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| “ | Eat it, but don't get caught eating it. | „ |
| ~ The warning given to Ogi about the Honey Gods |
The unnamed Trees, sometimes referred to as the Honey Gods, are the main antagonists of the Junji Ito manga Splatter Film, also entitled Smashed. The Honey Gods are a species of enigmatic, sentient tree native to an unspecified country in South America, which produce a delectable honey-like sap which is supposedly so delicious that anyone who consumes it finds all other food to be tasteless in comparison. Natives to the jungle where these trees grow risk their lives to collect the sap, and consume it under the notion that they must not 'get caught' by the trees when they do so, as the Gods possess a remarkable ability to use their many hand-like branches to strike their 'attackers' from many miles away, using an unusual form of teleportation that allows them to detach a branch and send it great distances across the Earth in an instant.
Appearance[]
The trees are tall and thick with a veiny pattern on their bark. Honey Gods have numerous highly-flexible branches that are constantly in motion, waving around in seemingly random patterns. Each of the branches have flat round structures at the end that resemble human hands, each of which have six or seven finger-like smaller branches, which in turn host large numbers of thin leaves. The amount of branches an individual tree may have can change at a moment's notice, as the tree is able to project its branches across the planet to attack those it catches drinking its sap, causing the branch to disappear momentarily, then reappear after the tree has made its attempt to strike back. As a result of this, the tree is able to attack both so suddenly and so quickly that its targets have little time to realise that they are about to die, though those who die in the immediate vicinity of a tree may have time to briefly notice the tree's branch moving towards them, as in these cases, the tree does not teleport its branches to strike at close range.
Depending on how careless the gatherers are, each Honey God has a variable number of stains on their trunks, which are the remains of those unfortunate enough to make their efforts to gather the tree's sap too obvious to the tree, getting smashed into a pulp before they could even manage to remove some of the sap.
The anime adaptation of the manga in the Junji Ito Collection show the trees to be roughly greyish-brown in color, while their sap is shown to be a rich reddish-orange.
Biography[]
Past[]
Ogi being presented with a jar of the Honey God's sap, after meeting the indigenous tribe that worshipped the trees.
| “ | The natives there, they even worship the plants it comes from. And you know what? I totally get it. This shit is godlike! | „ |
| ~ Ogi describing the honey from the trees. |
For many years, an indigenous tribe native to a remote area of South America's jungles had been collecting the sap of the Honey Gods, a species of enigmatic, seemingly-sentient tree. Due to its incredible qualities, they worshipped the trees as their gods, in spite of the danger collecting the sap posed. For the most part, this relationship between the trees and the tribe who collected the sap was fairly peaceful, as the people went to great efforts to not 'get caught'.
Splatter Film/Smashed[]
During an expedition to South America, a Japanese man named Ogi was hopelessly lost in a dense jungle. Miraculously, just when he believed that escape was impossible, he managed to stumble upon the tribe at their village, who nursed him back to health with some of the incredible honey they had collected. They inform him of the efforts they went to in gathering the honey, and give him the same instructions they use to survive, giving him a jar of it as a gift. Ogi returned to Japan, where he continued to safely consume it for quite some time, though he ate it sparingly, both to avoid running out and also to not 'get caught'.
Some time later, Ogi met with his friend Sugio at his apartment, and introduced him to the honey and the story of how he obtained it. Though he let Sugio try some, he consumed a large amount of it, causing Ogi to take the jar off him and insist that he couldn't have any more. After Sugio left, it was now too late for Ogi; while Sugio left unharmed, his voracious consumption of the honey alerted one of the Honey Gods to the incident, and Ogi died suddenly. Sugio went to a convenience store, and purchased a sandwich, but found that it tasted bland compared to the honey that he had just consumed.
A few days later, craving more of the honey, Sugio returned to the apartment with his friends - Yue, Yasmin, Riruko and Kameda - to find it empty, and Ogi seemingly missing. However, they soon came upon what looked like a grisly, splatter-shaped wall hanging inside his bedroom. When the 'wall hanging' fell off the wall and onto the floor, it became clear that this was no wall hanging; bones, hair and pieces of clothing jutted out of the mass. It would seem that Ogi had died through an extremely violent incident, one that completely pulverised his body, splattering his remains onto the wall where they dried in place. However, not knowing for sure if this was Ogi or not, the group continued to assume he was simply missing.
As the group left the house in fear of what they had just witnessed, Sugio stole the jar, and picked up a map left behind by Ogi, taking it for himself. The group went to Kameda's apartment, where they each shared fifths of Ogi's honey, decanting it into bottles.
