Spooky month is here, and I’ve found a level of spooky that’s so far been my speed. Toilet-bound Hanako-kun is a manga that is a ghost story about Nene, a girl in middle school who gets drawn into the supernatural world and shenanigans of the titular ghost who haunts the girls bathroom in spite of being a boy and being able to effectively rule the school supernatural side of the world. There’s the friend who turns out to be an exorcist, and the mysterious figure who seems to maybe be slightly not nice, a probably malevolent twin brother, and the slightly older hottie who probably has an ugly side.
In this volume (#9) we get the classic go to school one day and several characters who should be dead are alive and the rest of the world takes this as normal. Nene and her pal Kou are the only ones who nice, and they have to figure out what’s going on and how to get things back to the way they should be. They find out what’s going on about 2/3 of the way through as well as the solution to get back to the real world, but it’s not something either Kou or Nene feel they can do. More would be spoilers, but it’s one of those impossible decisions where you either have to do something you feel is inherently wrong or stay stuck in a place where you’ll eventually lose your sense of self and reality. The last panel also adds a little interesting tweak to the situation, and I think I might have to save the next volume for actual Halloween even though I’ve already got it for this reason.
There have been some hints earlier in the series that Nene has a sad fate awaiting her, and one of the untrustworthy character notes that she might be better off stuck in the not-reality, so seeing how that all gets resolved, at least the escape back to reality bit, will be interesting.
Either I’m getting used to the art style or else the story is really getting into a groove with the art; the dark and light along with the characters without detailed facial features is really matching the spooky and moderately suspenseful scary, but not going over the line into full splatter horror is really working for me. I’m not a major art person but still, I’m starting to like how the style here works with the style and tone of the story.