Manga / Himenospia

Himenospia (ヒメノスピア) is a 2017-2021 seinen manga written by Shinya Murata and illustrated by Yanai Nobuhiko. It was published under the monthly Gekkan Hero's magazine along with his other story, Killing Bites, but following the end of HERO'S in late 2020 both moved to the magazine's website Comiplex.

It follows the misadventures of a young Himeno Endou, who does not have a fun life. She's spent most of her life being treated like garbage by her incestuous stepfather and her abusive mother, her classmates force her to crawl naked around the school and then a wasp stings her in the neck... mutating Himeno and granting her a fearsome stinger tail.

Turns out there's a mysterious species of wasp out there that parasites female humans and turns them into servants. Once a wasp dies, her servants become crazed terrorists hell-bent on ruining society. As Himeno is now one of a few Queen-ranked mutants who can potentially convert an unlimited amount of women, she is soon targeted by the government and all her newfound "comrades" are slaughtered. Infuriated, Himeno must take charge as the herald for the next step in human evolution.

Of note is that the series is largely a reimagining of Murata's Arachnid. This is something that went full circle when a certain someone was later introduced in Blattodea, with Murata beginning to advertise Himenospia as being loosely tied to that series when he wouldn't do so before.

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This work features the following tropes:

• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Himeno becomes the student council president of her school following the "incident", and claims a piece of Tokyo for herself.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Himeno's stepfather attempted to rape her, and her mother hit her in the face with a hot iron when she found out. One flashback shows her treating a younger Himeno kindly, and it is unclear just what happened to make her so heartless in the interim. Ultimately Himeno ends up brainwashing her mother, causing the woman to realize her own faults and become overly kind to her, but unfortunately that peace doesn't last long.
  • Rushia, Mizu's mother, neglects her to astronomical extents to the point of casually admitting she named the girl after a term for abortion, and this resulted in Mizu's odd anti-kindness dysfunction. When Rushia is converted by Himeno and starts treating Mizu well, the girl is sickened to her core. The truth, however, is that Rushia is just head-over-heels for Himeno and is using Mizu as a tool to get closer to her.
• Accomplice by Inaction: In the second arc, when some soldier-women stop a molester on a train, they then turn on the closest individuals who did nothing to stop the asshole from forcing his fingers into the girl's underwear.
• The Ageless: Like how queen bees live about a hundred times longer than their workers, human wasp queens like Serena and Himeno can live for centuries and won't age past 16.
• Alien Animals: The red wasps are of alien origin and for some reason meddle with human society by creating the mutant queens. This is only loosely revealed at the very end, with a wasp scout watching over the Earth and then flying away to parts unknown.
• All Abusers Are Male: In chapter 22, Fujimoto and Mizu talk about how women would be peaceful without men being a source of conflict for them. Nevermind all the bullying on Himeno in the beginning and Rushia neglecting Mizu out of selfishness. The following scenes also downplay this by showing that even in the wasp girls' seemingly peaceful matriarchal hives, a bloody power struggle between Himeno and Serena is inevitable.
• All Men Are Perverts: With the exception of Dr. Fujimoto and the cops, but either way there are no prominent good-hearted or even sympathetic male characters in the story at all.
• Allergic to Love: Mizu is allergic to kindness, and hurls and passes out anytime people are nice to her. Especially the wasp women. On the other hand, being abrasive and harming others makes her feel good.
• Alone with the Psycho:
  • Mizu with Niho on two occasions. Niho is very unhinged and asks for help with assassinating Himeno, but later frames Mizu for Atsuko's murder.
  • Niho gets Himeno at her mercy after killing Aya, and then reveals she's actually Jiro Kuroda brought back to life by a brain transplant. Himeno unknowingly had her arch-nemesis right under her nose for months.
• Animal Motifs: Mainly wasps for the mutant women, but Himeno and Nagisa are compared to bees in the omakes and later an ant theme starts creeping in as the Arachnid throwbacks become prominent. One odd example is when Serena compares her Media soldiers to not only army ants but also termites — which belong to the Blattodea order and not Hymenoptera.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Himeno gets stung by a mysterious wasp and turns into a Queen with a sting and parasite-based mind-controlling powers that only work on females. And on some level the mutated women begin to act more like wasps than humans, as is often noted by Fujimoto and the mini chapters that end every volume.
• Artistic License – Biology: The premise involves female humans being mutated with long wasp-like stings coming out of their wombs. Some of them secrete the pheromone Queen substance like bee and ant queens do to mutate and brainwash other females. Don't think too much about how any of that works or about the viability of transplanting a middle aged man's brain inside a female high schooler who had been deceased for several days.
• Attempted Rape: Everything goes to Hell when a school employee attempts to rape Himeno and she retaliates, forcing her classmates to murder him when it turns out they cannot brainwash him to their side.
• Author Appeal: It's about bugs again, but with a focus on wasps. The narration fun facts reach their usual Once an Episode tendencies as it goes on. And the plot revolves around master-slave relationships, which were a regular subject back in Arachnid and Caterpillar.
• Ax-Crazy: Mizu is willing to fire tasers on people who bother her and attempts to kill Himeno in public, but even she is unsettled by how psychotic Niho Kurono is when the girl expresses a desire to kill Himeno, flies into a rage punching a fly that had landed next to her and then properly introduces herself like nothing happened.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Serena admits "defeat" due to being stung by Himeno and placed under a mental block that prevents her from killing the girl. But aside from that she doesn't feel brainwashed by Himeno's powers and gets away with everything, teaching the fellow queen to Take Over the World with her and seemingly being Easily Forgiven for killing Nagisa in cold blood.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When Dr. Fujimoto confronts Rie over her attempt to hack into the police's database, she raises her stinger, acts like she's going to threaten him... and then bows her head low and begs for the password.
  • In Mizu's origin story, we see her terrified and backed against a wall by her mother... who is offering a birthday cake.
  • Nagisa asks Himeno for a vice president rank in the student council like she's asking for sex, and is oblivious to why Himeno, who was actually going along with it, drops to her knees in embarrassment.
