Back to wareya's Profile wareya's Profile

I read this in japanese, but my japanese isn't that good yet, so keep that in mind. This review doesn't contain overt spoilers.

Zettai Reiiki starts out very simple: A guy wants to live alone, so he looks for cheap apartments. A certain listing catches his eye. And it's haunted.

When he gets there, the ghost tries to drive him away. But, because he's a freak, and she's a cute little girl, he's not bothered at all.

The entire story is the hijinks of our protagonist, his apartment's ghost, and their neighbors, family, and the people they keep running into. The cast is actually kind of small, but ... has exactly enough diversity to give the world flavor, and not enough to make any of the important characters seem less so. There's a steady trickle of new characters and gags, so even though there's not much to work with here, it stays fresh without going nuts and ruining its tone.

Despite being a comedy, there's actually a story here, and it's responsible for many of the interactions that happen. It's not a particularly deep story, but it *does* end properly, and it helps drive the manga from volume to volume.

It's definitely a thing that some cliches here overstay their welcome, but they always stop before they get bad enough to be annoying to me. Similarly, every volume ends on a false cliffhanger, which isn't really annoying if you have the whole series, and since the story is mostly an excuse for the comedy, it doesn't do much damage.

As I neared the end of the seventh volume, I felt like I was gonna miss this manga once I finished it, so I slowed down. That's a mark of a good story to me, but not good enough that the ending is my goal.