This is horrific (⊙…⊙ ), and would actually make sense hallucinations could kill and kill you
I like this! Any sources to link the manga to this tragedy or is it speculation?
IDK if the artist has said anything about the inspirations, motivations, muses etc. for the story, but so many things in this work made me think of the Minamata tragedy. It just feels like too much to be a complete coincidence. The incident so horrified Japan when it was exposed that it was one of those things that become part of a collective social consciousness... fertile ground for inspiration and if "Hikaru" is a treatment of that terrible historical event, I think it's a very creative and well done one!
One thing that really stood out to me and got me thinking was the fluid nature of New Hikaru's body, it's true lack of form, the neat visuals--liquid? solid? vapor?--and the description of it as 'cold'; also the number of times fish or something seafood related seem to come up. The light bulb went on: mercury? could it be... and then it was a case of 'connect the dots'. Japan. Small town, rural community. Seafood. Mercury. Poisoning. Industry. Children... Minamata.
Long answer to a short question ⁄(⁄ ⁄·⁄ω⁄·⁄ ⁄)⁄
sorry about that!
short answer: IDK if the Minamata disaster was a direct inspiration/influence for the artist, but I highly suspect that it (or something very similar) was.
Nuonuki the mountain god, an apotheosis of methyl mercury?
The swirling, fluid tendrils that come out of Hikaru's body resemble pools of reflective, mirror-like mercury, heavy metal, liquid at room temperature. Is this town haunted? Possessed? Harboring a mountain god? ... Or being gradually poisoned? What really happened to the children?
Mercury... is neurotoxic. Slow mercury poisoning causes hallucinations, birth defects, rashes, poor wound healing, coma, cerebral palsy, vision and hearing problems, severe disfigurement, and death.
This story: a memorial to the Minamata Health Disaster, in which a small town was poisoned--sacrificed--by chemical factory Chisso Corporation polluting the environment with industrial waste in the 1960s.
What did you do to the children, Chisso?