"Not a garden variety specter" — In/Spectre Volumes 1-6 by Kyo Shirodaira and Chashiba Katase

[spindizzy]

Both touched by spirits called yokai, Kotoko and Kuro have gained unique superhuman powers. But to gain her powers Kotoko has given up an eye and a leg, and Kuro’s personal life is in shambles. So when Kotoko suggests they team up to deal with renegades from the spirit world, Kuro doesn’t have many other choices, but Kotoko might just have a few ulterior motives...

Well this was weird.

A teenager is recruited to be a “god of knowledge” for yokai, trading an eye and a leg for the ability to see and command them, and uses her power (and those of a young man who might not be entirely human) to... Combat Steel Lady Nanase, the violent ghost of a dead idol, who is terrorising a city with a steel beam?

Yeah, the premise of where this manga started and where it ended didn’t quite gel.

I reviewed the first volume and wasn’t very impressed with it, but unfortunately there is a particular level of bad thriller that I can’t put down, and In/Spectre is it. Seriously, I haven’t devoured a series that I disagree with this much since I managed to find all of Remote for a tenner. (If you only ever trust me on one thing, trust me on this: DO NOT READ REMOTE. IT IS BAD. THERE IS A REASON THAT A TEN VOLUME SERIES WAS THAT CHEAP.)

And I do disagree with In/Spectre! On a fairly structural level, in fact, only part of which is because I was expecting something like Tactics or Mushishi (episodic mysteries with magical creatures) and got a thriller where the magical creature aspect is secondary at best. Part of it is that it feels very male gaze in its choices. Like, I would go so far as to say that the artist has trouble drawing plausible teenagers, because they always seem to look too young (the nineteen-year-old who looks twelve for ostensibly narrative reasons) or too old (the nineteen-year-old who was narratively a gravure model, whose chest size is commented on A LOT.), and the writer struggles to write women interacting with each other in a believable way. Like, constant competition about a man and comparisons between each other in relation to that man levels of unbelievable.

(The author of the original novel makes a point of informing the reader that they never use exclamation marks, apparently, so I’m sceptical of them anyway.)

And yet I read an entire six volume arc of it, because it was really compelling. The escalation of Steel Lady Nanase and the revelation of what exactly was going on with her got its claws into me even as I was complaining about pretty much every other aspect of the series.

I liked most of the characters better individually than I did together, because they didn’t quite gel. I feel like Saki was introduced solely as the audience stand-in to have things explained to, and she could have been so much more as a police officer whose district is being terrorised by a ghost! Kotoko was really interesting when she was in God of Knowledge mode, but infinitely less so when she was creeping on Kuro (which on the one hand I can appreciate, because let girls be gross horny messes over their crushes too, but also she's nineteen and deliberately drawn to look twelve, the male gaze is strong with this series, her love interest is in his twenties and doesn't seem interested, and also this is supposed to be supposed to be the main source of humour for the series...?)

It didn’t help that this relationship, that is supposed to be central to the series, doesn’t actually do any of the groundwork it needs for the characters’ choices to matter? Like, I am in fandom, I can overanalyse relationships with the best of them, and I am here to tell you that I’ve seen passing acquaintances written with more believable friendship than these two, so whenever they talk about their closeness or how willing they are to sacrifice for each other, I’m just like “... Where is this coming from?” Not even the fact that “someone who has become monstrous uses their monstrous nature to protect someone else” is one of my favourite tropes could make their relationship interesting to me. The only fully fleshed out character is Nanase herself, which is probably because she dies before the series starts so a lot of effort is put into making sure that we care, and we very rarely see her interacting with other people, so any problems in depicting realistic interactions are harder to see.

(Seriously, the series lost me on the characters right around the time Kotoko compares being thrown around by a ghost to her “deflowering.” WHO TALKS LIKE THAT. TO STRANGERS. IN PUBLIC. WHAT.)

But the central mystery itself of what is going on with Steel Lady Nanase was compelling, from its revelations about how Nanase died to the manga’s use of the collective unconscious and “Wouldn’t it be more interesting if...” as a hazard that the protagonists have to reckon with. (This is a theme that’s used to much the same effect in xXxholic and the Persona franchise, amongst others.) The pacing continues to have the same oddities as the first volume, in that the villain isn’t introduced until volume four of a six volume arc, and thus the plot gets slowed to a snail’s pace by flashbacks explaining who this person is and why we should care. But on the flip side, I like that the creators managed to take a scene that was essentially a teenager shitposting creepypasta on reddit and turned it into a genuinely tense, interesting denouement to a mystery that never actually existed! That was cool and interesting, especially for me because the scenes where the detective lays out the solution is my favourite part of any mystery. The fact that they present multiple solutions to a non-existent murder in conjunction with a brutal fight scene almost made up for some of the series’ flaws for me.
(I do want to go full overanalysis regarding the design chosen for Steel Lady Nanase. The way that her face is removed not just in reference to her death, but to deliberately dehumanise her in the minds of an audience who are interested in her as a spectacle rather than a person! Putting her in the costume of her most famous acting role to make sure that no one could possibly mistake who she is! The fact that she was deliberately designed like that in universe as well! The fact that she’s a ghost terrorising a city and she still can’t get enough respect that people stop talking about her cup size! ... I'm not going to do this, because HORRIBLY OVERTHINKING IT, but I want to believe that it was intentional on the creators’ parts as a commentary.)

So yes, I can't say that In/Spectre is good, but I did devour the entire series in an afternoon and feel kinda gross about it afterwards. If you want a ridiculous supernatural thriller and don’t mind having to look past the male gaze and creators who have a tin ear for how people actually interact, it’s not the worst example of its kind, which is the nicest I'll be about it.

[Caution warning: repeated imagery of suicide, murder, child death, references to stalking]