NOVA Horror Club Discussion: Hideshi Hino's Mermaid in a Manhole (1988)

NOTE: This is NOT a screening, please watch the movie before the discussion.

CONTENT WARNING: Disease, mutilation, abortion.

This film contains extreme body horror and prolonged depictions of illness and bodily decay. It also includes references to pregnancy loss and a graphic act involving the removal of a fetus from a woman’s body. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Please read the original manga ahead of the dicussion: https://mangadex.org/chapter/bf397fc1-17bc-4fa1-8cd7-2cfd35f8170c

Hideshi Hino's Mermaid in a Manhole is body horror stripped of bravado. When a lonely artist encounters a dying mermaid trapped in an underground sewer, he attempts to care for her — documenting her condition as her body deteriorates in disturbing and intimate ways.

What begins as a strange act of compassion transforms into a bleak meditation on decay, obsession, and environmental collapse. Blending body horror with tragic romance, the film replaces shock-for-shock’s-sake with an atmosphere of sickness and inevitability that seeps into every frame.