In Volume 1 we met mystery hunter Sorawo, who nearly died while visiting an “other” world that had access points in our own and Toriko, the beautiful blonde who saved her life. In Volume 2 Toriko and Sorawo and their broker for artifacts, Kozakura, learn of the research into this other world, known as the Ultrablue. Sorawo meets an admiring kouhai, Seto, and proceeds to do everything she can to distance herself, all the time haunted by the mysterious Satsuki Uruma, who clearly connected with the hearts of Toriko and Seto, but whom Sorawo sees as a threatening and manipulative presence.

Now in Volume 3 of Otherside Picnic, after a terrifying brush with death and madness at the end of Volume 2, Sorawo and Toriko decide to take a more aggressive view of the UB, and face it head on. They customize an agricultural vehicle and head into the world to try and map it. With Sorawo’s one UB eye and Toriko’s transparent hand, they have the ability to see the reality of creatures in the UB. But Sorawo can see something that she’s not telling Toriko, who is becoming more and more dear to her. Sorawo can see that Satsuki Uruma…is watching them.

We get a few random glimpses into both Sorawo’s past, which helps explain a lot about her, and Toriko’s, which doesn’t, but offers tantalizing hints. They encounter a foe whose UB ability is deadly and, for the first time, we run into something that actually frightened me as a phenomenon. As a result I kind of want to talk about the horror author Iori Miyazawa bakes into this series. The author’s notes fascinate me, because they are themselves a kind of second-hand urban legend that the work purports to draw upon. “I read this on a board that’s gone now…” is pretty much the Internet version of  “a friend of a friend told me….” The horrors themselves are random and inexplicable, often being “explained” away by something even more inexplicable, which is charming, but doesn’t make the scare any scarier…unless it coincides with something you, personally, carry. Then it’s fucking terrifying.  ^_^

You may remember we tend to stay in Ikebukuro and we know the corner where the Junkudo is across from the ramen shop well. Yes, that ramen shop with a long line is real. The line starts about 10:30 in the morning and goes all day until the shop closes. It’s mostly Japanese folks, but sometimes has foreigners in it…and it’s on my list of things to do, to get on that line and eat there. ^_^ Well, a few years ago, my wife and I had a scary and strange experience nearby. I won’t get into details, but suffice to say the whole scene outside that Junkudo make me deeply uncomfortable to the point of being genuinely terrifying. Which is when I realized how Miyazawa’s horror works.  All the stories need to do is to evoke a place or a feeling that already scared you, and you’ll fill in the rest. Stories of weird beach houses and toilets in the middle of the hotel room, or strange looking constructions in the middle of the woods might not get you, but if you had stayed in a creepy beach house, or a really weird hotel room or saw some kind of bizzarro structure in the woods, you’d be looking for that light switch as you walked down the hall. ^_^;

Volume 3 ends with an important moment, but one that can’t really be considered a climax until we see if anything will come out of it. Toriko and Sorawo need a heart-to-heart ….but it’s not Satsuki Uruma that they need to talk about.

shirakaba’s art is less-irrelevant than usual, which was nice. Hats off to translator Sean McCann and editor Krys Loh, because translating made up fake horrors and making them make sense is way harder than translating things that exist and making them make sense.  

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 6

Overall – 9

Volume 3 is available on Kindle, Bookwalker Global  and directly from J-Novel Club.  Volume 4 just came out in Japanese in March, so I imagine it will be a while before we’re getting the next installment! If you can’t wait, you can grab it digitally on Bookwalker Global, as well!