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“ | I... I saw it. It looked right at me. It did! Remina looked me right in the eye! Remina knows about us, knows we're here! That's why... it's coming for us... | „ |
~ Professor Ikeuchi before succumbing to insanity. |
Hellstar Remina is the titular main antagonist of the Junji Ito manga of the same name.
A gigantic alien organism from another dimension, Remina was initially mistaken for an exoplanet by human observers on Earth. Remina is extremely hostile, and has a single goal in mind; to rampage through the universe, destroying and/or devouring any planets and stars in its path. Remina set its sights on Earth after it determined the planet was host to sentient life.
Biography[]
The astronomer Professor Tsuneo Oguro discovered the emergence of a rogue planet from a wormhole 16 lightyears away on the same day of his daughter Remina's birth, so he named it after her. He would eventually notice that the planet Remina was moving at the speed of light on a collision course towards Earth, destroying every star in its path. After 16 years, Remina had devoured the entire Hydra constellation and entered the Solar System, while there, the hellstar had collided with Saturn and Jupiter, effectively destroying the both of them, and had then eaten Mars soon after. As it was approaching Earth, it had swallowed Earth's moon.
By this point, human society totally collapsed and turned into a global doomsday cult, hysterically believing that, by lynching the human Remina, the planet Remina would spare Earth. To make matters worse, Remina intercepting Earth's atmosphere causes the planet to be engulfed in apocalyptic natural disasters. A scouting team of astronauts explore Remina's surface and describe it as a "paradise" in their report, so a second team is sent to begin colonization. However, it turns out that Remina had possessed the first team's corpses and lured the second into a trap, proving it is not only sentient, but maliciously intelligent. All of the astronauts succumb to the planet's hellish, unlivable conditions. The story ends with Remina eating Earth, killing billions.
Appearance[]
From a distance, the creature looks like a giant, purple gaseous planet with one giant yellow eye and a few smaller eyes. These are usually hidden by a cloudy atmosphere, and are uncovered when it discovers a planet of interest it wants to eat. The creature seems to emit a reddish aura which is strong enough to permeate on the planets it's about to eat. When it begins eating, it reveals a large mouth full of rows of giant, needle-like teeth and a tentacle like tongue.
Up close, the atmosphere of the hellstar is a dark purple, and made up of many tree-like structures with many eyes and mouths and many cliffs. The hellstar's surface is also made up of thousands of smaller eyes and mouths, coming from the fused remains of all of the living entities that it has eaten or absorbed into its atmosphere, malforming their remains and leaving their eyes and mouths behind. Despite the incredibly hellish conditions on Remina's surface, it appears to host life of its own in the form of tall humanoid entities with long, thin limbs. Whether these beings are separate from Remina, or yet another aspect of the living planet's bizarre biology is never elaborated on.
Personality[]
Although Remina appears to have sentience, the exact amount of sapience and moral agency it actually possesses is ambiguous. In some instances, Remina appears to act as nothing more than an intergalactic amoral predator, only seeing each planet it comes across as a part of its natural appetite, with no particular preference.
In other instances, it seems to show some degree of intelligence, as it was seemingly able to sense being detected by the scientists on Earth. It also seemed to be able to manipulate the space suits from some of the initial explorers of its atmosphere using one of its thousands of tentacle-like tongues in order to lure in some of its prey. Daisuke also notes how the hellstar seemed to especially take interest in Earth, comparing its apparent anticipation in eating it to a fat boy looking at a doughnut.
In addition, the hellstar itself appears to have some fixation towards Remina the girl, as one of its eyes can be seen putting its focus on her in a couple of scenes. Combined with that, it only ever seems to start attacking Earth when Remina is close to death, such as when the doomsday cult begin their ritual, and attempt to kill her on two separate occasions. When it licks the Earth for a first time, around the time Goda starts leading the cult, it also conveniently misses the cross that both Remina and Daisuke are tied onto.
Powers and Abilities[]
Hellstar Remina proves herself to be a very powerful and unstoppable entity, being able to devour planets and stars whole. With planets much larger than herself, Remina is able to destroy them by colliding with them, consuming their materials in the process. When the Japanese military attempted to shoot down the Hellstar's tongue with hundreds of missiles, it did very little damage to Remina, and only caused her tongue to briefly retreat.
Despite being a galactic predator, Remina also shows a high level of intelligence. She has been observed to be able to move on her own, seemingly violating many known laws of physics. Remina also appears to either host or be able to summon a group of giant, humanoid beings on her surface, which are seen closing in on the astronauts who travelled to the sentient planet in an attempt to escape Earth's impending destruction.
Remina is also believed to cause insanity to anyone that looks into her eyes, as demonstrated by one of Professor Oguro's assistants, who has been persistently been observing its behaviours, but then turned mad after the Hellstar stared back at him. It is also likely that Remina had a role to play in the formation of the cult, driving Naoya Goda to become its murderous and psychotic leader solely for the purpose of causing her namesake to suffer.
She is also able to absorb living entities into herself causing them to become a part of her gigantic body. When one astronaut who was sent to the Hellstar had his helmet removed, his flesh and body dissolved into its surface of the planet, where it was quickly assimilated into Remina's mass.
Trivia[]
- Despite not having a confirmed gender, Daisuke always refers to the hellstar by female pronouns.
- In the manga itself, the entity isn't ever actually referred to as "Hellstar Remina". The name itself comes from a specific fan-translation of its Japanese title Jigokusei Remina. The 2020 VIZ edition of the manga even changes its title to simply Remina, likely to allude to both the entity, as well as the girl it is named after.
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