Leung Izumi 34

Tomoki Izumi's Mieruko-chan

Reviewed by Anson Leung

(Yen Press, 2020-2026)

Izumi’s Mieruko-chan is about a high school girl, Miko Yotsuya, who constantly sees ghosts that nobody else can see. The ghosts exist and interact with people in real life in some cases, so these are not delusions. Rather, they are a gift, or a curse, depending on one’s perspective. From her perspective, it’s 100% a curse. She has to try very hard to not show fear and pretend that she doesn’t see the ghosts at all, while still acting normal in front of other people. This is the main draw of the first few stories. While the first few stories are self-contained, longer story arc chapters are created in the later chapters, and it’s not long before the curse she has turns out to be a very helpful gift. This happens when she has to deal with problems with the help of Godmother and Romm, two seasoned ghost hunters who also see ghosts. While they can see outlines of ghosts, Miko sees the ghosts in their true form, and her vision exceeds theirs. But she has no way to fight the ghosts, which is where the relationship becomes mutually beneficial.

To make a manga stand out among its competitors, there must be a twist, or something unique about it. In this case, not only is this a unique story in general, but it also does a great job in the art department. The drawings of the ghosts are scary, but not too scary, and are very detailed. This is a main reason why, instead of coming out weekly like most manga, this manga comes out monthly. The quality of art never once drops, as some manga actively chooses to do when they gain an audience and can rely on their story’s plot to do the talking. Mieruko-chan chooses to still maintain its great art even when it doesn’t have to. There is a very real cost to this, as weekly and bi-weekly manga are more popular and will sell more copies. In this case, the author has chosen to let the quality of his manga transcend above monetary gain. Yet, a movie is in the works, so it’s not like the author sacrificed a large amount of money for his art.

This story is great at comedy. It has jokes that are above-average to average when compared to other manga. A running joke is how Hana has eaten so much food and made eateries so much money that they make special dishes just to sell to her. Its aim isn’t drama, but when it does do drama, it does not do it badly. An example is when Miko fought with her dad over pudding just before his death because he ate her limited-edition pudding cup by accident. Near the end, she decides to place a similarly hard to obtain pudding cup by his shrine instead of eating it herself. But above all, when the story arcs happen, it’s the misdirection that makes the plots great. Characters you think are evil actually turn out to be nice. And the opposite can also be true. There are hints throughout the story of whether the characters are truly evil or good, but you don’t really figure it out until they tell you. Then you go back and look at the hints the story gave you. It’s a fun experience.

The main characters of the manga are Miko Yotsuya, Romm Shindou, Godmother, her best friend Hana Yurikawa, Yuria Niguredo, the powerful and lovestruck Michiru Ichijou, and lastly, the enigmatic Seto. Miko is an ordinary teenage girl who one day awakens to find she has the power to see ghosts. At first, she struggles to keep a poker face, pretending not to be able to see them, made worse by the fact that other people will think she’s crazy if she reveals what she sees. Otherwise, aside from her above-average beauty, she is average in height, academics, and physical abilities. Hana is her happy-go-lucky friend who likes to eat a lot. Later, it turns out she has connections to the spirit world, too, as the ghosts like the ones Miko sees are attracted to her aura and eat it, leaving her hungry all the time. Even later on, it’s revealed that her aura can help to physically kill the ghosts themselves. Romm is the adopted son of Godmother, and he makes his income off of streaming and presenting “ghost sightings” that are actual real ghosts that nobody else can see. He’s not so honest, however, as his sales pitches to his audience include selling junk that doesn’t actually work in warding off real-life ghosts, at least in most cases. Romm is a powerful ghost hunter, but even though he can beat most normal ghosts, there are some that are incredibly powerful, almost in the realm of a deity, that can kill Romm almost instantly if they tried. Romm is legitimately helpful towards Miko, and is, aside from his unsavory sales tactics, an overall morally good person. His methods of ghost hunting include modern-day technology, such as incredibly loud music. Godmother adopted Romm because she saw that he needed somebody who could understand his ghost hunting powers. She is also a scam artist, as she pretends to be a fortune teller and scams people by pretending to see ghosts that they have to get rid of, followed by selling them junk, similar to Romm. However, she is also a good person who didn’t hesitate to give her strongest charm, free of charge, in an attempt to save Miko. As a relevant character, she becomes less and less of one, since Romm has most if not all of her knowledge but a relevant amount of power to fight the more powerful ghosts that the series presents later on.

Yuria is a girl with a minor amount of ghost hunting power who has dim vision of weak ghosts, but not the strong ones, and a minor amount of aura. She thinks she’s stronger than she is because she can’t see the more powerful ghosts. However, she can see aura, which both Romm and Godmother can see, but not Miko. She can be called the jack of all trades of Miko’s friend group. She’s the one who can see Hana has large aura to be used as healing, and alerted Miko to the fact. Since she’s in Miko’s friend group, she can help Miko whenever Romm cannot, due to her physical proximity to Miko. Michiru is a teen model. She has a tall height, and an incredibly beautiful face. At first, Miko could not see her face, as it was covered by her ghost guardian. Ironically, Miko’s inability to see her face leads to misinterpreted social interactions that lead Michiru to fall in love with Miko when she falsely thinks Miko understands her at a profoundly deep level. Ironically, Hana, the one Michiru views as her biggest love interest rival, is the one who probably operates at the same wavelength as she does. While Hana is kind, Michiru is also excessively kind. However, Michiru knows no boundaries and will go as far as breaking into someone’s house if she likes them. A big plot point is her having no friends because they fear her lack of boundaries, and her kindness can seem excessive. However, Michiru resolves her trauma when Hana reassures her that her kindness is not too excessive for her, and Michiru feels vindicated. With this, her face is cleared up and Miko can see it. Michiru’s guardian recedes somewhere else, mostly into her hair. Seto is the last character to be introduced so far. He has the power to physically grab ghosts and kill them with his hands. He can summon spirits in businessmen suits all around him to help him see the ghosts so he can grab them and kill them. While aligned with humans and the side of justice, he won’t hesitate to kill ghosts that have done nothing wrong. He might be an antagonist as much as he is an ally to the group later on. His main purpose is to fight the “middle-aged man ghost” and the remnants of the “shrine ghost”. Both are extremely powerful ghosts, with the “middle-aged man ghost” after Miko’s life, and the “shrine ghost” being the longest overarching storyline that spans a lot of the storylines in this manga.

