The scariest thing about Black Book (Kuro Ihon) is how similar it is to Seeds of Anxiety. Seriously, the first-person everyman narratives are so exactly on-tone and the monster artwork so exactly…. exact, that it feels like artistic inspiration might have been taken a bit too far here. On the other hand, it’s not like Seeds of Anxiety is the most distinctive work ever made. It’s only the monsters that are particularly shocking.

Putting that aside, I found this rather weak. There’s a few vengeful ghost stories that do absolutely nothing for me. I assume it’s a cultural barrier stemming from a Japanese fear of being caught neglecting your obligations of respect to others. But I don’t care. I’d piss on a ghost.

There is one story in here I found rather eerie, where two sisters play a Ouija board-esque game with hefty consequences that can never be undone. The sense of powerlessness over something you’ve partially caused and being the only one to know the truth of something is a “what-if” scenario that sent a faint shiver down my decrepit spine.

Uh, the rest? I dunno. These are one-shot adaptations of some author I’ve never heard of, and I don’t find either the premises or storytelling to be compelling. There’s barely even a body count here. It’s like, someone saw some weird shit and it turns out to be the ghost of people who got fucked over or something. Who cares? Man, this really is like Seeds of Anxiety. But that had way better monster designs for shock panels and knew its stories weren’t worth 20 pages each.

Also, I’m really sick of every single horror manga I read that adapts “true stories” ending with an author’s note about how, during or after publication, something bad happened to someone related to them somewhere, meaning the spirits of something are pissed off and cursing them. It’s just confirmation bias, chill the fuck out. The only people cursing you for making this are people like me who were slightly bored. And I’m only cursing you to bite on a hard piece of cereal in your Cap’n Crunch.