• Batman Gambit: The government informs Himeno about Serena's visit in advance and equips her group with submachine guns in hopes of a violent firefight between them, but the two queens instead settle the incident peacefully.
• Berserk Button: Dr. Fujimoto comments at one point he really detests how Graptopsaltria nigrofuscata cicadas don't care if they fall on their backs and can't get up, as he feels they're disregarding their predators and the need to adapt and evolve. His face even contorts as he says this, and he's fairly chill otherwise.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: The wasp women have a ovipositor stinger coming out of their genitalia, and the queens can use theirs to transform other women into wasp mutants as well. When intending to kill, they instead inject venom that deals instant death by shock to their target.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There is the Japanese prime minister, who wants Himeno captured to reclaim control over Japan and invites Ronald Trampoline along so he can be rid of Serena. She, too, is another major antagonist who has been killing rival queens for over a century to maintain her status as the world's single shadowy ruler.
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • In chapter 6, Nagisa plants a kiss on Himeno to convince her to leave her soldiers behind and escape because they all love her and want to be her shield.
  • To cap off their Foe Romance Subtext, Serena gives Himeno a deep kiss after recounting her own backstory. Despite the shock, Himeno reciprocates the kiss.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Serena pretends to be sweet and friendly towards Himeno, but she's actually planning to wipe both Himeno and Himenospia out so she can be the only queen.
  • Niho is the only girl who has ever asked Himeno to become one of her wasp soldiers, and as such is very important to her. But by the time we learn this we already know Niho is one edgy traitor, and then it turns out she's actually the guy who ordered the shooting at Himeno's school and the assassination of her mom.
• Bittersweet Ending: Himeno and Mizu survive the story while Serena stops being hostile to them due to being stung by Himeno. Unfortunately, Nagisa was killed by Serena during their confrontation.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: A girl who ends up doing a questionable takeover of a city through brainwashing is opposed by authorities who really just want her power for their own purposes, an American Shadow Dictator and a comically sociopathic girl.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Himeno starts out concerned about her powers, but Nagisa, who had a Heel Realization after her own conversion, argues she should view the personality changes brought by her stinger as improvements. And so Himeno denies to people like Mizu that what she is doing is brainwashing, but to Serena and Niho she honestly remarks that she was lucky Aya was a woman who could be converted to her cause and that most of her followers can be considered prisoners of war.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Himeno insists her stinger does not brainwash people because it doesn't affect their personality and autonomy much, but the victims become fanatics for her nevertheless. Serena, on the other hand, happily goes for the slavery angle on anyone but her closest confidants. However, when the two are alone discussing a murder on the school, Himeno expresses relief that a police inspector that nearly caught her was female and thus susceptible to brainwashing. She later admits to Niho that the student council members other than her and Nagisa are prisoners of war.
  • After Mizu attempts to murder Himeno in view of everyone else, Fujimoto claims she isn't mentally ill or particularly unstable. By his and the setting's standards, maybe.
• Bodyguard Babes: Serena surrounds herself with sharp-dressed female guards, among which are Joyce and Marjorie, her Co-Dragons. Himeno herself has nearly the entire student body of her school at her beck and call, but Nagisa is the only noteworthy original classmate of hers left.
• Bookends:
  • The story begins and ends on a shot of Earth from outer space.
  • The last chapter of the first volume is titled "End". The start of the climax is titled "Beginning".
  • Nagisa's Dying Declaration of Love in the penultimate chapter reaffirms what she told Himeno about her feelings all the way back in chapter 3.
• Boss Subtitles: Most characters are introduced with their name on a text box. Serena and her bodyguards stand out for not getting this treatment.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Women stung by Himeno retain their autonomy and personality but turn completely loyal to her and will do anything to spread her rule. Himeno is understandably disturbed and hesitant at first, but is forced to swiftly establish an autonomous region within Japan to keep the government from acting against her and her close friends.
• Brawn Hilda: Among Serena's forces are large, muscular and square-jawed women armed with miniguns. Only their hairstyles are cute.
• Break the Cutie: Himeno already was a Broken Bird to begin with, but then her classmates and mother got murdered by the authorities. She begins to turn cold from then on, and embraces her role as a wasp queen.
• Breather Episode: Each volume ends in a dark cliffhanger which is followed by a lighthearted mini chapter about Nagisa's and Himeno's bee-esque interactions.
• Cannibalism Superpower: Subverted. Himeno is assumed to have become a queen instead of a soldier because she was forced to eat the red wasp that stung her, but it is revealed her transformation actually was the wasp's will.
• Car Fu: When Himeno and Nagisa get cornered by a cop named Oonuki while attempting to escape from their school, Rie runs him over with her car.
• Cerebus Retcon: Himeno's soldiers follow her every whim and are even willing to sacrifice their lives, but something Played for Laughs is that she can't get Nagisa to erase her copy of the humiliating nude video they made of her in the beginning of the story. This is because Nagisa is a fellow queen and Himeno has a limited amount of power over her.
• Character Title: "Hime no supia" literally means "Princess' Spear" and is a pun on the protagonist's name, the word "Hymenoptera" and "utopia". Or even "Hymen no Spear".
• The Chikan: One pervert starts groping a girl in a train only to find several angry women of varying ages pointing their deadly stingers at him. They demand he turns himself in to the police.
• Child Soldier: Serena has a group of juggernaut soldiers who she stung as soon as they were born and were made to do absolutely nothing but military training.
• The Chosen Many: The red wasps are revealed to intentionally select certain human women to become queens.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: After Serena asks Himeno out on a date, Nagisa, Joyce and Marjorie follow from a distance while looking horribly frustrated.
• Composite Character:
  • Himeno is one of Alice Fujii and Ai Kuramoto from Arachnid. She combines the miserable backstories of both characters, Alice's looks and personality and Ai's mind control powers. However, she's an ageless wasp person with parasitic powers like the Boss was instead of a tricky spider or an ant with sex powers.
