Huvahh

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Calling Huvahh a manga (or even a one-shot) doesn't really do it service. It's pretty much just a showcase of some character designs and environment motifs for Shadows of the Damned. For the five minutes or so it takes to read it and really observe the art, if you're a fan of Q Hayashida (Dorohedoro) or Shadows of the Damned, it's totally worth reading.

There is barely any plot, dialogue is all mumbling nonsense, and there barely even a through line between pages, but the art is really all you're coming to the book for, so none of that really matters. If you've played Shadows ... of the Damned, you can see some familiar designs and motifs floating around. It's definitely a great companion piece to the game, especially considering how long it is. If you're reading this review right now, you've probably spent more time reading about Huvahh than you would reading Huvahh.

I only give it a 7 because I would have preferred a few more pages and some of the art could use a little more polish, but that grimy sort of crust punk garage album cover art aesthetic is what Hayashida is so well known for.

Well, the art is nicely done! However, it is also a bit pretentious: something about the complexity of the art makes it seem less like manga and more like some sort of artist sketch book. That's really all I can really say about this one-shot, as the language is unidentifiable, there is no logical story line and the mood is kind of creepy, but more in a confusing way than an enjoyable one. Maybe I expected too much of a one shot, but even if there is some sort of meaning behind this then it certainly isn't easy to identify, which to me means that ... this is a bad piece of work.

(There's a TL:DR version at the bottom of this review)
So Huvahh is a bit of weird one: It's a very short one-shot, almost completely devoid of dialogue (apart from gibberish), and a heavy focus on being creepy and grotesque. That last detail should not be a surprise to those familiar with Q Hayashida's work (Dorohedoro, Dai Dark), and this seems to be an experiment for the author to tell a story almost entirely through visuals, and creating a feeling of witnessing something really alien.

The enjoyment factor for me personally comes from challenging yourself to discern the narrative, by following the art, the paneling, and ... identifying certain tropes and messages. Another part comes from the creepy and violent art, which as an unapologetic Q Hayashida fanboy I thought was pretty cool, but not all that unique for the artist. The one-shot, despite it's shortness, still has a couple Hayashida-isms that are cool to identify if you're a fan (e.g. a character with many eyes stacked on their face).

I think back to how "Gon" tells it's story entirely through visuals and then look at Huvahh and feel that, while I think it's an amicable attempt, the visual storytelling is not as affective as it can be, I think, in part due to the one-shots incredibly short length. Another problem is one that is a result of the nature of such an experiment: After you piece it together, you might find the story is not all that interesting, because it can't really be all that complex, instead touching on a few familiar beats. That's not to say a simple story is inherently inferior to a complex one, it's just something that you might find disappointing after I just talked up how fun it is to figure out the narrative yourself.

TLDR: At the end of the day, Huvahh makes for a really neat little novelty, and fun bite-size experiment in purely-visual storytelling, especially if you are, like myself, a fan of Q Hayashida's work, but nothing all that special. Still, for it's short length, I say go give it a try if you like horror.