After having a ghostly encounter at a young age, Ryouta is plagued by nightmares of ghosts. Years later, the boy he shared that traumatic experience with comes back into his life…but Ryouta has no memory of him.
You can check out a sample of this series for yourself below!
Author
Genre & Tropes
Info about this series (ongoing)
This series is currently ongoing, with two volumes published in Japanese.
What’s this series about?
A young boy named Ryouta is brought to a little mountain village by his father. While looking for something to do, he spots one of the local children, Hajime. Hajime reveals to Ryouta that due to his lineage he is forbidden from ever leaving the village. He is so sheltered that he isn’t even allowed to know about items that were not created in their village, as revealed by his curiosity towards Ryouta’s 3DS.
When Ryouta questions why Hajime’s lineage is so special that he must be locked up, he learns about the legend of Unai-sama. This so-called evil entity used to wreak havoc on the villagers, impersonating residents and causing many to doubt their neighbours. The entity was so terrifying because it had the ability to warp others memories and perceptions of it. Thanks to the power of a spiritual man who visited the town one faithful day, Unai-sama was sealed away, saving the village. Hajime’s family is in charge of said seal, as well as the festival that praises the holy man.
After hearing the legend, Ryouta can’t help but become curious about this seal binding such a powerful entity away, and Hajime is more than happy to lead him to it. The boys travel up to the building it’s located in, make a promise that Hajime will one day escape the suffocatingly small town and visit Ryouta…and are sucked into the sealed room by ghostly hands. While they were able to make it out of the room more or less unscathed, Hajime looks a little bit…different.
Once Ryouta is back on his feet his father takes him home, and time passes until he becomes a university student. Though he has aged, he has never forgotten the horrors he saw in that sealed room. He does his best to be a good student despite the trauma, but he soon comes face to face with a strange classmate named Hajime, who claims to have come to this university specifically to meet him. This is strange to Ryouta, for as far as he can tell, he’s never met anyone named Hajime before.
Now that this boy has forcefully entered his life, terrifying supernatural occurrences have started to plague Ryouta. Will he ever be able to figure out the cause?
My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)
I bought this volume after sampling and falling in love with the first chapter. Though I did end up enjoying the volume, it played out a little differently from how the first chapter led me to assume. I actually quite liked that the story didn’t play out according to my predictions, as I believe the best type of horror story is the type that keeps you guessing.
From how the old man describes Unai-sama in the first chapter “Once it mixes with you it messes with your head. Once it messes with your head, it’s all over”, I had assumed that it only existed to cause chaos. Like an old god that feeds off of destruction. The very first page of this volume shows someone burning the village down as they calmly walk away, so I was very confident in my Unai-sama = chaos-inducing old god assessment.
I assumed that Unai-sama possessed Hajime that day at the shrine and never let him go, and I kept that assumption all throughout my read. From the second he had that creepy smile on his face, there was clearly something very wrong with the boy. What isn’t clear is what his goals are. Sure, he more than likely is the one that burned the village down, but ever since finding Ryouta, it doesn’t seem like he’s doing any evil deeds. If anything, it seems like he just is trying to be friends with Ryouta in his own way.
Perhaps Unai-sama has the ability to recall the real Hajime’s memories and feelings, and even after possessing him still sees Ryouta as a friend? Or, maybe he was just lonely after being locked away for so long and became fixated on Ryouta when he was dragged into his sealed room? Absolutely everything about him is a big mystery, so it’s fun to theorize about his motivations.
Ghost stories within a ghost story
As for the ongoing plot, that’s also a bit confusing. It seems as though while Ryouta has been plagued by nightmares ever since getting pulled into that room, the actual paranormal events only began after Hajime came back into his life. Maybe because he’s a paranormal entity himself, he attracts them?
The story focuses on Ryouta as he struggles to adjust to his university life. He’s become introverted and a bit shy after everything he’s gone through, so we follow as he tries to get his life back in order. Just as he decides to give his all to being a good student, Hajime comes in. Following his entrance, the story primarily focuses on two things: Ryouta struggling to deal with the ghosts, and Ryouta struggling to understand Hajime.
Hajime really is a mysterious character, as though he plainly states he came to university to be with Ryouta, he never actually forces himself on him. He just somehow is always there when Ryouta needs him most, and somehow knows just enough to help him get out of any immediate danger. Almost like he has some sort of “in” with the ghosts.
There are two big events that happen in this volume—the floating woman, and the haunted resort. Personally, I enjoyed the floating woman’s story more, but that may just be because it was told from start to finish in this volume. The haunted resort seems to be a much more layered story, as this volume ends with some side characters starting their own paranormal investigation—meaning we don’t know how it ends yet!
I assume the story will continue to focus on big ghostly events, and through these events we will see how Hajime and Ryouta interact with each other. Will they become friends? Will Hajime turn out to indeed be an evil entity out to destroy Ryouta’s life? Who knows!
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