Hauntress Review

Hiroshi Mori is a college student, living in an apartment complex all by himself, when one night he’s disturbed by knocking at the door and ringing of the doorbell. But not his door, his neighbour’s, but no one seems to be home because the ringing of the bell keeps on going and going and going. Hiroshi decides to open the door and see who is it, only to be greeted by a tall, thin, long-haired woman in a trench coat and carrying paper bags. Hiroshi says that his neighbour isn’t home, but the mysterious woman doesn’t stop coming round, night after night, until one day she sets her sights on Hiroshi, and that’s when the real nightmare begins.

Hauntress © Minetaro Mochizuki/Kodansha Ltd.

Hauntress (a title that is kinda hard to search for on Amazon, because the engine keeps wanting to change it to ‘huntress’) is a early 90s horror manga by Minetaro Mochizuki, a manga artist who’s been active since the mid-80s. A few of his works have been published in the UK in the past, including his most famous title  Dragon Head, as well as Isle of Dogs, but this is the first time this particular work has been made available in English, and Wikipedia informs us that it was once ranked as ninth on the ‘Most Traumatising Manga’ in a poll in Japan in 2015. According to the synopsis and Kodansha’s website, the manga itself is credited for introducing the concept of ‘stalking to Japan’. I can’t find anything to back this up, in English anyways, but the term ‘stalking’ was first introduced in a 1995 paper, and it replaced other terms such as ‘female harassment’ and ‘obsessive following’, which is interesting to find out that the concept of being followed is obviously understood and old, but the word ‘stalking’ as a term is only 30 years old; the more you know, I guess! Regardless of this manga’s impact in Japan, does it has the potential to make an impact in the West, over 30 years since its debut? I would say so, for the right audience, but I didn’t find myself clicking with this particular horror manga.

The story sells itself as a ‘urban legend’ and ‘exploit our fear of the seemingly mundane world’, so the tale tries to straddle the line between a realistic horror, and one that’s made up in the mind, like a nightmare. On paper, there are a lot of good ideas in here: Hiroshi just wanting to help out the stranger, so he can get back to sleep is a simple act that anyone could do, and yet he ends up sowing the seeds of his own doom without realising it. There’s little rhyme or reason why someone would become obsessed with someone and a simple act of kindness can be enough to trigger a mentally ill person to believe that this other person is actually in love with them. When Hiroshi gives the mysterious woman the benefit of the doubt, and even does some really silly things like letting her into his place, you can understand why, as no one wants to believe someone is out to hurt them, and it’s only in hindsight that we recognize the signs of a stalker. I also like the twist midway, where Hiroshi and his friend believe that the mysterious woman might be an old classmate they used to bully, thinking it’s her trying to get back at them, but the lurking horror isn’t so simply explained.

Hauntress © Minetaro Mochizuki/Kodansha Ltd.

The main problem lies in the way the story tries to straddle ‘urban legend’ and ‘realistic horror’, because in the end it fails to be either. It’s strongest when it’s a stalker type story, as the slowly growing dread of the woman continuously coming over, even going as far as force her way into Hiroshi’s place, does build up a nice boiling pot of horror that Hiroshi doesn’t realise he’s in until it’s too late. The fact that the police dismiss his claims of someone trying to harm him also feels realistic. However in the climax and epilogue, they swerve into selling the story as an urban legend, as if no one knows what really happened, but this results in a unsatisfying ending because it doesn’t match up with what’s been set up. For example: Hiroshi’s friend Satake and Hiroshi’s love interest Rumi, both see the mysterious woman and are hurt by her too at different times, with Satake going as far as to travel outside the city to do his own investigation when they first believe the stalker to be an old classmate. But both Satake and Rumi are missing from the big climax of the story, with the ending having Rumi having seemingly ‘moved on’ from the events, unaffected, and Satake being clearly shaken up, but putting it all down to ‘bad luck’. If my best friend went missing, and I was personally injured by a stalker, I would feel more emotionally invested and traumatised by what happened. If they wanted to go the ‘urban legend’ route, it would have been more effective is Hiroshi was the ONLY one who could see and was affected by the strange women stalking him, as that would explain the apathetic nature of both these characters.

I do get why the mangaka went with the urban legend route however, as the woman who stalks Hiroshi is shown to be inhuman in nature; able to withstand attacks that regular humans could not. On the last page, when we see the woman show a more demonic side to her, it reminded me of Junji Ito’s Tomie of all things, but at least with Tomie the writing and tone was consistent, and you saw the escalation of the horror she presented match that. Here, it feels like Minetaro Mochizuki wanted this ‘unstoppable’ force to be the stalker, but didn’t have a human way to explain it, so went the urban legend/nightmare route instead.

Another thing that I think doesn’t work is the art style. Minetaro Mochizuki clearly has talent but there are two issues that work against the manga. One is the over-excessive use of panels and effects in each panel, meaning there were a few times when I wasn’t sure what was happening. One such example is towards the second half, when Hiroshi hits the woman on the back of the head, but it was only after he said he did it that I got what the action was suppose to be. Another issue is the character designs; the stalker woman herself is very creepy, obviously, but so are Hiroshi’s friends and love interest, they’re introduced with ALSO very creepy smiles that made me think I was reading a manga version of the US horror movie Smile. I thought it was intentional and maybe would lead into Hiroshi’s growing paranoia, but no, they’re the ‘normal’ ones apparently. The uncanny valley can work in some circumstances, but again I didn’t think it made sense in this context.

Annelise Ogaard translates this manga and it’s a good read that’s easy to follow, even if the action isn’t always.

I don’t want to discount Hauntress’s impact on the horror manga scene in Japan, but I felt myself unable to really get swept up in this particular story, due to writing issues that ended up clashing with the overall intention of the story. If classic horror manga intrigues you, then give this a try, as it’s the first time this story has been made available in the UK, and hopefully you’ll find something to enjoy that I sadly didn’t.

Our review copy from Kodansha (Vertical Books) was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).