  • Nagisa doesn't resemble anyone from Murata's previous series, but readers familiar with Arachnid can recognize she acts much like both Gokiburi and Yoriko did towards Alice. Her backstory as a shadow dictator matches Yoriko's as much as Serena's does, involving the atomic bombings of Japan and getting rid of her entire family before eventually manipulating Himeno to be her pawn for a grand plan.
  • Serena's character design is from Majo ni Ataeru Tettsui, but she has a role very similar to the Boss from Arachnid as an ageless superpowered girl who's been controlling the United States' politics for over a century. Her not-so-friendly rivalry with Himeno and her backstory involving poverty and thinking her ability is a divine gift is also reminiscent of Dinoponera.
• Covered with Scars: Himeno, who already has half her face scarred, ends up like this after Niho whips her 84 times in a row.
• Covers Always Lie: Niho and Himeno hugging each other on the cover for volume 7 alludes to Niho being unwillingly in love with Himeno due to her odd circumstances, but the two don't get that friendly as Niho is shaken back to her senses by Oonuki.
• Cute But Psycho:
  • Himeno is generally kind, but it is shown just how psychotic and brutal she can be when driven past her edge.
  • Mizu Adachi grew up under extreme neglect and emotional abuse, and grew so used to it that kindness became poison to her. When she first meets Himeno, who unwittingly made her mother a nicer person, she immediately attempts to stab her to death.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Himeno suffered from a sexually-abusive father as a child and her mother's response to that was to hit her in the face with a hot iron. Her classmates also bullied her to absurd levels.
  • Mizu's mother gave birth to her on a whim and was utterly disdainful about her very existence. Downplayed in that Mizu grew used to it and wouldn't have it any other way.
  • Serena was born in 1850s New York and lived in poverty, selling herself when she was just 8.
  • Jirō used to have an inferiority complex over being literally named the second son of his family until he fell in love and learned to trust others. Then his family's death in a terrorist attack staged by wasp women left him with nothing but an obsession to see them wiped out from the face of the Earth.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Arachnid, it has its campy moments but is a political thriller story instead of a wacky battle royale and is far bleaker in tone. However, after the Darkest Hour in which the Yoriko+Gokiburi analogue Nagisa is killed, the Sequel Hook ending is far more upbeat than the one Arachnid had. The series also had detailed female nudity as well.
• Darkest Hour: In chapter 27 Himeno is held prisoner and tortured by Niho on a hidden basement floor in the police's headquarters, and her minions have no idea what to do. Mizu gets Nagisa to calm down and intends to ask Serena for help, even if she's hardly the most trustworthy person around. To make it worse, Serena refuses to help in the next chapter.
• Decapitated Army:
  • When a wasp Queen dies, her servants turn berserk and start doing calculated terrorist acts to destroy society. If small groups of rampaging soldiers from the bug wasps are that bad, the death of either Himeno or her rival will cause the collapse of their countries in a potentially worse way than even the zombie apocalypse scenario from Arachnid this story is echoing.
  • After Himeno is captured by Niho, all of her followers including Nagisa are too distraught and confused to come up with any plan to find her. Mizu realizes Himeno left her around for a time like this and, because she desires revenge against Niho, decides to negotiate with Serena to save Himeno and kill the police's forces.
• Decomposite Character: Himeno, Nagisa and Serena all have some very spoilery traits of the Boss from Arachnid. Himeno and Serena are both ageless shadow rulers with brainwashing powers, and Serena outright has a variant of the Boss's backstory. Nagisa is the terrible school bully who becomes Himeno's friend while manipulating her to become a big shot for mysterious reasons.
• Denser and Wackier: The story, which is already about super-powered wasp mutants, quickly retreads some of the most bizarre plot points from late in Arachnid such as a variation of its zombie apocalypse (the threat of it, at least) and a schoolgirl who's an ageless shadow dictator, and then follows with a person who's presumed dead being resurrected via a Brain Transplant. Then in the very end, it turns out the red wasps are aliens.
• Deuteragonist: The second arc introduces Mizu Adachi as a second protagonist. She's a disturbed person who thrives in abusive environments and who seeks to dismantle Himenospia from within.
• Eagleland: President Donald Trump is given an unflattering caricature and Serena is portrayed as very lascivious to contrast with Shrinking Violet Himeno.
• Enemy Mine: After Himeno is captured by Niho, Mizu reasons with Serena that saving Himeno and asserting control over Himenospia is the best path for confronting the Japanese government. Plus, Mizu only acts as an intermediator between Nagisa, who beat her up badly earlier, and for Serena, who wants to sting her, to get back at Niho for framing her for murder.
• Evilutionary Biologist: When Fujimoto realizes Himeno has become a previously unseen human-wasp queen, he sabotages the police to let her establish her society and closely watches over her development afterwards.
• Expecting Someone Taller: Even after her takeover, Himeno is, or rather pretends to be, far humbler than Mizu is led to expect. And the gall of Himeno acting humble after everything she did just disgusts her further.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Himeno avenges the deaths and her mother and her classmates by killing the man responsible with extreme prejudice, using her sting to stab his face beyond recognition while repeatedly screaming death threats through Berserker Tears.
• False Utopia: Himenospia is an autonomous region ruled by Himeno and policed by her now huge amounts of semi-brainwashed soldiers. Crime reduction rates and quality of life have improved because of them, but Himeno admits as much that she's really preparing for war against any potential enemies.
• Fan Disservice: Much of the nudity in the series appears in an abusive context, with one nude corpse scene when the dead Tokisaka is shown in a morgue before Jiro's brain is set inside her.
• Feel No Pain: Serena's Media soldiers feel no pain or anything else because they are entirely dedicated to their duty of protecting her. They're shown to be unfazed even from getting repeatedly shot in the head.
• Feminist Fantasy: In Himenospia women make up 70% of the population and the laws are biased towards them, but Mizu views it as a Gilded Cage where the women are subjected to Himeno's Cult of Personality.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Chapter 34 bluntly implies Nagisa is the hidden mastermind and this is confirmed in the next chapter, complete with Himeno wondering who could be making a puppet out of her while said person is holding her shoulders. The omake on volume 7 then confirms Nagisa is a hidden queen before she admits as much in the story proper.
