Somebody has a friend looking at buying a house. Somebody is asked to examine the floor plan and begins to learn that the house may have a more sinister history than first appears. And that’s just the start of the story… (or multi-story)
New horror manga! Hooray! In theory. After spending the earlier part of the millennium reading Mail and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, I was quite pleased to see something new and potentially interesting show up amidst this week’s releases.
Unfortunately, most of this story is about as interesting as the real estate listings that form part of its narrative. There are attempts to make it lurch to life with dramatic revelations (one of which is quite good, I must admit), but most of the conclusions are somewhat creepy yet mostly implausible, even for horror.
Much of this ended up reminding me of Monster, for some reason. Yet while that had some of the highest tension of any manga I’ve ever read, this is a lot of research into real estate with a payoff that doesn’t really work for me.
And that’s the problem - if you buy into this, you’ll be fine. But if you don’t? Eh, this won’t really be much of anything exciting. Urban horror mixed with modern folklore and murder should be an easy sell, but it’s merely okay.
The later introduction of a woman who may be connected to things and her story adds an extra layer of unease, but even the story notes that some of that all feels a little easy. There’s not really enough of the ‘can she be trusted angle’ either.
But she’s also the only compelling character, really - our lead is nameless (and almost androgynous in a way I cannot say was intentional but feels like it) and not at all interesting. Half the story is him/her/them bouncing off an equally boring guy with a theory that should be better than it is.
The geometry angle (thank you, thank you) is probably the most interesting and provides some really neat little moments, but even then the theory that develops feels more designed to fit the facts than anything sensible.
I don’t scare easy, so it’s not like I was hoping for sheer terror from this, but horror’s a mood and an atmosphere and this doesn’t really get there by the end, sadly. I’m genuinely unsure if I want to see the answer to the one lingering mystery badly enough to read another volume.
On a more contemporary level, compare this to Golden Gold, which was weird and creepy and started off with a terrific hook that made you realize it was going to get so bad. And then it kept getting worse. And it sustained it over multiple volumes (proviso - I ended up dropping the story, not because it was bad, but because I just had way too many books on my plate at the time). This is nowhere near that in execution.
2.5 stars - I mean, I didn’t hate it, but it’s not nearly as engaging as I would have liked it and it didn’t instil me with a desire to see what happens, which should be job one of any story, but especially a horror story.