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Nukuharu – Gen Manga – 2013 – 1 volume

Yay, another Gen one-shot!  This one came out in time for Halloween ’13, which is when I read it.  But of course I suck lately, so I’m writing it up in February 2015.  But it’s still good, and you should read it.

These were all cute, short stories about Japanese yokai.  The first was about a hundred-eye monster, a human, and a sparrow-spirit-boy.  The second is a silly story about a shy detective investigating a murder.  That sounds somewhat horrifying, but it’s really not.  Next is a longer story about a kotodama, someone who has the power to say something and make it so.  I LOVE stories about kotodama, and this one’s a great one.  There’s a longer one about a girl that senses spirits, and one last cute short one, this time about some magical gadgets.

I loved this book.  It’s short, and all the stories are very short, but they stand well on their ideas.  Normally I don’t get that into short stories, but these ones are written well, and have interesting subject matter.  The art is good… the style is a bit plain, and the backgrounds can be sparse, but there’s some wonderful details (some of the monsters especially, and the hundred-eye monster in particular was a favorite of mine).

This is sort of a horror manga that’s not really a horror manga, and would probably make an interesting read for fans of something like Natsume’s Book of Friends.  Try it out!  For some reason, the links stopped working on my WordPress editor, but you can check it out at this address:  http://www.genmanga.com/books/index.html