Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
by Yoshiyuki NishiPlot
Vengeful spirits making it difficult to relax at home? Evil toys trying to possess you while you sleep? Who you gonna call? No, not Ghostbusters. When dead are disturbing the peace of the living, only a specialist in supernatural law like Tohru Muhyo can send those evil spirits packin' to the afterlife.
With his slightly clueless sidekick Jiro Kusano, Muhyo takes on cases like a school girl haunted by a friend who committed suicide and a ghost-infested dorm and delivers tales of the supernatural that are only slightly spooky, but very entertaining.
GeGeGe no Kitaro
by Mizuki Shigeru
Plot
Youkai are specters who have lived in the human world since the dawn of time. They often rest peacefully in their dwelling places, until humans rouse them by inconsiderate actions. Kitaro is a young youkai boy who wants to help humans and youkai live in harmony, and he fights to protect humans from the enraged youkai who lash out at them.
by Kujo Karuna
Plot
Naraka High School, is a seemingly normal school. However, unknown to the public is the cruel truth of what really goes on in the school's halls. Rather than studying, students are forced to struggle for their very survival. And the strong bonds of friendship may be the only difference between life and death.
by Katsura Asuka
Plot
Set several decades after the events in the popular Blood: The Last Vampire anime film, an amnesiac Saya Otonashi lives as a seemingly normal high school student with her adoptive family in Okinawa. Horrible nightmares are the only hints at the violent life she once led, but her past is about to catch up with her and awaken the merciless warrior within.
Chiropterans--powerful shape-changing creatures who need and crave blood-threaten humanity once more, and a mysterious organization called the Red Shield needs Saya's deadly sword skills and mysterious powers to aid in the fight against these beasts. As her submerged abilities begin to reawaken and as she seeks to regain her memories, Chiropteran warriors are guided by a mysterious leader to threaten Saya and her loved ones.
Asuka Katsura's manga series successfully expands upon the original Production I.G/Aniplex feature, delivering moments of jarring violence and thrilling action in a tale that spans several centuries.
by Miyagi Tooko
Plot
One volume of dark supernatural short stories. Living spirits, oni, death, and reincarnation are some themes in these creepy tales.
Plot
Deimos was once a handsome god. He loved a beautiful goddess who returns his sentiments. The problem, well, she is his sister. For their crime against nature they were struck down out of Olympus. The brother is now a demon and the sister a rotting corpse at the bottom of the ocean. Deimos must choose between his sister and her living human incarnation. His sister is jealous. The girl is horrified and unsure of just what to make of her situation.
Doll
by Mitsukazu Mihara
Plot
Like many of the horror manga spotlighted on this list, Doll is a series of short stories. In these themed tales, human-like androids called Dolls change their owners' lives, often in strange and unexpected ways. A woman develops an unusual closeness to doll that will affect her human family from beyond the grave. A man wants to make his doll into the perfect human lover, but discovers that humans are not perfect.
The gorgeous artwork in Doll follows the classic Gothic Lolita aesthetic of haunting delicacy with a dark, decadent core. While not your traditional blood and gore horror story, Doll will haunt your dreams long after you turn the last page.
After School Nightmare
by Setona Mizushiro
Plot
Mashiro Ichijo is a girls' idol, handsome and kind, but he has been hiding a secret all his life: he's not truly male, nor entirely female. He has the upper body of a male but the lower body of a female. When a mysterious school nurse introduces him to a new class, he finds that in order to graduate he has to go to a world of dreams to find a mysterious key, competing with other classmates to find it. Once this key is found, the student graduates and all other members of the school forget their existence. As he struggles with his gender identity, he tries to decide whether he wants to live as a male and go out with one of the prettiest girls in school or as a female and be with the cute male slacker, both of which are madly in love with Ichijo.
The final chapter reveals that the whole story is an allegory for an outer story that was hinted at on the first page and then hinted at repeatedly during the course of the story: The school is connected to a ward of pregnant women and when a student graduates, they are born in the real world. Mashiro is reborn as a girl, whose twin brother died right before birth. In the epilogue, the real-world analogs for Fujishima, Mizuhashi, and Ebizawa are shown, with the real-world Mashiro and Mizuhashi meeting by coincidence when catching the same train to school.
Nightmares For Sales
by Kaoru Ohashi
Plot
Shadow's Pawn Shop looks ordinary enough, but the deals that Shadow and his not-as-innocent-as-she-looks assistant Maria make with customers are for higher stakes than just money or possessions. Customers make deals to fulfill their dreams or to rid themselves of their troubles, but somehow end up losing some, if not all of their souls in the bargain.
Nightmares for Sale is a series of short shojo-style horror stories, focusing on Shadow's customers and the tragic lessons they learn when they make a deal at this mysterious pawn shop.
Mermaid Saga
by Rumiko Takahashi
Plot
Chronicling the adventures of Yuta, a fisherman who gained immortality by eating mermaid flesh. Desperate to live an ordinary existence, Yuta spends five hundred years wandering Japan in search of a mermaid who can restore his mortality, crossing paths with criminals, immortals, and “lost souls,” people reduced to a monstrous condition by the poison in mermaid flesh. Though the stories follow a somewhat predictable pattern, Takahashi’s writing is brisk and assured, propelled by snappy dialogue and genuinely creepy scenarios. The imagery is tame by horror standards, but Takahashi doesn’t shy away from the occasional grotesque or gory image, using them to underscore the ugly consequences of seeking immortality.
