Iguana Girl

A slow, painful look at a mother's rejection and one woman's struggle to feel human, mixing quiet family drama with surreal fantasy.

Created by

Kazuhisa Imai

Genres

Sci-fi & fantasy, Drama

Starring

Miho Kanno, Naomi Kawashima, Yoshinori Okada

Overview

Iguana Girl is a manga by Moto Hagio published in Petit Flower. It was adapted into a television drama in 1996. It is about a young girl, Rika, whose mother views her as being ugly, and favours her other daughter, Mami. Rika thinks of herself as ugly and as an iguana, but after her mother's death, realises that her mother was also an ugly iguana. Iguana Girl reflects Hagio's own relationship with her mother, and it took her "years to write this story". Hagio saw an iguana in a documentary on television and identified with it, feeling it was "lamenting its failure to become a human, just like me".

How it feels

Melancholic, dark, earnest and whimsical. Slow-burning and needs your attention.

About

Family, identity, grief, parenthood

Content

Mild violence, sexual content and language. No gore.

Note

Written by AI, so it can be wrong. Full breakdown

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