4.25 Stars
A collection of scary tales full of ghosts, hauntings, and cursed objects, all of which are (supposedly) true. I guess Japan, for some reason, seems full of really intense “true” ghosts and monsters (Yokai) and Yamato has collected a lot of them in this Manga series.
And they are nice and eerie, the illustrations really give the tales the necessary edge to make you feel uneasy (especially if you are reading this late at night, in the dark, with your face way too close to the phone screen). Normally, anthologies all have a weak story, but in this one, the only parts that I would maybe consider less than satisfactory would be the girl “narrating” the stories to tie them all together (although there could be a good payoff on that line in future volumes) and the short story at the end.
There were the occasional moments where I had the feeling something might have gotten a bit lost in translation, whether that be of the language or the culture, and one or two of the stories felt familiar, as if I had come across a similar but different take of the tale before, but they were all new to me and I would very happily read the next volumes.
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