| Reptilia | |
&sq=Facebook&lang=en&file=File:HebiShojoCover.png) Cover to Scared of Mama | |
| へび女 (Hebi Onna) | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Horror |
| Created by | Kazuo Umezu |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Kazuo Umezu |
| Published by | Kodansha, Shogakukan |
| English publisher | |
| Magazine | Shūkan Shōjo Friend |
| Demographic | Shōjo |
| Original run | Scared of Mama August 10, 1965 – September 7, 1965 The Spotted Girl September 14, 1965 – November 9, 1965 Reptilia (Hebi Shōjo) March 15, 1966 – June 21, 1966 |
| Adaptations | |
| |
Hebi Onna (へび女, transl. "Snake Woman"), published in English under the title Reptilia, is a Japanese horror manga trilogy written and illustrated by Kazuo Umezu. It is composed of three series – Scared of Mama, The Spotted Girl, and Reptilia – which were originally serialized in the shōjo manga (girls' comics) magazine Shūkan Shōjo Friend from 1965 to 1966. The individual series were not originally conceived as an ongoing story but were later revised to form a connected trilogy, which was published as a single volume by Shogakukan in 1986. An English-language translation of the trilogy was published by IDW Publishing in 2007.
The trilogy follows a monstrous woman who is able to transform into a snake-like being. Umezu drew inspiration for the series from Japanese folklore, particularly stories about yōkai (supernatural beings), and conceived of a story about a monstrous mother figure as a critical response to the recurring motif of loving mother-daughter relationships common in shōjo manga of the 1960s. The series was Umezu's first major critical and commercial success and is credited with provoking a boom in the production of horror manga in the late 1960s. Two of the three stories in the trilogy have been adapted into live-action films.