• Foe Romance Subtext:
  • Serena molests and kisses Himeno either to taunt her or to pretend being friendly.
  • Niho masturbates to her torture of Himeno and has the need to wear a dominatrix getup to whip her around. Himeno argues Niho must have fallen in love with her despite her intentions as a result of being a fusion of Jirou's mind and Tokisaka's wasp-mutated body.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Niho is suspiciously introduced right after Oonuki states the police has secret plans for sabotaging Himenospia.
  • In hindsight, "Niho Kurono" can be interpreted as wordplay for "Jiro Kuroda", who turns out to be inhabiting Tokisaka's body.
    "They rhyme a bit, now don't they?"
  • Nagisa is quick to understand how Himeno's powers work and to suggest her to create an utopian nation. She also gets a bad feeling when Himeno and Aya are about to interrogate Niho but leaves her be. Those are signs of Nagisa manipulating Himeno for her own purposes despite caring for her one way or another.
• Frameup: Mizu tries to call Himeno for aid against Niho, only to get punched out by Nagisa and find she's been framed for Atsuko's murder. Since Mizu had hit Niho with pepper spray right before, the mole is able to further convince Himeno that she is guilty, and the chapter ends with the pussy-sting firing squad already ready to execute her.
• Friendly Enemy: After greeting Himeno with threats of sniper fire and demands of a Shameful Strip to measure her personality, Serena invites her for a date. Afterwards it seems like Serena is willing to form an alliance with Himeno because she found a kindred spirit in her, but Himeno expects her to be putting on a facade and, indeed, Serena wants Himeno dead like all the other would-be-queens she has eliminated over the past century.
• Gainax Ending: The ending reveals, with next to no details, that the red wasps were the work of aliens all along.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Only women can be mutated by the red wasps and queens can only convert other women. However, men stung by a queen can still end up brainwashed if they're then administered female hormones for a long time. Jiro as Niho seems immune to the brainwashing thanks to his male brain, but later realizes Tokisaka's body will not let him shoot Himeno. This is all powered by oxodecenoic acid, also known as queen substance, just like the ant virus on Arachnid but there were no such restrictions in that series.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: Himenospia is a city where a large part of the female population is armed with a two-something meters long insta-killing vagina dentata cord.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Serena inexplicably gets one huge teddy bear from a overly filled claw game machine offscreen, and remarks on how the toy looks more exaggeratedly cute than the ones in America.
• The Glasses Come Off: Every time Himeno is making a serious comment, like passing judgment or considering killing someone, she takes her glasses off.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Himeno has the right half of her face scarred from her mother hitting her with a hot iron, and comes to take pride on it as part of her identity.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking:
  • Police officer Jirō Kuroda is a smoker who bears a heavy grudge for the wasp women because of the death of his family and wants them eradicated.
  • Aya Murakami, a police inspector, is seen smoking inside Himeno's school and has a Hardboiled Detective demeanor, as seen when she interrogates and threatens Serena about the mystery murder on Himeno's school.
  • Niho Kurono has a smoke on the school's roof while talking to Mizu, who wants nothing with that, and argues that she won't get addicted to nicotine so long as she smokes sparingly, like when she wants to focus, needs to sleep or has just killed someone. Also, she's actually Jirō and clearly has gone unhinged from being revived as one of the wasp-girls he hates so much.
• Gratuitous English: Mizu is supposed to be fluent in English, and yet we get this gem from her:
  "Don't give a fuck with me."
• Gratuitous Rape: Surprisingly downplayed, actually. Attempted rape does play a part on Himeno's backstory and in how the police catches wind of her classmates being mutated, but the wasps aren't fueled by rape like the army ants from Arachnid they're based on and it isn't such a regular occurrence like in most of the author's other works.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It is implied throughout the series that the red wasps are deliberately infecting human females and turning some of them into queens for some kind of purpose. Upon being infected, the Japanese "Sovereign" was even subconsciously led into seeking to dominate her country and to be wary of the foreign queen who existed long before her. In the end, it is revealed the wasps are agents of an unseen alien civilization that Himeno and Serena might have to fight against.
• Guns Are Worthless: Himeno beats Jiro on a quick draw match and brutalizes him with her venomous stinger, but otherwise the wasp girls are very vulnerable against groups of heavily armed soldiers. This is especially notable considering the throwbacks to Arachnid — for example, the Media ants from that were muscleman who got easily beaten by a cybernetically-enhanced high schooler in physical combat and the Media wasps from this are musclewomen armed with goddamn gatling guns who make mincemeat of their opposition.
• Happiness in Slavery:
  • Women who get turned into wasp people become awfully devoted to their Queen while also turning strong-willed and nicer to each other and their families, no matter how rotten they might have been beforehand. They realize it is all because of the Queen's influence, but feel at peace with their situation. After establishing Himenospia, Himeno makes up excuses for the public about how her comrades aren't brainwashed, but knows they are and feels conflicted over it.
  • It is later stated Niho was the only person to ever willingly ask to become Himeno's servant, and even then it turns out to not be the case at all.
  • Chapter 31 is named "Love". It is revealed Serena brainwashes girls from birth and raises them into super soldiers who know nothing but warfare and loyalty for her. She outright denies they're human.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing:
  • Himeno brainwashes her abusive mother and bullies into caring for her, but refrains from doing the same with Mizu. She realizes it's no good if everyone is willing to die for her and wants to have somebody who so vehemently disagrees with her methods close to keep from getting too Drunk with Power.
  • Serena instantly dismantles a protesting group at Himeno's school by stinging one of the few women in it and having her expose how corrupt nearly all the men in the crowd actually are. She also takes advantage of Himeno refusing to convert all the students at her school to get some soldiers for her own protection.
  • Niho suffers from identity loss thanks to the lingering effects of Himeno's brainwashing in Tokisaka's body and ends up sacrificing herself for her.
  • Serena gets converted by Himeno, but she takes it well — she's unable to harm Himeno anymore but is otherwise unaffected and decides on her own to eventually convince Himeno to use her domination ability to Take Over the World.
