This Monster Wants To Eat Me, Volume 1 is a tale that is creepy and dark and yet somehow full of kindness, set in a seaside town on Seto Inland Sea in Japan.

It is one of the best manga series I am currently reading.

Hinako has some event in her past that has kept her from participating fully in life. Her best friend Miko is relentlessly cheerful and kind, but when Hinako encounters a girl who is decidedly not human, her quiet, featureless life begins to change.

Shiori is not, as she notes, a human, but as a human she is bewitchingly beautiful. She is also quite deadly, when she protects Hinako from threats around her. Most notably, Shiori is interested in eating Hinako…just not yet. What Shiori does not realize is that Hinako would welcome death as a respite from a life burdened with extraordinary loss.

The tone here is the kind of crawling psychological horror I quite like. There is violence here and we are meant to be frightened by it, and I’ll CW this series for suicidal ideation, but both are presented more as a overwhelming sense, than as an action. This book offers chills up the spine, rather than jump scares and gross violence. With it’s seaside setting it’s almost Lovecraftian in tone, without, y’know, the racism and xenophobia.

Caleb Cook offers up an amazing bit of translation work here, he second this week after yesterday’s rave review. You can almost hear the the soft sigh of the ocean in Shiori’s voice and the yap of Miko’s effervescent jollity. Bianca Pistillo’s lettering is in Yen house style – so, subtitling the sound effects rather than retouching – but there are places where her touch is quite subtle, such as the moment when the word “uncomfortable” is lettered in a way that feels off-balance and, yes, uncomfortable.

I reviewed this volume in Japanese in 2021 – every volume since has been amazing. I’m completely hooked. I have been begging Yen to license this series, so you can imagine how happy I am that they have and that you can read it, as well!

Ratings:

Art – 8 Intriguing and dark
Story – 8 Intriguing and dark in different ways
Characters – 7  There are depths we have yet to see (didn’t want to say “intriguing and dark” again, but…)
Service – Blood. Violence. Monsters From the Deep. Secrets.
Yuri – Miko is possessive, Shiori is infuriating, Hinako is infatuated

Overall – 8

This Monster Wants to Eat Me is a creepy-shivers up your spine story about a girl who didn’t die and all the supernatural creatures who either want her dead…or want her alive. This book is hitting shelves in June, so grab it now for a perfect beach read – presuming you like your beaches populated with deadly threats and supernatural creatures.