Human Metamorphosis is a satirical manga that compares human society to the insect world, centering on the life of a devious woman. Tomura Toshiko, rumored to be a genius, is an up-and-coming writer. Her novel wins the Akutagawa Prize for the best novel of the year. While she attends the award ceremony, another woman named Usuba Kageri commits suicide elsewhere. It turns out that Kageri and Toshiko used to live together, and the prize-winning novel was copied from Kageri's manuscript. Toshiko acts like a parasite: she approaches talented people one after another, squeezing everything out of them and stealing their works for her own fame. Behind her success story, she keeps her secrets.