• Hellbent For Leather:
  • With Himeno chained and half-naked under her custody, Niho puts on a dominatrix costume and starts whipping her — which comes off as really weird given who she really is and who she is posing as. Can be considered a throwback to dominatrixes appearing in especially odd circunstances once in both Arachnid and Caterpillar.
  • Serena threatens Manabe with some kind of torture if he does not reveal who his leader is. When confronting Niho at the underground prison, she has a whole squad of masked women dressed in leather bodysuits.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Himeno is framed by the police for the massacre at her school, but exposes them and becomes the ruler of Saginomiya. As such, Mizu views her as a Villain with Good Publicity who brainwashed countless people including her mother to gain power and who rules through fear.
• Heroic BSoD: After imprisoning Himeno, Niho humiliates her with various kinds of psychological and physical torture and for a while Himeno is completely hopeless... until she starts thinking about how none of this is news to her. Himeno then monologues about how she's glad to have met just so many horrible people in her youth to strengthen her will from.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When the police break into Himeno's school and start shooting on sight, Himeno is terrified for her classmates and considers turning herself in but the rest of the girls oppose that, on their own volition, and convince her to flee. Most, if not all of them, die fighting off the cops.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • Several real-life terrorist incidents in Japan are said to have been caused by wasp infectees in-universe. The one that killed Jiro's family is fictional, but has heavy parallels with the 2005 Amagasaki derailment and the 1995 attack by the Aum Shinrikyo.
  • Fujimoto finds that the Naso indigenous people of Costa Rica continue to have a monarchy because of the red wasps.
  • After Serena fires Donald Trump for betraying her, her bodyguards argue she should've had him assassinated like she did to Kennedy. They also suggest Biden as the next president, but Serena decides on having Himeno as her frontwoman instead.
• I Have Your Wife: The police lure Himeno to them by taking her mother into custody, but in reality they had already killed her. Himeno then gives then the nasty surprise that she's converted many family members of police and government officials over the past week.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Himeno yearned for friends and a normal life, and ended up achieving that through brainwashing her assailants. That catches the attention of authorities who kill nearly all of them, forcing Himeno to become a political figure and take over her hometown to survive. Because of that, an American queen comes over to meddle in her business and yet more trouble ensues.
• Idiot Ball: Despite knowing Niho is highly suspicious, Himeno has the supposed traitor Mizu beaten up and disproportionately guarded for no reason and then enters a police car with Niho. Himeno does have Aya there to help with the interrogation, but the officer who's driving is male and turns out to be on Niho's side. It doesn't go well.
• Ironic Echo: Serena tells Himeno that "funnily enough" she became a Queen at around the age Himeno had a traumatizing moment that defined her life. The "Sovereign" later tells Serena that "oddly enough" she was born the day America nuked Hiroshima.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In the first chapter, Himeno's classmates force her to crawl naked while streaming it on Youtube and Nagisa makes her eat a wasp. Her drunken mother blames Himeno for her husband leaving and attempts to beat her up.
  • When the police invades Himeno's school, they're under orders to shoot on sight and the first few victims, who weren't yet infected, are riddled with bullets without even knowing what's going on.
  • After that whole mess, Himeno still turns herself in to the police to attempt to negotiate with them since they seem to have her mother in custody. However, Jirō affirms they killed her already and even rubs it in by showing a picture of the corpse while holding Himeno by the collar and calling her sub-human. That backfires immensely on him.
• The Lancer: Nagisa Hattori is Himeno's bully-turned-lover and right-hand woman. Once converted, she's the one who pushes for Himeno to make it big as an Insect Queen.
• Lecherous Licking: Some hours after Nagisa is converted, she gets a sudden urge to lick Himeno all over like honeybees to a queen bee. Serena, too, is later seen having an orgy with her followers to assert her dominance.
• The Lost Lenore: Jiro Used to Be a Sweet Kid but became a cold-hearted man after his wife Niho got killed by terrorists, and when he's brought back to life in Tokisaka's body, he styles his new appearance after Niho.
• Meaningful Name: Himenospia city is presented as Himeno's utopia, but is really a spear she'll eventually use to wage war.
• Meta Twist: The story features several, several throwbacks to Arachnid, but ends on a surprisingly bright tone in not mirroring the disaster scenario from that story which was in itself a parallel to the ending of its prequel Jackals.
• The Mole:
  • Niho Kurono is a member of Himeno's student council who despite being a wasp soldier wants to kill her. It is suspected that she actually serves a third unknown queen... but she is actually Jiro Kuroda, who's been brought back by a brain transplant.
  • Oonuki only provided assistance to Himeno to make her think the police was under her control, and had hoped for her and Serena to kill each other. Probably shouldn't have trusted the guy your people ran over with a car...
  • Serena brainwashes some of the schoolgirls at Himenospia after enrolling there but this doesn't ever come into play.
  • The "Sovereign" is Nagisa, whose sting looks the same as any other soldier's so she can infiltrate an enemy queen's group. She plotted out the events of the story intending to get both Serena and Himeno killed, but ended up falling in love with Himeno after being stung by her.
• Mooks: Every soldier girl other than Nagisa in Himeno's school after her takeover appears rather nondescript and they don't receive any characterization other than being abnormally head-over-heels for Himeno. As such, the poor girls are very disposable and get shot dead without doing anything in multiple instances. Even the one who gets named, Atsuko, is no different and is killed just a few pages after being introduced.
• More Deadly Than the Male: At one point Dr. Fujimoto discusses the superiority of females over males in species across the board, and remarks modern human society can be easily toppled by Himeno and other mind-controlling wasp queens.
• Mr. Exposition: At first the story didn't have as many wild life fun facts as in Murata's previous works and when one happened it usually came from Dr. Fujimoto rather than a disembodied narrator.
• New Era Speech: After exposing the police's killing spree on TV, Himeno unveils her plans to make Japan into her ideal society.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Himeno doesn't become unscrupulous enough to turn every female in her town, presumably to discourage more indiscriminate killings from the police and to leave people who wouldn't go insane if anything bad happens to her. This leaves her vulnerable to Serena, who naturally converts some of the neutral schoolgirls into her spies while attending Himenospia.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Japanese prime minister is named "Shinzo Manabe" and is portrayed as more competent than President "Ronald Trampoline" who wants to dominate the wasps for his military forces.
