Manga Review: Ghost Hunt vol 1-6

[Jason]

Title: Ghost Hunt
Volumes: 1-6
Mangaka: Shibo Inada
Original Story: Fuyumi Ono
Originally serialized in: Nakayoshi (Kodansha)
Genre: Shoujo
Licensed by: Del Rey
Price: $10.95



Ghost Hunt is an adaptation and expansion of Fuyumi Ono’s novel, There are Many Evil Spirits. The story opens with one of the two main characters (and arguably this is mostly her story), Mai Taniyama. She and her school friends are telling ghost stories, including one about the old school on the new school’s grounds, which is supposedly cursed. So, in spite of fires, dead students and teachers, the building can’t be demolished because something bad always happens at the site.

A young man, Kazuya Shibuya, interrupts the storytelling. While everyone else starts tittering about how cute he is, Mai is instantly suspicious and thinks he’s planning something. Mai, intrigued by the ghost stories, goes to investigate the old school and manages to break a very expensive camera and maim a young man named Lin. The next day, Shibuya meets Mai’s classmates, including Kuroda, a girl claiming to be psychic. Shibuya tells Mai he wants her to work off the damages since not only did she hurt his assistant’s leg, the camera was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mai is less than thrilled, because even though he’s just one year older than her at seventeen, he acts much more mature and is exceedingly cold and arrogant.

Shibuya runs a psychic research company. The principal of Mai’s school has hired Shibuya Psychic Research (SPR) to look into the old haunted school. Mai gets a crash course in psychic investigation. She quickly dubs Shibuya, ‘Naru-chan’ which is short for Narcissistic and she also learns a little about how to stand up to him.

Naru isn’t aware that the principal has hired other ghost busters, including Ayako Matsuzaki, a Miko (Shinto priestess) and Takigawa Houshou, a former Buddhist monk now a long haired ‘rebel.’ Kuroda also butts in, still claiming to be psychic and that she can help. Soon they’re joined by Father John Brown, a Catholic priest from Australia (let’s ignore the face that being nineteen and a priest isn’t really possible) and finally a famous sixteen year old medium named Masako Hara (whom Mai pretty much starts butting heads with over Naru)

This rag tag team doesn’t really get along, too many egos clashing, but they’re stuck with each other. Various exorcism attempts fail and team members get attacked (this is a theme throughout all the series). Naru decides science can explain everything much to the amusement of the others, who think he’s sadly deluded. However, things go from bad to worse and Mai finds herself defending Naru because she’s begun to like him in spite of herself. She tells Takigawa and Ayako off, telling them to ‘act like adults’ (they often fail to do so throughout the series, though they’re both in their early twenties). After Mai gets hurt, we see her first dream of Naru (something she’ll do often and the only time you see him smile) and in her dreams he’s always pleasant and helpful, unlike in real life. The drama wraps up and Naru offers to keep Mai on as his assistant.

Volume Two evens out the characters a little, making them all a little less arrogant, except Naru, of course. Naru is hired by Noriko of the Morishita family because they believe their house to be haunted. Having worked out their differences and forged a working relationship, Naru calls in Takigawa, now dubbed Monk-san, and Ayako in case exorcisms might be needed. Mai thinks the problem is poltergeists, a theory Naru immediately blows off even before they get to the house where we meet Ayami, a young girl of about five or six. Almost immediately, spooky behavior starts with the child’s entire room being rearranged. Ayako tries an exorcism and makes matter worse. They begin to think Ayami is somehow involved as children often are in poltergeist activity. Soon, Ayami is claiming to know her stepmother is plotting to kill the family because her doll Minnie told her so.

Mai has more of her Naru dreams and in the psychic back-story, which we get a lot of throughout the series, we’re told dolls were originally hollow in order to house spirits. That tidbit creeped me out and made me agree with Monk-san’s grim view of dolls. Monk-son tries to exorcise and burn Minnie only to have a child-like spirit attack Noriko. As they research they learn that three children from a previous owner died in the house and going back in time shows a pattern of many more dead children. Finally they call in Masako and John for back-up. Masako is overwhelmed almost immediately. Further exorcism attempts produce even more spirits and Mai ends up down a well. The resolution comes in an interesting manner via spiritualism and spellcraft from esoteric Buddhism.

We also get a side story not in the original novel. Masako contacts Naru about a movie shoot where a love scene keeps getting interrupted by a spirit who dumps water on the actors. It’s a cute, yet sad story as opposed to being scary.

Volume Three has Monk-san bringing in their next client and this time we learn of his surprising true profession. The case is in a school where many accidents and illnesses are happening, a case Naru has already turned down. Once they convince him to take the case they look into a girl possessed by a fox spirit, one who had a ghost touching her belly, which ulcerated, and one girl dragged by a train. Before long, Masako and Ayako are called in. They search for students with psychokinesis, a term that's nicely explained by the prose. They concentrate the search on a girl named Kasai.

After a particularly creepy haunting, Mai confesses that she’s had a dream of Naru being hurt. She’s also adamant Kasai, the main suspect, is innocent of causing these problems, even as the evidence is stacking up against her. The others think she’s the Jusha, the witch, behind it all. Mai falls down a manhole this time, taking Naru with her. From here, it’s a race to find the Jusha before she kills them. It ends with a major revelation about Mai. This volume makes it clearer that Mai is attracted to Naru. There is also some art weirdness in this volume with Monk-san’s clover t-shirt that has an ever-changing slogan on it.

