Rasetsu 1

Chika Shiomi has a ton of series licensed in English at this point (Night of the Beasts, Yurara, Canon, Queen of Ragtonia, and this), and given the sheer volume of stuff I read, it’s a bit unusual I haven’t actually picked up anything by her yet.  I do have Queen of Ragtonia waiting in my to read pile, but after hearing a bunch of negative reactions, I thought I would try this one first and hope for a better first impression.

This is a followup to Yurara, and I was a bit worried that knowledge of that series would be necessary to enjoy this.  It wasn’t at all, and I made it through the entire volume without having to look up what the connections between the two series were.  As far as I can tell, the link is Yako, who was apparently one of the main characters in Yurara.  He enters the story after the initial introductions, and he’s treated the same as Rasetsu and Kuryu, so I was unaware that he was a holdover (at least until the end of the volume, when he starts talking about how Rasetsu looks like Yurara).  His power is a little ill-defined, but otherwise he felt just like the other members of the cast.

The story is about Rasetsu, a girl who works at a sort of exorcism agency and has the ability to get rid of ghosts.  She is often accompanied to her jobs by Kuryu, a strange guy who’s got the power of kotodama, which means he can control others through speech.  That’s actually an awesome ability, and the only other place I’ve seen it utilized is in Tenjho Tenge.  There’s also Yako with his water barriers, he joins the agency after the first chapter, and the chief of the agency, who can tell any sort of spiritual problem just by hugging the person in question.  These characters are also fairly quirky.  Rasetsu needs to consume an entire cake after using her abilities, Kuryu’s just sort of an oddball, and the chief… well, he hugs people.  Women come to the agency just to be hugged by him, apparently, but he takes their claims of hauntings seriously anyway.  Yako is the only normal one, and doesn’t really seem all that happy about it.

Once everyone is introduced, we learn that Yurara is under a curse and will be abducted by a demon when she turns 20 unless she finds her true love.  She seems to have come to terms with this and has a pretty nonchalant attitude about the whole thing, but then again, there are hints of a possible relationship between her and Yako, so apparently she’s still searching for her love.  She’s a strange girl, so it won’t be a normal pursuit, but the romantic possibilities are there.

There are a lot of interesting things going on, but nothing really grabbed me as of volume one.  The characters haven’t fallen into any shoujo stereotypes yet, and the story is pretty atypical, but it’s not excelling at anything in particular, either.  Perhaps things will pick up now that all the introductions are out of the way, though.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.