The Terrifying Students at Ghoul School! Volume 1 Review

The Terrifying Students at Ghoul School! is the spin-off series of A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School!, where a cowardly teacher who also happens to be the reincarnation of a powerful shaman becomes the teacher for a high school class full of yokai students. In this prequel, the main protagonist switches from Abe-sensei, the teacher, to the students themselves, a year before Abe-sensei joins the faculty. Can we expect the same humorous and comical events that readers got to enjoy in the original series? Let’s find out.

The main protagonists in this volume are Mamekichi Maizuka, a mame-danuki (a species of tanuki) and Tamao Akisame, a nekomata (a yokai that turns into a cat with a split tail) on their first day at Hyakki Academy, a school for yokai all trying to learn ‘standard’ high school subjects, like Japanese, and some more yokai-specific subjects, like Spookology. Hatanaka-sensei also seems to be a constant presence in this volume, as he gets pretty close to Mame and Tamao since they are all animal yokai, and he happens to be their teacher as well. A few other students from the main series make an appearance and we get to find out about their background stories and how the relationships between them formed, but Mame and Tamao are always somehow involved in all the events narrated in this first volume. If they will continue to be the main protagonists for future volumes, it’s still to be seen.

I’m a huge fan of A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School! so I had high expectations for this spin-off series, but unfortunately, The Terrifying Students at Ghoul School! didn’t meet them. I was expecting a main storyline that would introduce the characters and their journey to how they came to be in the main series, but what I found was a collection of short stories, not always related to one another and that could be mostly read as standalones. I was really hoping to find out how Mame and Sano-kun met and became best friends as their relationship plays a big role in the main story, but by the time they both join high school, they are already besties, and Sano doesn’t make an appearance until the end of the volume. I really hope the mangaka, Mai Tanaka, explains how they became friends in future volumes.

To show the younger students as freshmen at Hyakki Academy, the mangaka played with the hair length and colour of the characters, which are different from the way the characters are represented in the main story. Abe-sensei is mentioned but doesn’t make an appearance, while Miki-sensei appears in a few chapters as a side character just to mess with the students and, of course, Hatanaka-sensei.

What I did appreciate about this spin-off series is the comedy element that it is ever-present. Mai Tanaka continues to make the readers laugh thanks to the characters’ personalities and how they deal with whatever happens to them. They are still a bunch of fools, both students and teachers, but that’s why they are so endearing. Moreover, in a few scenes, the characters ‘speak’ to the readers on why they can or cannot do something, still with a funny ‘tone’ that matches the story.

To keep this comedy element, the illustrations are fundamental as the characters’ looks add to the humour of the story, from chibis to exaggerated expressions. I would have liked the volume to be less word-heavy as I felt at times the words took away from the art, which would have been enough to describe what was going on or what the characters were thinking. Lastly, translation notes are present toward the end of the volume, but not near the final page, after which they are followed by more stories. I think this position might have been caused by the limited extent of the volume as some notes also reference stories that come after the page. A couple of super short stories are illustrated inside the cover, which I think is also due to the limited page extent.

For readers interested in this series, I would highly recommend starting with A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School! and then pick up this volume, as some events reference the main series and not everything is explained.

The Terrifying Students at Ghoul School! by Mai Tanaka is published in volume format by Yen Press in the English language with a translation by Amanda Haley. There is no news yet on when Volume 2 will be released.

Our review copy was supplied by Yen Press.