As the group drank from their supplies, Yasmin was suddenly crushed against a wall, leaving his body as a flat bloody pulp, similar to the ‘wall hanging’ from before. The rest of the group were once again horrified by the sight, as it confirmed their worst fears that the thing that they found in Ogi's apartment was indeed him.
The remaining four delinquents then sat out on the streets in the hopes of avoiding whatever had killed both Ogi and Yasmin, and try to rationalize what had just happened. When Kameda and Yue try to suggest the possibility that the deaths were mere hallucinations, Riruko drinks from her bottle of honey, which then causes her body to get crushed onto the pavement.
This causes Sugio to realize that the prior three deaths were all the result of them eating the honey, remembering the warning that the tribe told Ogi. Due to the vague description of the warning, where eating the honey while "caught" will get you killed, Sugio wasn't able to deduce why Ogi, Yasmin, and Riruko in particular had gotten killed when the rest of them were left unscathed. Nonetheless, Sugio deduces that the murders were the result of a wrathful god or some extra-dimensional creture, an idea which Kameda mockingly dismisses.
For the next few weeks, Sugio and Yue attempted to avoid drinking the honey following the incidents that they had witnessed, fearing that they would be killed next if they continued to drink it. Unfortunately for them, ever since they first tried the honey, everything else had become tasteless to them, making it difficult for them to eat. Both of them appeared thin and malnourished. It had gotten so bad that Yue was "off the wagon" at least twice, still indulging herself with the honey occasionally.
All the while, Riruko and Yasmin's deaths had made the news, which also reported on an increase of "pancake murders" around the area. To their shock, neither they nor Kameda were the victims, though Yue had deducted that the deaths may have resulted from others taking Kameda's stash of the honey. When they meet up with Kameda, he tells them that he had tested all possible ways of getting "caught" on numerous people who were never aware of the honey, nor its origins, as a means of disposing his share of the honey. His conclusion on what caused the murders was "Hell if I know".
The remaining three decided to relax by the river, where Sugio and Yue both lose the will to withdraw on the honey. When Yue has a small portion of the honey, and doesn't get killed, Sugio snapped and desperately drinks the honey straight out of his bottle, only to get suddenly pulverised. Yue then claims that she was able to spot what caused Sugio's death for a short moment, claiming it was something big that fell from the sky. Maddened by a combination of withdrawal and psychological trauma, Yue had come to believe that she could avoid whatever is causing the "pancake murders" by drinking the honey while immersed in water, running into the river. However, this fails, and Kameda manages to catch a glimpse of the same large object materialising in the sky before it slams into the river, reducing Yue to a pulp that quickly dissolves away into the water.
After Kameda found the map that Sugio had picked up in Ogi's apartment, he decided to travel to the South American jungle that Ogi went to a few months later in an attempt to gather more honey, vowing that he wouldn’t forget the warning unlike his less fortunate friends. Drawn through the jungle by the sweet smell of the Honey God's sap, Kameda then eventually came across one of the Honey Gods in all of its glory, observing its strange appearance, and the mysterious way that its branches seemed to disappear and reappear. There, he realised the truth about the 'honey', and that this is where it was really from.
Taking his knife, Kameda ignored the stains on the tree's bark - all of them belonging to unfortunate gatherers from the tribe, who had failed to avoid getting caught by the tree - and drove the blade into the trunk, drinking some of the sap that welled out. However, Kameda’s sudden carelessness finally caught up with him, and the tree swiftly attacked with one of its many branches, killing him instantly.
Personality[]
While the Honey Gods are sentient and revered by the people who rely on them for their sap, very little personality is shown from them, though they appear to be capable of strategizing to take down their attackers, as demonstrated when the Honey God allowed Yue to fool herself into thinking she could avoid being splattered by consuming the sap while floating in water, only to smash her into a pulp effortlessly. Otherwise, the Honey Gods are largely docile and live like any other tree, only becoming aggressive when they become aware of a drinker carelessly consuming the sap from afar, thus making the threat they pose to the wider world effectively nil.
Trivia[]
- The Honey Gods and their method of killing those who consume their sap are an analogy to humans and mosquitoes. Only female mosquitoes drink blood, while the blood of animals is an equivalent substance to the sap inside plants. Both sap and blood serve the same purpose in transporting nutrients around the organism for later use. Humans often use their hands to kill mosquitoes that bite them, just as the trees use their giant, hand-like branches to instantly slam and crush anyone they catch drinking their sap. A mosquito can survive consuming a human's blood as long as they 'don't get caught', just as the people who drink the Honey God's sap can potentially survive if they follow the same mantra, consuming only small amounts and on rare occasions to avoid attracting the tree's fury. Ironically, male mosquitoes, which do not consume blood, primarily feed on substances found in plants, including nectar and fruit juice.
Gallery[]
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