Many thanks to Yen Press for providing a review copy

About the Mangaka

This series is a collaboration between Ryukishi07 who, as well as doing the original game, does the story. And Suzuragi Karin who does the art.

Ryukishi07 is the pen name of a member of a doujin group called 07th Expansion. They are famous for their visual novels, of which Higurashi is the most famous. You can check out their website here (NSFW & Japanese).

Hardly anything available on Suzuragi sadly, beyond that she works exclusively for Square Enix, and specialises in titles that have been ported over from games to manga.

About the Manga

higurashi_vol2

This volume concludes the initial story arc, and boy what a way to end a arc and set up the next one. Volume two blows volume one out of the water on all levels!!

Right from the outset this volume is truly mind blowing. First we have the full colour glossy cover. Nothing special there true, but this one radiates menace and sets the creep factor to the max right from the outset.

As if to counter this though we’re given a colour panel that can’t be described as anything other than cute and soft. However turn the page and it’s full blown creep and right in your face.

Ryukishi07 has excelled with the story in this volume, the way it flows seamlessly from panel to panel and chapter to chapter is a rarity in manga. This time it’s down perfectly, which only helps to increase the suspense and fear factor.

This series is one of a few that has literally given me nightmares after reading them. Usually when I read manga it’s easy to detach myself from them, and read them dispassionately, this I found impossible to do with this series. The more I read the more the story drew me in. As a result it gave me nightmares :) several times I dreamt of being chased by Oyashiro-sama.

However the story would be muted if the art didn’t live up to scratch. All I can say is that it more than lives up to the story. Suzuragi is an exceptional artist, and this series clearly shows her talents off. True this is the first time I’ve read anything she’s worked on, so I can’t compare it to any others, however I think it’s safe to say this is some of her best work.

She clearly understood the story she was working on, and thus was able to mould the art around the story. This results in the art being creepy when it needs to be, but not over the top creepy. She takes it just as far as it’s needed, with the eye’s and head cocked just so. The effect of this is perfect, and when you factor in the cute aspects as well, it’s really hard to pick any faults with this volume.

I recently sat down and watched the anime of this (again), and frankly the ending of it disappointed me. However the ending of the manga, while essentially the same, has a different and more powerful feel. I prefer the manga over the anime, in part because the anime tries to hard to be light and airy at times. Rather than focusing on the story. Though at a guess that’s because the target audience was different to the manga.

As with the previous release, Yen Press did an exceptional job with this one. Althea and Athena Nibley did excellent work on the translation, leaving parts in Japanese that should be left alone, and adding a glossary of terms. Shelby Peak did the lettering and overall I was happy with it. The only thing I noticed was where a few panels had bleeding fonts, making them fuzzy, and due to their size a bit hard to read. This was only in a few panels though, so it’s not a huge thing.

Where this release did have some issues though was on the guttering, which in this volume was pretty bad, one of the worst I’ve seen from Yen in a while TBH. However, while I was having to bend the spine to read the spine side panels, it wasn’t to the point of doing any major damage to the spine.

Needless to say, this series maintains it’s place on my Essential Read list, and I’m now eagerly awaiting the next story arc to be released. The preview revealed at the end of this volume has me eager for the next!!

Where to Buy

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