(Youto Chinkonka) Tokyo Requiem 1

Author: IMAI Shuuhou
Artist: KASAI Ayumi
Imprint: Asuka Comics DX
Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten
ISBN4-04-853277-4

Reviewed by Jeanne

Besides, I'm famous for having No Sense of Humour. Someone else should be reviewing this manga. They're not, so you'll just have to listen to me bitch. Warii.

As Nora, bless her, discovered for me, this is based on a RPG which is one reason why it makes little sense. You're supposed to know the details already, which seems to be the chronic litany of my current reading. (And people wonder why I go running back to the '49ers like Hagio Moto and Yamagishi Ryouko all the time. Cause they tell a nice linear story that they made up all by themselves, guys.)

But after that. We got rough 'n ready otoko rashii-manly Seno Jin and his cute blond kouhai Kayano Azusa who likes to draw pictures of demons, at this high school where gee an awful lot of people keep killing themselves or being killed, as per choice, and bloodily at that. Appears the enigmatic Mibu Kureha in his black leather coat. He's apparently a youkai exterminator of some kind, come to consult with an old man at the school who wants a little psychic warfarin laid down. But alas in spite of all his amulets and good luck charms, the guy's been taken over by demons himself, and Mibu has to get rid of him with a sutra spell. (Which means he doesn't get his fee, and complains about it. Mibu is a pro.)

Beyond here are semi-spoilers for the stories. Beware.

Jin and Azusa walk in on this by accident and get told about the demons who live in the twilight world between our world and the next (common Japanese idea, this- Buddhist in origin or not? Dunno.) Azusa the demon lover thinks this is neat, Jin the sceptic thinks it's rot. As they leave the school they find the school ID of one of their classmates, Nogizaka, a champion swimmer. They take it to her house, but she's half hysterical and won't let them in. (Like all high school girls in manga, she lives all alone without a sniff of a family around. This is probably a piece of idealistic fantasy put in expressly for the female readership.) And who should they meet but Mibu again, carrying a bag of-- exorcism charms? No, wool. He knits for a hobby and made the scarf he's wearing. Azusa is utterly taken with it. "He even did his initials." And next thing they're being co-opted to aid in the exorcism of Nogizaka, who's being preyed on by these little beasties in her body (we see them coming out, which is yuck, before Azusa and Jin catch them in butterfly nets, hohoho.) Beasties know everything she does and have been threatening to go and tell the world, which is why she's so suicidal. Mibu deals not only with the beasties but their master as well, a kind of embodiment of the superego and as unpleasant as you'd expect a superego to be. (I like the suggestion that the real demon is your own conscience.) And off they all go, and Jin gets a scarf from Mibu as a present. End chapter one.

And thus it goes. We got demons, we got gyaagu, we got panty shots, who could ask for anything more? Well, obviously, I could. A little swooning Reijin-cover sensuousness would not go at all amiss here. Do we get it? Nope. Tokyo Requiem is a game that I hear is specifically marketed to girl gamers. Fine. If you say so. To compensate, the manga seems to be marketed to guy readers, since female crotch 'n tit shots are not a standard feature of yer average shoujo and BL. (Maybe Asuka DX is hoping to become crossover, perish the thought?) At any rate the BL indications are all reduced to jokey haha Azusa wubs Mibu except when Azusa wubs demons and pouts when he can't get to kiss one multi-eyed monstrosity. Rats. There's a het plot, about good ol' otokorashii etc etc Jin, the umm male reader insertion point, battling the evil urges he gets after seeing Nogizaka's breasts in a bathing suit. It's sweet, but not what Reijin readers bought the book for.

However, that said-- the stories are good ghoulie stories, and the chapter headings rather suggest that what we see are real beasties from Japanese folklore. The books cited at the beginning of each story and in the opening sequence seem to be authentic works on Japanese bogle-lore. We have our nasty little tell-tale Sanshi in the first story, the three little bugs that live inside people and listen to their evil thoughts and then go and tell the world. Second story gives us a mist demon, Enenra, a beautiful woman, which seems quite fitting, who is dealt with by an application of practical physics, which is... quite inventive. Third story gives us a demon from Shikoku that lives in water and drowns people. There's an old story, we find much later, about how the demon punished the farmers who poured poisoned water into a stream, an old story which has interesting tie-ins for modern day pollution and people who pee into oceans.

These demons are demons so of course they must be exorcised. 'Prepare to hear your requiem' Mibu says, though the actual kanji read 'spirit quietening song.' Exorcisms work a little differently in Japan anyway. You aren't sending the foul servants of the Prince of Darkness back to the eternal flames, you're just telling a natural force to please go elsewhere because it doesn't belong here. True, Enenra has been enticing salarymen to their deaths, but *we* see her going for an unlikable someone who's been making people suffer, and who seems to be getting just what he deserves. One has a certain fellow-feeling for these demons at times.

As a promise for possible future BL umm 'indications' (action is too much to hope for) there's the bespectacled guy Mibu passes in Shinjuku, who will develop an interest in him in vol 2. Alas, there seems no second appearance to date of the much more bikei young type in traditional dress who shows up for five pages at the beginning of the third story. Runs an antique store by the looks of it, sells Mibu the necessities of his trade, has a shiki that doesn't work, and for extras gives a little discourse on what traditional shikis are, for those of us who get dumped wholesale into onmyouji manga about Abe no Seimei that never explain anything. Take a piece of paper, write the proper symbols on it, and leave it to watch the house while you're out. It will raise and lower the curtains and turn the lights on and off like a time switch, only better. It can probably answer the door too.

The last story in the manga is an excerpt from something else, but I'm not sure what the something else is. The main work of which this is a gaiden (side story) I suppose, meaning from the game itself. Shows how Mibu became what he is, though what he is there is an assassin of sorts, avenging unpunished crimes. Whatever, it looks like fun.