Bwahahaha! Welcome, tadpoles and toads, to Beat’s Bizarre Halloventure. Every week this October, three evil writers will recommend their favorite spooky books and series from Japan, Korea and elsewhere. This week we have dreams, cats, and, of course, ghosts.
Total Eclipse of the Eternal Heart
Writer/Artist: Syundei
Translation: Amber Tamosatis
Adaptation: Lora Gray
Lettering and Layout: Kaitlyn Wiley
Cover Design: KC Fabellon
Proofreader: Cao Hawksmoor, Shanti Whitesides
Editor: Jenn Grynigen
Production Manager: Lissa Pattillo
Editor-in-Chief: Adam Arnold
Publisher: Seven Seas
Hoshino is a high-schooler who gets by just fine except for two things: he’s a bit too infatuated with his “devilishly beautiful“ classmate Yamada, and he has a recurring dream where a young boy “Shou-kun“ is being strangled by a man he calls “sensei“. One day he finally blurts out that he loves Yamada. He didn’t expect Yamada would say it back, let alone pull Hoshino close and kiss him in the middle of the street.
It is indeed too good to be true, because the moment he’s entangled with Yamada, Hoshino falls into situations that are impossible to explain and equally impossible to forget. The more time he spends with his classmate, the more unanswered questions he ends up with. Who really is Yamada? And what’s his connection with Hoshino’s recurring dreams?
Syundei is best known for her Boys’ Love series Go For It, Nakamura! which is also available from Seven Seas. If that series represents the comedic, over-the-top aspects of queer adolescence, Total Eclipse of the Eternal Heart represents the horror of it. Not many can pull this duality off as well as Syundei, and it’s a blessing to have both of these works available in English.
Total Eclipse of the Eternal Heart is a single-volume, R-rated manga, and for the right reasons. It has murder, violence, minor-adult relationships, you name it. The series constantly blurs the past and the present, life and death, dreams and reality. Syundei keeps the reader on the edge of their seat until they reach the book’s satisfying end.
Syundei’s distinct character designs stand apart from other BL series. While Total Eclipse of the Eternal Heart doesn’t have complicated backgrounds or inventive paneling, the artist’s sense for pacing and expressions are impeccable. It’s especially commendable how creepy and unsettling her characters can be despite their cute appearances.
Revenge, obsession, sexual desire and control is at the heart of Syundei’s work.This series in particular is dark, discomforting, and the perfect choice for horror lovers looking for an addition to their TBR stack. I’m sure this is an overlooked work in the horror genre simply due to its BL label. What better month than October than to take a chance and be surprised (or spooked) by an artist you haven’t read before? — Merve Giray
The Cat Proposed
Writer/Artist: Dento Hayane
Translation: Katie Kimura
Lettering: Vibrant Publishing Studio
Editing: Lena Atanassova
Publisher: TOKYPOP
What can be scarier than real life when suffering from depression and burnout?
Matoi Souta is not having a good time right now. He’s so tired and burnt out that on his way home from work, he considers jumping on the train tracks to finally get some rest. Scared by his own thoughts, Souta stops by a nearby kódan–a traditional Japanese storytelling performance.
Once there, Souta is captivated by the performance, especially the narrator Toujou. But then Toujou follows him after the performance. It turns out he’s a bakeneko, a shapeshifting cat spirit, who wants Souta to be his mate. Souta, who is inexplicably drawn to him, agrees.
The Cat Proposed feels as if it should be a light-hearted story. A man who can turn into a cat and wants to marry a human? How cute. But it is actually a scary and heartbreaking tale of how much depression can push someone to the edge. Souta is so done with his job, he thinks suicide is his only way out. His extreme exhaustion also leads him to believe he’s hallucinating the entire bakeneko thing (don’t worry, he’s not.)
Dento Hayane combines an exploration of mental illness with folklore without trivializing or downplaying the former. The mythological elements add an eerie touch that is almost unsettling in contrast to Souta’s suffering. Somehow it works, and as a result, I was so invested in Souta’s journey to healing as well as his new love story with Toujou. — Lisa De La Cruz
The Black Museum: The Ghost and the Lady
Writer/Artist: Kazuhiro Fujita
Translation: Zack Davisson
Lettering: Evan Hayden
Editing and additional research: Ajani Oloye
Editorial Assistance: Mark Gallucci
Cultural Consultation: Finola Austin
Publisher: Kodansha
Kazuhiro Fujita is one of the great classic shonen manga artists. He tells big, exciting stories that put fresh new twists on yokai, fairy tales, aliens and whatever else he can channel through his pen (and signature white-out.) Not to mention arguably the best sense for creature design in the industry. So why is so little of his work available in English? Is it because his best known works were published in Shonen Sunday instead of Shonen Jump? Because his comics can be old-fashioned and annoyingly sexist? No matter the reason, only one work by Fujita has been translated for the English language market, and that’s his uncharacteristically short series The Ghost and the Lady–part of an on-and-off anthology called The Black Museum.
Thankfully, The Ghost and the Lady is a great ambassador for Fujita’s output. Not necessarily because it’s his best work, but because it combines so many of his signature devices in a concise package. We have an adversarial friendship between a vengeful spirit, the Man in Grey, and a stone-faced yet pure-hearted heroine, the real-life Florence Nightingale. Fujita dramatizes the systems of pain and cruelty set against Nightingale’s kindness as eidolons, beings of pure hate that crawl from the skulls of ordinary people to assail heroes with axes and arrows. It’s up to the Man in Grey to cut them up with his sword and pistol. Just like that, what could have been a straight-forward drama becomes a battle manga.
There are drawbacks. Many of the early fights are repetitive, since Fujita’s eidolon device ensures battles are won through pure willpower rather than strategy. (The series improves once he introduces other ghosts like Chevalier d’Eon to give the Man in Grey a real challenge.) While The Black Museum is published in Morning, a seinen magazine, it isn’t necessarily any more mature in its themes than Fujita’s shonen comics. This is at its core yet another tale of friendship, struggle and victory, just with more esoteric wrapping.
That wrapping, though! Fujita is clearly having so much fun channeling the squalor of the past, from ragged curtains in hospitals to terrified armies stomping across muddy fields. His eidolons project spines from their eyeballs and howl like demons, while the Man in Grey cavorts across the page with a smirk on his face and a gun in his hand. I also appreciate the book’s literary inclinations, like its Shakespeare quotes and fairy tale references. While I’m sure translator Zack Davisson played a role, Fujita himself is known for his love of mythology and literature. That love comes through in even his most absurd works. The Ghost and the Lady is no exception. — Adam Wescott
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