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| “ | Kume... please don't leave me here all alone... I'm afraid she'll find me... and feed me again... | „ |
| ~ Moriguchi pleading with Kume to accompany him at the hospital out of fear of the Black Bird's arrival. |
The Black Bird is the main antagonist of the Black Bird manga by acclaimed Japanese Mangaka Junji Ito. She is an enigmatic guardian-angel who force-fed (with mouth-to-mouth) an injured, stranded hiker Moriguchi his own flesh from his future-self even when after he is rescued by the main protagonist Kume and hospitalized.
Biography[]
A young man named Kume is bird-watching in the woods when a badly injured young man calls out to him for help. Kume calls an ambulance, who take the man to hospital. The man confirms that he is in fact Shiro Moriguchi from Tokyo. He submitted a mountaineering log one month ago before setting out to scale the Shirogane-dake mountain, but was then injured when he fell from the mountainside. Moriguchi claims that he survived the dreadful month through living off the rations in his backpack, and that he is sadly unemployed with no family or friends to contact.
Moriguchi is scheduled for corrective surgery. Kume however comes to visit and announces that Moriguchi's story is all over the news. However, Moriguchi seems frightened and tearfully begs Kume to stay in the hospital room with him overnight. Kume agrees. They chat for hours and Moriguchi repeats his assertion that he is an orphan who has no family or friends.
Kume is woken in the night by a strange gulping sound, and sees a woman in black with hideously engorged lips lying on top of Moriguchi. When Kume calls out to her, she simply smiles and leans in close to his face; but suddenly leaves. Kume tries to ask Moriguchi what's happening, but sees a pile of fresh, shredded flesh on Moriguchi's pillow. Under pressure from Kume, Moriguchi confesses the the awful truth. After falling off the mountain, he was too badly wounded to move, and was starving to death. However, the woman appeared and fed him on half-chewed flesh from her own mouth. She returned periodically to feed him with flesh and fresh blood. Moriguchi is convinced that he should not have eaten the flesh. He is afraid because he had believed the woman would not return after he was rescued.
Kume stays with Moriguchi again the following night. The woman comes back again, and tries to feed Moriguchi an eyeball. Moriguchi retches and spits it out. She leaves, and Kume chases her; but she transforms into an enormous blackbird and flies away. Kume takes the raw meat as evidence and reports the incident to the police, but does not mention the fact of the woman turning into a bird.
Moriguchi is terrified of the woman. He believes that she is a demon, and has been feeding him because she believes he is one of her own kind. As a baby, he had been found abandoned under a tree and left there for more than a week before he was found. No one knew how he had survived, and he wonders if the woman might have been keeping him alive at that time. Just as he's telling Kume this story, police arrive to interview the men. The flesh and eyeball have been proven to be human. Moriguchi and Kume tell the police everything they know; but it isn't much, and the police cannot find who the body parts came from.
The woman isn't seen again. Moriguchi eventually recovers and announces his intention to return to Tokyo to look for a job. Kume goes to the station with him to say goodbye. As Moriguchi's train leaves, Kume looks up at the sky and sees a gigantic blackbird flapping after the train.
A month later, Kume receives a postcard in which Moriguchi says he is happy and has a new job. There is no mention of the woman. Kume thinks the bird he saw couldn't have been her. However, a few years later Moriguchi's body is found frozen in a cavity at the peak of Mt Fuji. There are reports that a giant blackbird was devouring his corpse when he was found. DNA tests prove that the flesh and eyeball that had been fed to Moriguchi had actually come from his own body. A diary found in Moriguchi's backpack describes that the woman had returned to him; somehow able to enter his home even though it was locked. When he asked her to stop feeding him, she instead began to cannibalize him. He tried to flee abroad, but she imprisoned him in the crater and ate him alive as he slowly froze to death. Kume believes the woman had traveled through time to feed Moriguchi his own flesh.
Kume is on another birdwatching trip when he is startled by the sound of something flapping through the sky. He looks up to see the woman, in her bird form, perched in a tree above him. The shock causes him to fall down the mountainside and break his leg. As he lies there helpless, the bird lands and kisses him, transferring chewed flesh from her own mouth to his.
Appearance[]
She appears in the manga in the form of a slim, woman of average height with silk, long black-hair as well as wearing entirely black tights and high heels. She has completely blank, expressionless eyes with no pupil, thick eye-lashes, she also has a normal-looking nose and ridiculously huge lips (perfect for force feeding mouth-to-mouth) covering her razor-sharp fangs. Her true form however is that of a giant huge-winged black bird with her only head and face present. Given her crow-like appearance, it is probable that the Black Bird is intended to represent a Tengu, a type of Japanese yokai sometimes said to have avian characteristics.
Personality[]
Although she does not speak throughout the entirety of the manga, it is well shown that she is a sadistic, malicious and a treacherous fiend. Whether she force fed dying hikers due to helpfulness or not is highly debatable as she force feeds them their own flesh from their future-selves. She seems to take pleasure, often grinning when cornering her victims, and giggling maniacally after force-feeding her victims. She is also persistent and relentless in stalking her victims in order to do the deed, though it is unknown whether she always choose certain victims or pick random victims by chance.
She is also implied to have a perversion for force-feeding people as she often straddles and caresses her victims while doing so. Her motives for all this is unknown though it is likely out of perverse sadism, but it is to be theorized that she was either once a guardian-angel turned evil similarly to to the biblical fallen angel Lucifer or simply a sadistic demon or entity who saves lives with a terrifying price.
Gallery[]
 Villains
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Souichi Tomie Lovesick Dead Uzumaki Gyo Mimi's Ghost Stories Remina Black Paradox Dissolving Sensor No Longer Human Short Story Villains | |