Osashiburi, Ghost Hunt! When last we left off, Naru, the head of Shibuya Psychic Research, was hospitalized after revealing a glimpse of his mysterious and dangerous powers. As volume ten begins, Naru has checked himself out of the hospital and seems to be back to normal, but on the way home he begins acting strangely, setting up camp in a rural village and ordering divers to dredge the nearby lake. Gradually, some information about Naru’s past comes to light and he reveals that the whole reason he created SPR in the first place was to find this spot. While awaiting the divers’ results, the team is commissioned by the town’s mayor to check out rumors of spirits haunting an abandoned elementary school. It turns out the job is a lot more dangerous than they were led to believe and the volume ends on a gigantic cliffhanger with the team trapped and the fates of two characters uncertain.
What Ghost Hunt does best, when it’s at the top of its game, is evoke an atmosphere of delicious creepiness. After a bit of a sputtering start, this volume settles into a nicely spooky groove. The nature of Naru’s search is marvelously macabre, and the scenes in which the team explores the rickety remains of the school are full of tense moments and grisly discoveries. On top of this, Mai has begun to realize that she doesn’t know enough about her colleagues to be able to call them friends, and so takes some welcome steps towards remedying that. Unfortunately, what Ghost Hunt does worst—achieving and maintaining consistency in character designs—is still a problem, but one to which I’ve simply become resigned.
Who knows when we’ll see volume eleven here—it just came out in Japan a little over a month ago—but the quality of volume ten assures me it’ll be well worth the wait.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
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