• No Ending: The final chapter has little closure and instead sets two major sequel hooks — Serena starts wanting Himeno to Take Over the World for the sake of global peace and the red wasps are revealed to be aliens.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Serena freely caresses both Mizu and Himeno when she meets the two.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Japanese government sought to eradicate the wasp queens and their soldiers to prevent them from starting terrorist groups, but once human wasp queens show up they seek to capture them for their own nefarious plans.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Himeno outplays the Japanese government and makes the existence of the mutating wasps public. Then she starts a nation of her own within Japan and other queens come to cause trouble.
• One-Hit Kill: The wasp women can cause instant death from anaphylactic shock with their stings, or at least they're supposed to — Himeno stings Jiro 84 times and that still leaves him alive for long enough to get his brain transplanted into Tokisaka's corpse.
• One Person, One Power: A late-story reveal is that each Wasp Queen has her own unique ability, indicated by how each queen has a different stinger. For example, Serena's power is "Order", the ability to convey directions and information through her stings via a second prong in her stinger. A Soldier created by Serena will have orders immediately given through them without Serena needing to speak a word. Himeno's ability is revealed to be "Domination", the power to overcome the will of even another Queen and make her love Himeno, making her a big exception to the rule that "Love can not be overridden". The ability of the "Sovereign" moving against Himeno and Serena is "Mimicry", the ability to pass herself off as a Soldier, and hinted at by the fact that her stinger is the same as a Soldier's. Even the "Sovereign" herself did not fully realize the implications of Queens possessing these powers, which caused her and those serving her to mistakenly believe all Wasp stingers were alike until she saw Himeno's.
• Orwellian Retcon: Chapter 30 was the one originally titled "Love" instead of 31 but it was changed to "Massacre" in the tankobon. It actually fits either way, as both chapters feature carnage and Serena boasting about her brainwashed Media soldiers.
• Pitiful Worms: Himeno is frequently treated like a bug by those who despise her. Which is pretty much everyone until she starts brainwashing them.
• Police Are Useless: The investigators don't seem to give a damn about the sleazy things that previously happened on Himeno's school, but as soon as they realize dangerous wasp girls are afoot they send a group of agents to neutralize them. The girls swarm and drive them away, so the cops go into full Police Brutality mode and send an heavily armed squad to kill them all.
  "Unbelievable. For the police to make a move this quick... even though usually... they're so slow to do anything."
• Potty Failure: While torturing an imprisoned Himeno, Niho tricks her into getting acute food poisoning and has so much fun watching the results she starts touching herself.
• Production Foreshadowing: Yanai Nobuhiko suddenly posted bonus pages for the series on Twitter in February 2022, nearly a year after it ended. Two weeks later, Serena got introduced in the Arachnid continuity.
• Production Throwback: It is nearly impossible to talk about what Himenospia borrows from Arachnid without spoiling both stories, as it is largely based on its final twists and there are a ton of reused concepts, characters and plot points. Blattodea then made an alternate-universe Serena Cervantes the Greater-Scope Villain of that series, making the references come full circle.
  • The scene where Himeno is being forced to crawl naked around her school is framed the same way as an Imagine Spot from Arachnid where Gokiburi was threatening to do the same to Alice. Her worst bully, the Yoriko to her Alice, suddenly becomes her best friend and the other bullies are upset by this. Futhermore, Himeno's backstory is a mashup of Alice's and Kuramoto's abuse-filled childhoods.
    • Himeno later ends up imprisoned, bound and beaten much like how the Army Ant Queen wanted Alice to be, but the exact panel from Arachnid isn't recreated.
  • Nagisa urging Himeno to become a Queen at their school's rooftop is very reminiscent of the climax of Arachnid, where the Boss revealed her true identity and ridiculous demands to Alice on their school' rooftop. Yes, Nagisa's true character is almost the same as Yoriko's.
  • The wasp queens' brainwashing abilities are reminiscent of how the Army Ant Queen from Arachnid did stuff, and Serena is even shown asserting her control via sex like what happened in that story. The death of either Himeno or especially the more accomplished Serena could trigger the apocalypse Arachnid ended with, but with crazed yet intelligent terrorists instead of brainless rapist zombies.
  • Back in Arachnid, the Organization Boss ruled over Japan for nearly a century as a mind-controlling parasite to their wasp-themed frontmen. In Himenospia, Serena likewise uses mind control to perform social parasitism and rule from the shadows for over a century. Her backstory is even very similar to that of the aforementioned Boss, but made darker by her childhood involving poverty and prostitution before she gained her ability.
  • Himeno refers to her refusal of stinging Mizu as giving her a distinct role in her group. In Arachnid, Kuramoto could give roles for her drones which restored most of their autonomy.
  • Considering the kiss scene between Himeno and Serena one to the "Take That!" Kiss between Alice and Dinoponera in Arachnid might seem like a stretch but later Killing Bites had such a scene between Pure and Koyomi that's framed even more like the original. With Himeno and Pure being derivative of Alice and Serena and Koyomi having hints of Dinoponera in them, the parallels are very likely intentional.
  • Serena has a group of brainwashed super soldiers that are specifically an allusion to the Media army ant soldiers from Arachnid. Their miniguns and spartan training make them much, much deadlier than the original ones. In fact, there was a point in Caterpillar where an ant-themed berserker got his hands on a minigun — but the Guns Are Worthless trope was in full effect on that series.
  • While Serena steps on the head of the Prime Minister to assert dominance over him and Japan, the narrator talks about how paper wasps Know When to Fold 'Em upon being raided by black-tailed hornets. In Arachnid, a paper wasp-themed assassin was forced under a mind-control command he had no choice but to accept and that gave him a hornet theme as the Organization Boss' frontman.
