Jan 15, 2023
tl;dr
Overall amazing, almost a 10 but the fmc is dumb and that will be recurring and pretty detestable
This is my first-ever review but i felt like i had to do one for this manga, asap.
For starters, i love it, but im a bit biased, since i love the horror genre as a whole but the sub-sub-genre of supernatural manga hits the spot for me.
Mangas like Mieruko-chan, Dandadan, and so on are in my top favourites, but this one can't really go to that top bracket for me because of one fatal cliché that i've started to really despise lately, and that is dumb mcs. Our
...
fmc in this manga, "Chigarashi Mahina", is just so dumb it ends up hurting the reader...
Yeah, the first paranormal ordeal was partially her fault but as our mmc "Makube Kaoru" (not dumb, i might add) said, its normal that something is going wrong, its a bunch of "first times" for her, its completely understandable, everyone makes mistakes, especially when they just moved out to a new environment but there it is, this should have been a one off, a one time ordeal, alas it wasnt.
Chigarashi fucks up continuously, case in point, her second encounter was mere days (i think) after the first one and her reactions to it were that of someone that has never dealt with the supernatural, and even before that she decided to go to haunted spots, like.. what?
Her third encounter was softer, and we can't really blame her since it wasnt her fault that a junkie mother and her son died in her apartment and she went straight to the realtor and Makube after that so i really thought she was on the right track and was just a bit of an airhead or sum.
The fourth encounter was the whole reason i made this review... What in god's green earth is wrong with you Chigarashi? "If you don't face your fears, you won't be able to get over them", or something along those lines was what our mmc said previously, yeah, true, but you can not go head-on into something like this without prior training or knowledge. Props to her for trying to know more about the place, but her shrine making mistake was almost fatal... Lets compare it to a normal person trying to mix two substances and a professional doing the same thing. Whilst the professional might also make a mistake the probability is a lot lower and even a mistake made by a professional is somewhat remediable... She went with the first and only piece of evidence she had without any more research... And the cherry on top, all of this was because of another love interest, who we end up having to hate cause he was rational and blamed the fmc... Ok, he was a bit out of line, never liked the guy, but his reactions were understandable.
The fifth encounter just added fuel to the fire... Once again, what in god's green earth is wrong with you Chigarashi?
This one started off kinda like the second one, something odd is happening, this time with a notebook, and she doesn't even think about it as something bad or wrong even tho we already know she has experienced the paranormal... many times...
The book is a form of escape for her, she does not need to study at first thanks to it but then the book takes over her life little by little and when her new best friend "Nene" (really like her btw, in the supermarket encounter she was great and she was the one that called the mmc for help, lowkey wish she was the female lead) confronts her about it she doesn't really bat an eye at first, only when Nene makes her see that living for herself and trying to do things for and by herself is the key (without even knowing that she is preventing her own death and her friend going off the deep end) (and again, i love Nene, she is such an interesting character and someone we should look up to) she changes, which is good, like, amazing even, because she ended the "mind control" that was happening partially by herself which is a big step, literally the first step is the biggest and the most important one, once again, props to her. And then she fucks up again... Like, the day after all of this happened she ends up fucking up again.. how? The notebook has disappeared... hooray? No, holy fucking shit, no, no, no, that is the worst thing that could have happened. The book that was trying to kill her friend has disappeared and her reaction is one of being thankful and almost reminiscing about it... what. the. fuck.
She gets called in the weirdest way possible and, once again, doesnt think too much about it and "goes with the flow"... she might actually have some kind of mental disorder or brain damage and here i am lashing out at her... She ends up with the notebook again and who would have thunk it, he really is bad, oh nooo. It tries to kill Nene but Makube saves her (he was seen snooping around before and was mentioned a bit before because Nene has a crush on him and yeah, let them end up together if there's any romance to be had cause if the two leads end up together that is just another stupid cliche, they arent good for each other, and with this i mean no one should be with the mmc) and then the notebook goes after Chigarashi and they fight a bit. She ends up defeating it, cookie for her, yay, but wasn't this all preventable? Im starting to feel that this will be a recurring sentiment in this manga...
Oh and at the end she does something manipulative that is supposed to be funny, another dislikeable trait of hers i guess.
As you can see, this chapter was quite something for me!
Ok, now for the other aspects of the manga.
Art? Marvelous, a solid 10 for me. It spooks but also amazes the reader really easily. Chapter 3 is the living proof of that, and you already know which panels im talking about, and if you dont you'll soon find out.
The story itself is also amazing and has a really good setup for the exorcist/haunted character trope. Its a slice of life kinda, we watch the characters go on with their daily lives but in the bg there's creepy shit happening, lovely. A 10, without a doubt
I have already talked about most of the characters. There is another female character that appears here and there, she aight. The other one-off characters are also okay, they are there to move the plot forward in their little ghost stories.
I can talk about Makube a bit more tho, since the review so far was almost all about Chigarashi. He is our exorcist, his bg story is kinda known and its alright but i hope we get more of it, he has a pretty interesting design for an exorcist that has been seen a couple of times but its still refreshing. He has done nothing wrong thus far (besides a single mistake but it was so we, the readers, could know his power, plot purposes i guess) but we can see that he is not particularly perfect which actually makes him relatable. How the fuck is the "real" exorcist more relatable than the victim of the haunting.. bruh. Still, a 9/10.
The writing only has the cliche problem for me but that's it, also a niner i would say.
And this is it for the chapters that i have read so far. There are still half a dozen more available to read and i'm going to do so as soon as i can but yeah... Chigarashi needs to change. Im most likely going to give it a 10 one of these days tho so this was just a rant about dumb mcs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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