Manga Review: Category: Freaks, Volume 3, by Gokurakuin Sakurako

Rating (Out of 5): ~2-2.5, maybe

Publisher: DrMaster Publications

Publish Date: 2007

Volumes: 4

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf! (or you can get a set of all three).

Goodreads Synopsis:

The world is occupied by evil spirits preying off human weaknesses and desires. But what mortal can resist possession by these "freaks" when they can make dreams reality? And what price is there to pay for the wicked union of these spirits and their human hosts? Enter Nanami Paranormal Investigations where director Asagi Nanami utilizes his own talents and supernatural aid to keep these spirits away from the folly of human weaknesses. But can they succeed when the fruit of evil is so sweet?

Review:

I started this series quite a while ago, mainly because it’s by the same author as Juvenile Orion, a series that I quite enjoyed. This one… not so much. This series is just odd, a bit confusing and messy, and even a little ecchi (not that that’s bad).

This series is short at only four volumes, but it was cancelled (or the company closed—I’m not too sure which came first, this was a rather unknown company and series) after only three. I would say that it would have been nice to have finished the series, and perhaps it would have been, but this is such a confusing series. I barely even remember what happened in this volume, and I’m not even sure if I’d have been able to describe it while I was reading it.

I do know that it’s mostly, pretty much, about a group of characters, sometimes kind of detectives, who kill Freaks, which are demon-like things that attack and possess humans. Sometimes they go undercover, sometimes they stumble upon a case—it varies, I suppose.

I’m not going to go into who each character is, because even if I did check what their name was, I was never really sure who each person was, what their part was, or really anything about their personalities. The head guy, Asagi, I found kind of interesting, as well as Naoki, a guy who seems to have kind of just stumbled into the group, I think. I did like Tokiko, kind of the mascot of the gang, who’s in the body of a little girl and detects where a Freak is and eats it. I wanted to find the relationships between the characters interesting, and I did find some of it that way, but I just never really got to know any of them enough.

The whole storyline tended to get a bit confusing at times, and I had a hard time following what was happening. Maybe that was just me, though.

I’d have liked to have liked this series more. But it’s messy and rather forgettable.