Sugiru Juunana no Haru story by Fuyumi Ono and art by Kotetsuko Yamamoto

I need a break from specific themed manga searching for a while... I think this last spooky manga was actually really good, but it was a bit of a grind this Halloween to find a suitable one (come to think of it, I think last year was the same). If I wasn't so lazy I'd try to stockpile manga a little earlier in the year. At least I don't have to worry about Thanksgiving themed manga, that's something to give thanks for in my book. I hope you all had a Happy Halloween, in any case.



Sugiru Juunana no Haru story by Fuyumi Ono and art by Kotetsuko Yamamoto

This picture is kind of awkward, isn't it?

Genre: Horror Josei
Length: 2 Volumes – 14 Chapters



          The art is satisfactory, at times its a bit sketchy, with most of the effort put into the emotions the characters are going through. The expressions vary and give a lot to the story, actually. The character designs are a little generic, but its not overbearingly cliché or anything like that. The hair

has a nice, soft look and the eyes have a realistic and energetic look. The clothes aren't overly interesting but they fit the bodies well. The backgrounds were a little lacking, often a darker tone would have made the manga that more spooky, otherwise it was typical. I don't really think there was anything special about this art but it was well done overall.
           Naoki and Nori go every summer to visit their aunt and cousin in the countryside, and this year is no different than any other. Naoki and his cousin, Takashi, are very close in age, only half a month apart, and both are soon to be seventeen. Everyone gets along so well, the first few days are an excellent vacation for the city kids. Then, overnight, Takashi changes completely, becoming surly and mistreating his mother and cousins. Can this have something to do with what he was telling Naoki the night before, though the older boy didn't believe it, that Takashi saw a ghost?
           This ghost story, though incorporating many well known Japanese ghost story tropes, was something I'd never wholly seen before. Not just in the way it was told but the conclusion of it. The start is long and slow so that you have plenty of time to contemplate what might be going on before anything actually does. It takes a lot to pull one over on

me, and this story half-way got me, but that twist isn't the end of the story either. Unlike some tales, you get the whole plot, no questions unanswered with out the story running at breakneck speed or the ending being only half there. This low and slow pacing also kept me wondering just what would happen next. Its a ghost story with out all the jump scares or over used tropes. I really enjoyed it, and there were only a few minor things that bothered me. The biggest was the art, in case you couldn't tell by my lackluster description at the beginning. I think I've read a lot of manga that look just like this one, but, considering the art and story are done by different people I think the gap between how well the story is done and how generic the art is is easily dismissed. By which I mean, its understandable that it could happen, even though I'm not very happy about it. The second thing that bothered me was that the narrative sometimes changed to another person, or it starts up and its a little unclear immediately who is supplying it. Still, the strength of the story and how it creeped along are what shine and I liked the atypical way it was presented.




4/5 The story is interestingly spooky with out being gory.

Indeed.