The manga starts off with self-isolated slice-of-life stories involving Miko trying to act brave in front of scary ghosts only she can see, to involving her solving problems of normal people that are somewhat related to ghosts (I call them intermediate arcs), to finally fighting powerful ghosts that threaten her very life. Slice of life stories are still strongly sprinkled in all phases of this manga. Some of them involve her hanging out with friends with only minor to moderate interference with ghosts that don’t even take up the entire story.

An example of self-isolated arcs in the beginning is noticing a ghost after her friend Hana, and Miko decides to use hand sanitizer to try and drive it away. I liked these stories because they show how she uses basic social interaction tricks any age group can understand in order to keep at bay something that may or may not be dangerous to her. The horror is real, but it’s not guaranteed to kill her even if they notice her, so the stakes aren’t too high, and there’s ample room for comedy. It’s not just focused on her terror.

One of these intermediate arcs involves their teacher. Is he a psychopath who kills cats and dumps their bodies? Evidence leads up to him being one, but he turns out to save cats. Dumping out the neighbors’ food? That wasn’t his rudeness; the neighbor was in love with him and ended up putting hair in the food she gave him. He noticed it and threw the food away. The ghost that was with him turns out to be the mother he hated for being oppressive towards him. The twist ending is when it's suspected that he’s still a killer—just of bad people, rather than cats. And they reuse him for the arc involving Michiru and helping her with similar troubles he went through involving her sister’s overbearing nature. So, in summary, we have an arc that has an amazing recurring character and reusable value, a mystery that enhanced the stakes of the manga with what could have been a dark turn, a nice mystery to unravel, and a twist that nobody asked for but got anyways. Not that we’re complaining. The twist is great! This arc was a multi-faced beauty of storytelling that offered many things.

Another story arc involves Michiru. At first, before it was revealed that she was a good person, the fans of this manga thought she was a mentally twisted psychopath with the guardian ghost speculated to be an evil power that might have killed good ghosts, too. Part of that arc involved snapping a picture of the guardian ghost to get the information back to Romm so he can tell Miko his analysis of the mystery girl. The art is fantastic, so there was a real allure to this mystery girl. The reader was always left wondering to what extent she could be trusted. There was also a desire to get her onto Miko’s side because she had such power. This arc introduced a strong protector that could theoretically solve Miko’s problems by being her personal bodyguard. Somebody that could help her fight the entire premise of the story, because her guardian can kill ghosts with its tentacles. It was also right after the “shrine ghost” arc, so that was a great time to introduce such a powerful ally to Miko’s team. It was a captivating arc. And like the previous one before it, it offered a lot of different things that made it great. Yuria isn’t the only jack of all trades in this manga; the manga itself is jack of all trades in being good at many things.

The “shrine ghost” arc is the most prominent arc in the manga, and the first of the “fighting powerful ghosts that threaten her life” stories. Spanning back to 3 incidents where strong but not almighty ghosts threatened Miko’s life, the “shrine ghost” kills these less powerful ghosts. In return for this favor, it wants to “take Miko”, whatever that means. This kicks off the arc to find a way to kill the “shrine ghost” before it can harm Miko in any way. The backstories on the characters Romm and Godmother are given through this arc. The buildup was not anything too outstanding, though it was still good. What could have made it better is if they had stronger allies aligned with Miko, since I doubted Miko realistically had any real chance of winning with her current team. What really set it apart was the detailed drawings during the battle itself. The struggle for the team to survive up until the point Miko snuck in and destroyed the skull, the power source of the “shrine god”, was intense. There was doubt in that moment whether or not Miko would make it in time to defeat the “shrine god” before it killed a member of her team. The drawing of the “shrine god” does not disappoint. Even Junji Ito, the greatest horror mangaka of all time, would have been impressed by it. It had immense presence, and defeating it was very satisfying. Yet another example of an arc that had a lot to offer.

The current arc has Seto working with Miko to deal with both the “shrine ghost” and the “middle-aged man ghost”. Seto might accidentally kill her father who’s in his ghost form, so this is a conflict brewing in the background. I’m sure this arc has a lot to offer, too. All the arcs are very good, although not one of them has something transcendent in value that makes it the best in what it does among all the manga that currently exist. With this said, it cannot be overstated that it is still very good.

Mieruko-chan focuses on strong, uncompromising artwork and crafty misdirection as its main appeal. Its comedy and drama are solid. Overall, while not the best manga ever made, it’s certainly worth reading. Firmly in the “good to great category”, this manga will act as a great addition to any reading list.

Anson Leung is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Commerce program. He is an Alberta-based writer who loves all forms of writing, including poetry and article writing. In his spare time, he loves playing tennis and board games.