The Demon Prince of Momochi House Volume 1

May contain spoilers.

“Housework can kill you, if you do it right.” – Erma Bombeck

At the age of 16, orphaned girl Himari Momochi inherits her ancestral home – not that any of the locals want to help her find it, believing the house to be haunted. Upon arriving there she discovers that her home is already being occupied by squatters. The squatters in question are three boys named Aoi Nanamori, Yukari and Ise. Himari obviously wants them out, but they refuse to leave.

While cleaning the house, Himari finds that the house does indeed contain monsters such as yokai, and that is built on the barrier between the human and spiritual realms. Most of creatures there are pretty harmless, but some of them are malevolent, wishing to consume Himari’s soul. Aoi says that he can stop them, but orders her not to look at him. She closes her eyes and finds that Aoi has transformed into a “nue” – a creature comprising of various different animals, having the ears of a cat, the wings of a bird and the tail of a fox. Yukari and Ise are also similar, with Yukari being an amizuchi (a water serpent) and Ise a shoujoi (an orangutan).

As a child, Aoi broke into the abandoned house. As a result of this he was given his nue powers, while Yukari and Ise come from the spirit world. However, Aoi does not want Himari to gain similar powers as well, and claims that the house recognises him as the rightful owner. After some time Himari discovers one of the reasons why Aoi is so keen on not wanting to hand over control of the house to her – because of the powers he has been given, Aoi cannot leave the house.

Compared to Twin Star Exorcists which I reviewed recently, this story seems to come across better, mainly because of the characters. All of them seem somewhat warmer, friendlier, and easier to approach. With Himari surrounded by the three guys, you could arguably describe the series as a reverse harem, although it might be a bit early to describe it as a harem series, as this volume is only three chapters long. However, this is perhaps not surprising given that The Demon Prince of Momochi House is a shojo series, and thus the exorcism and fight aspect is more in the background. It is still there, but the manga is more about the asthetics rather than the actual combat. Twin Star Exorcists is more about the thrill and spill of it all, but The Demon Prince manages to get the balance between the two better.

The art is also good, although the character design might be a tad confusing. For example, Aoi’s wings in his transformed state do not really stand out; they just appear to be several strings of peacock feathers.

However, so far this first volume has been entertaining enough. It is not as action-packed as Twin Star Exorcists, but the character development helps to make up for it. Sometimes it is nice to have a more relaxing take on a similar supernatural story.