Feb 22, 2021
Before reading this manga, I was never aware, someone could make things like punctuation and grammar scary. And then I read this manga, written by the author of Zatch Bell, a series I loved. And this definitely is a rather short, but still pretty fun and creepy tale, that I feel like a lot of people would enjoy.
The manga is about Chao, a boy, who sits in a wheelchair, finally having his first day of real school and making friends with his classmates. But the teacher turns out to be a monster in disguise, forcing the students to answer a question “related to punctuation.
...
And when a student gets this wrong...they get turned into a giant bug, without anyone (them included) remembering their face, name, hobbies, life...anything really. Before then being crushed to death.
So yeah, the story of this manga goes from a 0 to a 100 pretty quickly. I was expecting it to be like some simple childrens horror manga, but this one does have pretty dark moments. Even the implications themselves are pretty dark too (especially the whole body horror aspect and forgetting about your own life). And it doesn’t pull anyway from any of that either. Which I thoroughly enjoyed and made the story stick out more to me. Especially the ending with the answer to the question, which made it a little more clever. One small problem I do have is, it’s not really complex or it doesn’t really go much into any details, be it about Chao or the ending with the whole “Was this a dream? Was this real?” aspect. But then again, this is supposed to be a rather short, creepy tale that you can quickly read. And it definitely excels at it.
Excellent is also what I can call the art of this manga. It manages to capture the horror aspect of this manga really well, be it the fear on the childrens faces, the disgusting look when they turn into cockroaches, the design of the monster teacher...it all goes hand in hand with the creepy atmosphere the writing already manages to establish and improves on it massively.
The characters are the weakest part of the whole manga and pretty much show that this is more or less just a short story. They all get their personality traits (with Chao probably being the most developed one), but that’s really it for the entirety of it. Like the story, it never goes into much details about the characters. Same goes for the monster, but then again, this uncertainty adds a bit more to it. Is it evil? Does it have any bigger reason for pretty much scaring children for life? There are all things we never really learn.
A short and creepy manga, perfect if someone is in the mood for a short and creepy read. Then I can wholeheartedly recommend this manga to them. While it never goes into details or develops any characters really outside of the basic things, it’s still a great short story.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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