Volume Four brings a case Naru doesn’t want because it can attract too much media attention, a spectral dog attacking inside a school. The student president, Yasuhara, makes a plea in person and Mai finds him to be rude. The principal at school is downright hostile. At this stage, it’s easy to see Naru, Mai and Monk-san have become the breakaway popular characters while the rest of the team tends to remain less fleshed out and in the background.

A dog attack happens soon after their first visit to the school and they check out the rash of sudden class-wide illnesses caused by a foul smell in one room. Naru suspects students playing around with Kokkuri-san, a fortune telling game, may have stirred up the spirits. John, Masako and Ayako get called in. Poor Mai’s PK only seems to work when she’s asleep and having her dreams. Monk-san tries to teach her a few Buddhist protection spells, not to mention encourages her to sleep so she can have more precognitive dreams to help solve the case.

This story is carried over to the next volume. However, we do get a side story set in a Christian church at Christmas, which excites Mai. The church’s haunting is a little boy who wants to play hide and seek and the priests think it’s the spirit of Kenji, a mute boy who disappeared from their orphanage. Things go bad when Mai is possessed and thinks Lin is her dad. The story was good but the resolution too unbelievable for my taste.

Volume Five starts mid-investigation where number four left off. Yasuhara, the student president is still helping them. Mai naturally is the first one attacked at the school and she forgets the counter spells Monk-San taught her but at least she has a chance to have another dream. Ayako teaches Mai some Shinto counter spells as well. Mai accomplishes both the next time the need arises only to have a room cave in on her and Naru (Mai obviously is a trouble magnet).

The team decides to call it quits before someone gets really hurt. As one spirit starts devouring others and becoming stronger in the process, the danger grows until something Mai says triggers a memory of a Chinese curse. However, stopping the curse will kill the person who originally cast it. Unable to accept that, and horrified that Naru can, Mai tries to stop the spirit and nearly gets killed. Even though the case is resolved, Mai and Naru’s relationship is left strained. There’s a bonus at the end, pretty character sketches and biographies. Volume Five was the last to be serialized in magazines. Starting with volume six, they went directly into book form.

Volume Six has the most violent cover to date, a blood-splashed Mai. This time a western-styled mansion is the main haunt. Not only is the whole team assembled but Yasuhara is there as well. We meet Madoka Mori, a young lady who knows (and apparently likes) Lin. She’s the one who taught Naru how to ghost hunt and she’s just as appalled as the rest of the team by Naru’s usual rudeness. Yasuhara has been invited in as a stand-in for Naru as the president of SPR. so Naru can avoid the media. The client is the prime minister, guaranteeing press coverage. It’s his wife’s familial estate that’s haunted and SPR is only one of many groups invited onto the case, including a very famous one from England that includes the legendary researcher Dr. Davis. Even though the prime minister’s family owns this mansion, no one has lived there for years. However, suddenly several young people have disappeared in the house, which is old, built in Meiji 10 (1877) and even thought it’s abandoned, it’s renovated every year. No one has actively lived there since his wife’s grandfather died years before. There was one blip in editing here where they mix up who said what, which was very jarring especially since they usually do such a fine job of it.

No one is too thrilled when Naru wants to spend the night. The mansion has a “Winchester House” weirdness to it, with doors and stairways to nowhere and windows that open into other rooms, with the manga referencing the famous haunted California Winchester House. Naru and Monk-san are being particularly nasty to one another in this volume for some reason. We also learn Mai’s background at long last.

Mai’s dreams are very creepy and graphic, this time including a bathtub of blood. A séance releases a wash of messages written about, saying ‘I don’t want to die’ and ‘help.’ The overnight sleepover has the girls cooped up in one room and Mai and Masako’s animosity comes through. One of the mediums from another group disappears inside the house and a search turns up secret rooms and clues but no girl. Mai and Lin have an interesting exchange that struck a chord with me over Lin’s feelings towards his coworkers and Japanese in general (and it’s a highlight of Mai’s growing maturity). Mai has another dream, this time feeling as if she’s been murdered and it ends with that cliffhanger.

Overall, the stories aren’t exactly scary, though I’m a bad judge of that. I’m tough to frighten, but they are creepy and more importantly, good. Mai is our main point of view character and luckily she’s never been the typical Japanese schoolgirl, which is a point in her favor. She doesn’t much like going to school actually, something that Monk-San and Naru point out often. The really nice thing is Mai changes and grows with the manga's progression. One thing I liked a lot about this production is that Del Rey has a glossary in the front explaining Japanese honorifics to the uninitiated, and also to explain various cultural and historical references throughout the book -- which is important in a book like Ghost Hunt as it relies heavily on Asian folklore and beliefs in the supernatural. For me, that’s much of the appeal of this particular manga, all the reliance on Eastern haunts and bogeymen with only two notably Western ones.

The art is lovely and highly detailed. It’s also very creepy when it needs to be. The characters are very distinctive so there’s no wondering who is that I’m looking at. Though occasionally, poor John looks a little like Mai when he’s out of his vestments. Also, unlike in some other volumes from this publisher, I didn’t notice any word balloons cut off so the editing, other than the one blip noted above, gets a thumbs up.

Reviewer: Cornerofmadness
Proofer: The Mighty Highlord
Editor: Jiji