MONONOKE SOUSHI
STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
4
RELEASE
July 6, 2010
CHAPTERS
31
DESCRIPTION
This is the story of a girl who works as a performer at sake houses, but who has a unique ability. She has a tattoo of an eye on her hand which endows her with the ability of "second sight." Though this often comes in handy, it also complicates her life. She is constantly getting involved in situations with various supernatural creatures, such as animal spirits, kappas, and more.
CHAPTERS
REVIEWS
TheGruesomeGoblin
Really powerful episodic horror series that goes to much darker places than I ever could have predicted.Continue on AniListMononoke Soushi is a horror/supernatural series by Yousuke Takahashi involving the strange and commonly dark episodic journeys of a girl working as a wandering traveling performer.
This is probably one of my favorite manga of this sort. Prior to reading this manga, I had been reading all of Yousuke Takahashi's other works, and the majority of them are either horror anthologies or episodic in nature.
And this in my opinion rapidly proved to be the best he had to offer (that has actually been translated) of the second category. I think the two largest keys to a good episodic series is a strong main character and avoiding feeling repetitive. Both things I think this series of stories fully accomplishes.
Tenome, or the "Eye of the Hand", is our main character for most of the series.
I really like her design, and she’s full of charm as she gets her way out of one weird supernatural incident after the other. After certain events happen in the series, it jumps several years ahead and we transition to an older and much more mature Tenome. Her skills in dealing with the supernatural have grown exponentially, to the point where she even takes her own apprentice, Shao Tsu.
She goes through several adventures and mishaps before this, some of which start seemingly lighthearted or calm, but they quickly take a twist and end with Tenome watching as a bunch of kappa tear apart a boatman who drowned them and as kappa used them to steal everything from his passengers...
But I really think this series goes from “good” to “great” with the events that lead into the story transitioning to an older Tenome. Because her introduction even changes.
Rather than simply a traveling performer, she says she’s a traveling performer that “raises people’s spirits.” And this most certainly is true as long as you’re not one of the evil characters.
One of my favorite acts of justice Tenome performs is tricking a bunch of hunters that regularly hunt “the world’s most dangerous game” that she had turned all of them into actual predator beasts. Thus, she caused them to lose sense of their human selves and begin mindlessly hunting the ghost of the girl they had already hunted and killed before Tenome and Shao Tsu met them.
Thus, they would spend the rest of their lives attempting to hunt a prey that was far, far out of their reach.
It’s real hard to not find Tenome likable because while she calls acts such as this one “pious acts of no value,” it sure seems like she ends up doing them a lot. Usually resulting in her no longer having a client to be paid by.
But Tenome is not the only one to change with the passage of time. The world itself also changes. As the time period these stories are now taking place in suddenly becomes abundantly clear.
That's a hell of a shift from kappas and tiger screens, for sure. A lot of the stories following this point are significantly darker and more somber in tone, and understandably so. Tenome and Shao Tsu just had to return to Japan right in the throes of World War II. At first, the shift seemed super abrupt and I was wary of it because I was unsure how far he was going to go into this direction.
Answer: Pretty goddamned far.
It turns out pretty much the rest of the stories are about Tenome and Shao Tsu wandering and dealing with the effects of the war both during and after it ended. This is brilliant because don't get me wrong, I like the other stories a lot too, but... this change in direction really opens a lot of doors for horror. As there is a chapter after this shift that is just outright called "Nightmares" where Tenome suffers one horrible nightmare after another of her potentially losing Shao Tsu now that Japan is like this.
And Yousuke Takahashi does not pull punches.
It's really weird to think this series that was repeatedly very nearly bringing me to tears several chapters first began with kappas, flying whales, and paper screen tigers. Like from that first handful of chapters I never ever would have expected stuff like this from this series. Once again, I must stress, and this time with various meanings, that Yousuke Takahashi does not pull punches.
...I kind of want to make a note that I thought volume 4 wasn't as good as volume 2 and 3 because for volume 4, Tenome makes a somewhat older Shao Tsu venture off on her own so the volume is almost entirely without Tenome but...
I'm rethinking it and... like in volume 4, all of the various bombings from the war has literally opened a hole into another dimension where monsters dwell called the Improbable City.
You thought the World War II shift was abrupt? We're taking this shit into Lovecraft territory now.
This volume's entirely around this strange city that's been created directly as a result of the war and focuses on various characters having to deal with being pulled into or being given the choice between remaining a human or joining the ranks of the Improbable City.
The manga itself gives me a perfect image to use as an example of being torn between these two worlds. However, given that I've been pretty restrained about including any of the gore in this review, I'll put it under a spoiler.
...Yeah, volume 4's great too. Just for completely different reasons than the rest of the volumes.
Conclusion
The more and more I've thought about this series while writing this review, the more I realized I just love it. To bring back what I said at the start of this review about good episodic series... repetitive is the last word I would ever use to describe this. As for the main characters, I became super attached to both Tenome and Shao Tsu. Like way way more invested than I ever could have predicted I would.
I give it a wholehearted 9 out of 10. I almost wish he hadn't stopped doing stories about these two, but it has a fine enough conclusion...
Although it still bugs me that Tenome and Shao Tsu don't ever meet again in person within the final volume. But it's at least stated by Tenome herself that they eventually will!
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SCORE
- (3.15/5)
MORE INFO
Ended inJuly 6, 2010
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