  • In Arachnid, Megumi is brainwashed by a wasp-like hitman who dresses her like a dominatrix and, while perceiving him as her beloved Alice, attempts to torture her ally Yoriko. In Himenospia, Niho tortures Himeno while wearing a dominatrix outfit and is unable to actually kill her because she's being affected by Himeno's wasp-like brainwashing to fall in love with her.
  • Oonuki keeps Niho from killing Himeno and starts to take the girl away from the jail cell and towards their mysterious benefactor. Then Nagisa comes out of nowhere and hits him with a flying knee to the face. This happened in Arachnid with Hibiki saving Alice from the Media ants just to get drop kicked into a hole by Megumi — and just two months before Himenospia chapter 34, there was an inversion of that gag in Blattodea with Chiyuri getting (genuinely) saved much like that by Dinoponera (Dinoponera is Alice's Shadow Archetype and Chiyuri is a foil for both Alice and Megumi; Himeno and Nagisa are counterparts for Alice and Megumi, respectively) and hugging Dinoponera in tears like Nagisa does to Himeno. The difference is that Serena then walks up to the other characters not with her Media ants in tow, but with a different class of servants instead.
  • Manabe conspires with Ronald to get Tokyo bombed in order to kill Serena's soldiers, like that little "get Japan nuked on purpose" incident from Arachnid. Then Nagisa is revealed to be a fellow wasp queen whose past is tied to World War II and who manipulated Himeno all along to further her own plans. The difference is that while Yoriko got Japan nuked on purpose, Nagisa was born during that incident and appears to despise Serena over it.
  • Like with Serena, Nagisa's backstory also has call backs to the Boss from Arachnid such as her using brainwashing to force her parents into a murder-suicide. It is then said she got rid of all her relatives to conceal her own existence.
  • Himeno is revealed to be a "Queen of Domination" (支配の女王) who can affect other queens. That title references the Army Ant's "Queen's Rule" (女王支配) ability to turn people into brainwashed zombies.
• R-Rated Opening: Downplayed. The story starts dark enough with the display of the severe abuse Himeno suffers from day to day, but the police's slaughter of her classmates only starts at the end of the first volume.
• Really 700 Years Old: Serena looks like a teenager, but she reveals to Himeno that she's actually about 160 years old. It turns out queens stop physically aging at 16 and have a vastly extended lifespan (they're not immortal, but they can live many times the length of a normal human lifespan much like how queen wasps/bees live many times longer than their workers).
• Recycled In Space: The story is practically an Arachnid remake, but as a political sci-fi conspiracy story and not structured as a Fighting Series.
  • The entire premise is based on the supernatural ant and wasp parasite characters from Arachnid who could mind control people and, in the ant's case, provoke a pandemic of zombies. Himeno is clearly a composite of Alice Fujii and Ai Kuramoto, and several situations from that story are also repurposed here.
  • While Killing Bites is about mankind evolving by taking on the traits of other vertebrate animals, this one is about taking on the traits of wasps. Arachnid and Caterpillar also had their share of inexplicably superpowered bug-people, but science fiction wasn't the focus of those stories.
  • Vaia'n Maiden, a previous manga from the author which was Cut Short, also began with a whole crowd of schoolgirls getting executed for comically evil reasons.
• Reused Character Design: A few character designs in this closely resemble ones from Arachnid.
  • Himeno is designed after Alice from Arachnid, who in turn was a lookalike of Turis from Jackals.
  • Eccentric scientist Dr. Fujimoto is Jigabachi/Sand Wasp from Arachnid with a full beard. Blattodea established in turn that Jigabachi's real name is the same as his.
  • Serena Cervantes is reused from Majo ni Ataeru Tettsui, name and all, but without the visual traits that marked her as an expy of Usagi Tsukino. She also exists in the Arachnid-verse, seemingly unchanged, as of Blattodea.
• Restrained Revenge: Niho whips Himeno eighty-four times as payback for her stinging Jiro to death that many times the previous year, remarking "an eye for an eye" is really meant to restrain excessive retaliation (but really... Himeno did that to avenge her mother and friends to begin with).
• The Reveal: Niho being revealed as a revived Jiro is followed by her stating that there's yet another mysterious antagonist involved in the conspiration against the wasps. This person is Nagisa, a hidden queen who manipulated Himeno into establishing Himenospia to lure Serena into Japan and defeat her.
• Rooftop Confrontation: In the end of the first chapter, Himeno is being bullied by Nagisa's friends at the school's roof but fights back and stings them all. Nagisa then walks up to her, declaring Himeno should spread her influence as far as possible.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Tokisaka is the one who suggests Himeno gets the entire student body of their school converted for their protection. She's the first one to die when the police invades the school. And her corpse is used for Jiro's revival afterwards.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: The staff at Himeno's school largely ignored the heinous actions of Nagisa and the other classmates. Himeno ends up with a twisted sense of gratitude for all of them, as she believes they toughened her up for the trials she faces throughout the story.
• Sequel Escalation: Serena is 60 years older than the Organization Boss from Arachnid and her powers aren't failing her. She also succeeded where the Army Ant Queen failed by gaining control over what's implied to be multiple countries and her soldiers can be very dangerous without needing to provoke a zombie apocalypse.
• Sequel Hook: Serena decides to take over the world with Himeno as her partner and frontwoman. Also, the red wasps are alien creations.
• Shadow Dictator: Serena has secretly ruled over the United States for over a century while also somehow locating and killing all other women also chosen by the red wasps to mantain her status. The reason she exposes herself to danger by travelling over to Japan and encountering Himeno is because she pretty much already had the country in her pocket for a long time.
• Shameful Strip:
  • The story opens with Himeno being forced to crawl naked around the school while her bullies record it on their phones. Actually Played for Laughs later, when Himeno is annoyed that the one thing she can't get the converted Nagisa to do is deleting that video — plus, Himeno thinks all that suffering built character for her.
  • After Himeno is captured by Niho, she is held in imprisonment by the cops while naked aside from a chastity belt to prevent her from drawing her sting. Niho then starts torturing her, first by tricking her with poisoned food and then by whipping her 84 times.
• Shower of Angst: Himeno has one in chapter 21 while reflecting on her newfound semi-immortality and how Serena will play her like a fiddle if she isn't careful.
