Junji Ito’s Remina (Hellstar Remina) — Review & Guide

What Is the Junji Ito Hellstar Remina Manga About?

Junji Ito’s Hellstar Remina manga is his take on cosmic horror — horror built on the idea that the universe is vast, indifferent, and beyond human understanding — at its most literal. A planet emerges from a wormhole in the Hydra constellation, and astronomer Dr. Oguro names it “Remina” after his daughter. That single decision sets everything in motion.

The planet moves at impossible speeds, devouring stars in its path like something alive. When it becomes clear that this thing is headed straight for Earth, society doesn’t band together. It fractures. And the mob turns on the one person they can reach — the girl who shares the planet’s name.

What follows across six chapters and 256 pages is one of Ito’s most relentless stories: escalating cosmic dread layered with some of the ugliest mob violence he’s ever drawn. The crowd-turning-on-Remina sequences are genuinely hard to read — not because of gore, but because of how convincingly Ito captures mass hysteria. People don’t just panic. They organize their cruelty.

The whole thing is self-contained in a single hardcover volume, published in English by VIZ Media (the main publisher that brings Japanese manga to English readers in North America). No sequels, no spinoffs. You pick it up, you read it in one sitting, and you sit with it afterward.

Is Remina Worth Reading? Honest Review

Short answer: yes, with a couple of caveats.

What It Does Well

Remina is Ito operating at planetary scale, and that’s not a metaphor. The panels where Planet Remina looms close to Earth — its surface covered in writhing, organic textures — are some of the most striking pages in his entire body of work. This is body horror (horror focused on disturbing transformations and violations of physical form) applied to a celestial object, and the effect is genuinely unsettling in a way that’s different from his usual fare.

The other major strength is the mob psychology. Ito has always been interested in how groups of people lose their minds — you see it in Uzumaki, in his short stories — but Remina pushes it further than anything else he’s done. The speed at which the public turns from adoring Remina (who becomes a celebrity after the planet’s discovery) to wanting her dead is stomach-turning. It reads like a horror parable about fame, scapegoating, and how thin the veneer of civilization really is.

The pacing is relentless. Six chapters, and each one escalates. There’s no breathing room, which is clearly intentional — Ito wants you to feel the same suffocation the characters do.

Where It’s Weaker

Character depth. Remina (the girl) is sympathetic but thinly drawn — she reacts to events more than she drives them, and you never get a strong sense of who she is beyond “a person trying to survive.” The supporting cast exists mostly to demonstrate different flavors of human ugliness. If you need well-developed characters to anchor your horror, this might feel more like a rollercoaster than a novel — thrilling but not deeply personal.

The ending is also divisive. Without spoilers: it commits fully to its cosmic horror premise, which means it doesn’t wrap up in a way that feels “resolved” by conventional standards. Some readers find it perfect. Others find it abrupt. Your mileage will depend on how comfortable you are with conclusions where humanity is simply not the point — where the universe is too big and too indifferent for a tidy resolution.

Who Should Read It

If you love cosmic horror, societal collapse stories, or apocalyptic fiction — Remina is one of the best manga in the genre. It scratches an itch that very few manga even attempt.

If you’ve already read some Ito and you’re looking for his most ambitious single volume, this is it. And if Remina happens to be your first Ito book, it still works — just know that his range extends well beyond apocalyptic horror. A short story collection like Shiver or the longer spiral of Uzumaki will show you a very different side of what he does.

Remina by Junji Ito (Hardcover)

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Remina vs Other Junji Ito Single-Volume Works

Ito has a growing shelf of single-volume hardcovers from VIZ Media, and they’re all at similar price points. If you’re deciding which one to grab — or figuring out what to read after the Hellstar Remina manga — here’s how Remina stacks up against the most commonly compared titles:

If you want pure cosmic dread at the fastest possible pace, Remina is the pick. If you want something with more room to breathe and a slower burn, Sensor is worth a look. And if you want Ito’s most “fun” disaster story — walking fish machines invading Japan — Gyo is wild in a completely different way.

Does Remina Have an Anime?

No. As of mid-2025, there is no dedicated Remina anime — not announced, not in production.

Here’s the full picture of Junji Ito anime adaptations so far:

• Junji Ito Collection (2018) — adapted various short stories as standalone episodes (an anthology format, meaning each episode is its own separate story). Mixed reception.
• Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre (2023, Netflix) — another anthology of short stories. Better received than the 2018 series.
• Uzumaki (2024, Adult Swim/Crunchyroll) — four-episode adaptation of his most famous work. Adult Swim is a late-night TV programming block; Crunchyroll is an anime streaming platform.
• Junji Ito Crimson (announced 2025, Crunchyroll) — will adapt multiple Ito stories, but Remina has not been confirmed as one of them.

Remina’s structure — a single continuous story across six chapters building to an apocalyptic climax — makes it a natural fit for a feature film rather than a TV series. Whether that ever happens is anyone’s guess, but the manga is the definitive way to experience this story for now.

Where to Buy or Read Remina

Physical (Hardcover)

VIZ Media published the English hardcover edition on December 15, 2020. It’s a gorgeous object — 256 pages, part of VIZ’s Junji Ito hardcover line that includes Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo, and others. MSRP is $19.99, though it’s typically sold for less at major retailers.

You can find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and most bookstores that carry manga. It also shows up in Junji Ito bundle sets (3-book and 4-book sets) on Amazon, which can be a good deal if you’re building an Ito collection.

Remina by Junji Ito (Hardcover)

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Digital

If you prefer reading on a screen, Remina is available digitally on the VIZ Manga app (VIZ’s official digital storefront and reader), Kindle, and Apple Books. The Kindle edition is usually priced lower than the physical copy, and it goes on sale periodically.

Remina by Junji Ito (Kindle Edition)

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Can You Read the Remina Manga Online for Free?

If you’ve searched for “junji ito remina manga read online” or looked for it on MangaDex (a website that hosts fan-translated manga) — those results are unofficial scanlations, meaning fan-uploaded, unauthorized translations scanned from physical copies. There’s no authorized free source for the full manga online. The VIZ hardcover and digital editions are the legitimate English releases.

At under $20 for a hardcover (and often less for digital), it’s a pretty easy buy for something you’ll read in an evening and keep thinking about for a lot longer than that.

Quick Reference

Here’s a summary of the key details for the Junji Ito Hellstar Remina manga at a glance:

Remina is a single, self-contained volume — one book, one story, no sequel. It isn’t Ito’s most famous work, but it might be his most ambitious. A planet that eats stars, a girl who shares its name, and a world that loses its mind. All in 256 pages. That’s a pretty good deal.