Ghost Hunt

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After becoming a fan of the show, I thought I should check out the manga and as I read, I wasn’t disappointed. The manga and the anime practically start out the same way, though the manga seemed to have a bit more depth to the characters and stories. Sadly though, 10 of the 12 volumes were extremely close to the anime with only a few exceptions. Only the last two were not in the anime which makes me wonder just what they were trying to do. There are two possibilities to the reason why this is, the first is that they wanted people to read ... the manga so did not finish the anime and then the second is the one that I think happened, that they ran out of time or money to create the last few episodes. I do suggest though that you do read the manga and maybe even before watching the show because of the fact of only two of the books not being animated.

When we start talking about characters, we have an interesting mix. John Brown is the Exorcist within the church. It’s surprising because he’s only 19 years old and is already ranked higher then a priest. In the anime though, I believe they had said that you have to be ordained as a priest for it to happen. Anyway, the manga has a bit more fun with his character because he’s a foreigner from Australia. This gets into the mindset of Japanese when they see foreigners. When someone speaks really formal or uses a different dialect, they may make fun of that person. John started by talking in a Kyoto dialect when the others asked him not to be so formal. I understand why people wouldn’t get it (hell, I didn’t get it at first either) but it gave a bit more insight to his character. Then there is Masako who is a famous spirit medium with a lot of knowledge under her belt on the spiritual realm. She is kind hearted for the most part but then can also be rather snippety and crude though still keeping her lady-like manner (mostly).

Ayako is a 23 year old shinto priestess who is rather wealthy because she is the daughter of a doctor. She is rather confident and proud though I never actually saw her do much when it came to expelling spirits even though there was at least one occasion that she did. The rest of the time, she seemed to act more like a mother to the group then a priestess. Takigawa is a monk/musician who pretty much acts like a mix of a father figure and an uncle to the group of younger characters. Again, there was not much about him doing stuff in the spiritual acts besides creating barriers and once in a while dispelling evil. He does do a lot more then Ayako though. Then we have Lin and Naru who we really don’t really know much about except they are rather silent most of the time or bossy. And then Mai who might be one of my favorite characters of the manga even though she is a bit clueless. I liked her because it gave the characters a reason to explain what was going on for the reader. If we didn’t have that, them explaining would seem forced.

The artwork is pretty ok though some of the characters really don’t look right. At first, I didn’t like the design of the girls but Mai’s design sort of grew on me. She looks much different then the anime though and so don’t be surprised if you don’t recognize her. I still do not like Masako Hara’s though as she seems way too dolled up compared to the others. The men have pretty much kept the style from the show (Well, from manga to anime actually) and yet Naru seems to show much more emotion then the anime and is a little more realistic. Sadly, the ghostly happenings seem to be lack luster or hard to see and many times the pages are pretty much all white making it hard to understand what is going on. That is the problem with only having white and black ink to show what is going on.

This is a great manga, because of it's balance between typical shoujo elements (romance, chibi moments...) and mystery.

The manga has a episodic format, so if you prefer one smooth story line than this might not be for you. However, each of the story arcs, which is usually covered by several chapters, is very well put together and thought out. The mystery element is strong, where as the horror element is not. Horror can easily make me squeamish, but there's nothing bone chilling in here. There is some blood and random popping up of ghosts (but that is to be expected from the title I think). ... Each arc is basically a team of different kinds of 'ghost hunters' trying to solve some sort of ghost related problem and figure out why weird events are taking place.

The art isn't amazing, but it is somewhat likable, and does not in anyway hinder the story. (Expect large shoujo eyes and pretty looking characters).

The characters are very likable, though most of them do lack some depth. Details about these characters seem to be drawn rather reluctantly from the author, but that could just be because it is a work in progress, or because it is in the mystery genre...The protagonists are a high school girl (whose point of view we see the story from), and a young paranormal researcher who has a lot of fancy equipment, his own research center and is very self-centered. Other characters include and an atypical monk and a miko, a young priest, a spiritual medium, and a mysterious assistant.

I became interested in this manga purely as a fan of Twelve Kingdoms and wanted to see what other things Fuyumi Ono had created. I've just finished reading Ghost Hunt and I guess I'm left pretty disappointed. Unlike Twelve Kingdoms, I felt there was little to no character development. Up until the very last volume, the manga is purely episodic stories with only the vaguest of callbacks from case to case. Even the characters themselves finally realize in the final volume that they know absolutely nothing about the people they have been working with for presumably months.

When an actual plot did emerge, I thought it ... was engaging and really well developed. Really, if the entire story had been like volume 12, I would have given this an 8 or 9. But after slogging through 11 volumes (honestly, around volume 3 or 4 I almost just gave up), we've only just finally learning some depth to the characters, but by now it's hard to even care.

So I guess, if you were like me and are now reading this review because you can't decide whether its worth it to continue, skip right to the very last volume as anything you could possibly miss is going to be summarized again for you anyway. Heck, you could probably just read volumes 1 and 12 and have a better experience than I did.