• Shown Their Work: The story features information regarding wasps and other Hymenoptera genera.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: Nagisa kisses Himeno on the lips to bring her back to her senses so they can flee the police's assault on their school.
• Slasher Smile: Niho is this story's queen of psychotically villainous ear-to-ear grins. Made even more pronounced by how she's actually Jiro, who was a dead-serious figure.
• Super Sex Organs: The wasp women's long stings seem to be ovipositor cords stretching out of their wombs.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: In the end, Himeno is saddened over Nagisa's death but is finally able to enjoy peace at her school and Serena isn't hostile to her anymore. And despite all the throwbacks to Arachnid, this story didn't mirror its desolate apocalypse ending.
• Take Over the World: Serena is implied to have a lot of the world under her control, and at the end she decides to cooperate with Himeno to end all frontiers and unite the world under the banner of Himenospia.
• The Teaser: Starts with the narrator commenting about humanity having much to evolve yet as a species and then a shocked Himeno emerging naked from some kind of machinery. It then cuts to the present time at her school.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Right before the disaster at Himeno's school, Tokisaka walks up to the gates and tells Jiro and the other cops to leave, thinking they wouldn't outright kill any of them without provocation. They do.
  • After Himeno is captured, her soldiers worry about losing their minds in the event that she is killed. One of them tells the rest to stay calm until they can reunite with Himeno... and in the next page all nine of them are shot dead by the Japanese special forces who are hunting Serena.
• There Is Another: Himeno is thought to be an unprecedented queen-ranked wasp mutant, but it quickly turns out another one was secretly ruling over the United States.
• Time Skip:
  • There is a year-long skip between chapters 10 and 11, in which Himeno has established her wasp society.
  • The final chapter skips another year, in which Himeno leaves Mizu as the leader of Himenospia while she lays low to presumably discuss world domination plans with Serena.
• Title Drop:
  • Early on, Himeno is told to make the world into her perfect paradise, with "Himenospia" written in furigana. After surviving the school shooting, she brands her dream nation with that name.
  • At the end of the story, Serena declares the whole world must become Himenospia.
• Token Motivational Nemesis: Jirō Kuroda is the police officer who ordered the invasion of Himeno's school and her mother's death. At the end of the first arc, he tries to force Himeno to do as he says but it turns out she had already extended her influence over Japan's female population and turned public opinion on her favor such that she brutalizes him in retaliation and the other policemen cannot do anything about it. However, it turns out they managed to transplant his brain into Tokisaka's corpse, and he now calls himself Niho Kurono and is further antagonizing Himeno.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The teaser trailer for volume 8 spoils Nagisa's death.
• Trumplica: An American president called "Ronald Trampoline" voices his opposition of Himeno's nation to the public... and then turns out to be merely a lackey of Serena, another queen gal. He betrays Serena later and ends up fired after she survives the confrontation at the underground prison.
• Tyke-Bomb: Serena's Media soldiers are women she stung as infants and put through intense combat training from childhood, molding them into mindlessly loyal physical juggernauts.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: The final gag in the story is Himeno coming back to school and cheerfully greeting Mizu. Mizu stares blankly at Himeno, noticing the items she's carrying in memory of her mother and Nagisa, and is about to explode with disgust before the scene cuts away.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Mizu wants to force Himeno to turn her mother back to normal. And Rushia's "normal" is being the Universe's Worst Mom.
• Wham Episode: In chapter 35, the car Mizu and Manabe are waiting in is blown sky-high and the girl is at the very least severely injured and unconscious. Meanwhile, Serena accuses Himeno herself of being the hidden mastermind who opposes the wasps. A shocked Himeno then realizes it was Nagisa who pushed her into creating Himenospia in the first place, so either she has been in league with that person or somehow is the actual mastermind herself.
• Wham Line:
  • From chapter 19:
    Serena: "Funnily enough, I became a Queen (...) about one hundred and sixty years ago."
  • From chapter 20, when Mizu finds something's off about one of the student council members:
    Niho: "I absolutely... can't comprehend (the soldiers' devotion to Himeno) either. (...) Just seeing that smug goodie-goodie face... annoys me so damn much. Say... won't you... help me kill... Endou Himeno?"
  • From chapter 22, when Serena tells her confidants that she's going to dispose of Himeno:
    Serena: "However, she must be disposed of before she matures any further. Just like all of the other queens I have killed so far."
  • From chapter 25, when Niho, after switching to a male pronoun and implying she somehow knows Aya for years, kills her and has Himeno captured.
    Niho: "It's been a long time, bug. The name isn't Kurono. It's Kuroda.
  • From chapter 30, Fujimoto has important news for the Prime Minister.
    Manabe: "That means... you've made some new discovery?"
    Fujimoto: "Exactly right. In short... It is the truth of the 'wasps'".
  • From chapter 35:
    Himeno: Everything is unfolding out of my sight. Himenospia too... was my creation. (...) No. It wasn't me. Himenospia... No... "Himeno's Paradise"... The first person to suggest creating that... The very first person... to suggest that was... (looks behind her, noticing Nagisa staring defiantly at Serena) Hattori-san?...
  • From chapter 36:
    "Sovereign": August sixth, 1945. Oddly enough, the date of my birth... was the same as... the day on which, by your direction... the atomic bomb... was dropped on Japan. I am no soldier. I... am a Queen.
• Wild Card: At first Fujimoto sabotages the police to let Rie help Himeno, but after Himenospia is established he turns into something of a neutral figure. He hears Mizu planning to kill Himeno, knows Oonuki and the police are plotting to capture Himeno and later even Serena hangs out with him but he seemingly does nothing about anything. Then as soon as nobody's looking, it turns out he's ultimately in cahoots with the Prime Minister.
• You Killed My Father:
  • Jirō holds the wasp mutants in contempt because they're responsible for a terrorist attack that killed his wife and unborn child. So he has no qualms about getting Himeno's mother killed, and that sure works out well for him...
  • Mizu hates Himeno because her mother was one of the people Himeno had to convert during her revenge plot against the police.

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