This is an anthology series all about various horror scenarios. While each story is rather different, they all feature young high school aged protagonists. This is a shoujo horror manga, with sometimes supernatural elements. The horror ranges from vampires to human eating plants to crazed stalkers.
This manga is called のぞき穴 in Japanese.
Before we start the review, let’s look at some info about this volume
Who wrote this manga?
This manga features five different stories, each with their own original authors.
I have loosely translated all five chapter’s names:
The Key, Written by Keiko Notoyama
Flower Eating, Written by Chihiro Komori
The Mirror’s World, Written by Meme Iwaoka
That Kid Next Door, Written by Eiko Komuro
Kurodsuka’s Bento, Written by Mako Fukunaga
Check out this manga for yourself here!
What happens in this manga?
I’ll give a brief recap of what happens in each story here:
The Key
Our protagonist finds herself lucky when she picks up the missing key to her crush’s house one day. At first, she decides that it would be best to place it inside the foyer so that no one can steal the key, but once she enters his home, she can’t let the chance to snoop slip by so easily. She takes a little bit too long looking around, and her crush returns home while she’s still inside. Panicking, she decides to hide under his bed until an opportunity to leave presents itself.
He eventually falls asleep while lounging on his bed, and she uses this as her chance to escape—Not before watching him sleep for a little while, of course.
She decides to keep the key to his house in the end, and makes a habit of watching him from inside his own room. Unlike the first time she snooped, she finds a surprisingly perfect place to watch him with little chance of being caught. Through his closet and into the ceiling, there’s a little area under the roof about sitting height. In the very middle of this room, there’s a tiny hole cut perfectly above her crush’s bedroom. From here, she can see absolutely everything he does.
But, this hole is a little bit too convenient for it to just randomly be there… could someone else have the same idea as her?
Flower Eating
A mysterious pair of siblings just moved to our protagonist’s small town, and everyone’s curious about them. As they both look like they just stepped out of a movie screening, it’s not surprising that the brother gets a girlfriend almost instantly. They only date for a brief period, and it’s not that surprising that she stops showing up to school when rumours start circulating about their break-up.
Things start turning strange when our protagonist catches the two siblings in the infirmary one day, with the younger sister seemingly feeding off of the older brother. She runs away, clearly disturbed, and is left with more questions than answers when the brother corners her to confess his love for her. When she questions him about his ex-girlfriend, as well as what she witnessed go down in the infirmary, he has perfect answers seemingly already prepared for her. There is something rather captivating about him, so she decides to accept his confession and agrees to go to his house for a date.
When she goes to his house though, she discovers that she’s not the only girl he’s brought over.
The Mirror’s World
Sick and tired of having just about everyone around her always angry with her, our protagonist does her best to avoid returning home from school one day. She recalls an urban legend about a people-disappearing mirror located at her school when she stumbles upon that very mirror. A girl who looks exactly like her appears before her and explains that in the mirror world, so long as you never get angry, everyone is always happy.
Ready to no longer have to deal with everyone being upset with her all the time, our protagonist is quick to jump into the mirror and trade places with her reflection. And it seems like what her reflection told her is true! No matter what she does, everyone is always kind and accepting of her. But, is a world where you can never outwardly show negative emotions truly a better world?
That Kid Next Door
In this town, there is a rather unique urban legend: if you neglect a child, they may crawl up on your back, turn as heavy as stone, and crush you with their weight until you die.
Our protagonist doesn’t really believe in this urban legend until a strange child in her neighbourhood comes up to her and asks her to play with him until his mother comes home. She accepts and spends the evening with him, parting with a “see you later”. To her, this meant “I’ll see you around”, but to the boy it seems like he understood it as “see you tomorrow”. And when she opted to go out with her friends rather than back home right after school the next day, the boy isn’t exactly happy with her.
Kurodsuka’s Bento
Spirits aren’t exactly high in the classroom of our protagonist, as a growing number of her classmates have gone missing recently. With absolutely no leads on where they all could have gone, rumours have begun circulating around their school. One of the most damning rumours is that one of their classmates has killed them, and has been slowly eating them for his lunch every day.
He absolutely refuses to allow anyone to see his bento, and he kind of looks like the type of person to kill and then eat his classmates, so the rumours aren’t all that surprising. One day, when he invites our protagonist out to eat their lunches together in one of the school’s gardens, we get a peek at exactly what fate all of their classmates met.
My thoughts about this volume
I’m a big fan of shoujo horror, and I really enjoy the sheer variety in types of horror that this manga had to offer! While the majority of the stories were supernatural, they all had their own unique twists and turns. All of the characters were unique, and the stories were all interesting enough that I never found myself bored.
Though I do think some stories were better told than others, I don’t think there were any stories included that I would consider to be bad inclusions. Personally, my favourite of all the stories was the very first one, “The Key”, as I like that this was the only story that had a villain as a protagonist. I wasn’t expecting her to turn out to be as crazy as she was, but I really enjoyed her! It’s fun following a very delusional character along for the ride.
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