Manga Review: Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, Volume 5, by Waco Ioka, Midori Yuma, and Laruha

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: September 2019

Volumes: 6+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 1. 4.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Faced with the choice of being married to a strange spirit or being made into dinner, Aoi decides to create a third option for herself!

Aoi Tsubaki inherited her grandfather’s ability to see spirits—and his massive debt to them! Now she’s been kidnapped and taken to Kakuriyo, the spirit world, to make good on his bill. Her options: marry the head of the inn her grandfather trashed, or get eaten by demons. But Aoi isn’t the type to let spirits push her around, and she’s determined to redeem her grandfather’s IOU on her own terms!

Aoi has hopes that her time in Kakuriyo will mean more than just toiling to repay her grandfather’s debts. She has a personal mission to find the yokai who kept her from starving when her mother abandoned her. Yet all she has to go on is the memory of a simple white-faced mask. She gets an important clue when a well-fed guest in a similar mask tells her it’s a common souvenir from the southern lands. But how can Aoi investigate further when a lone human in Kakuriyo is sure to become a snack for the first spirit to pass by?

Review:

This series throws me off a lot. For a second it'll feel like we're getting some progress with the Odanna, and then it'll completely forget about him for the rest of the volume. Honestly, for a shojo series with a pretty big romantic main plot point, there's basically no romance in this series. So little interaction even between the two main leads, even.

During this volume, mostly Aoi is trying to get some good publicity for the restaurant, and slowly getting hints toward the mystery masked yokai that helped her when she was younger.

I just don't really feel much for this series. It's okay, it's not really memorable. There is basically no romance elements, and even the main character is kind of boring.

Meh, still.

A review copy was provided by the publisher, VIZ Media, for an honest review. Thank you so, so much!

Manga Review: Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, Volume 4, by Waco Ioka, Midori Yuma, and Laruha

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: July 2019

Volumes: 6+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 1. 3. 5.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Faced with the choice of being married to a strange spirit or being made into dinner, Aoi creates a third option for herself!

Aoi Tsubaki inherited her grandfather’s ability to see spirits—and his massive debt to them! Now she’s been kidnapped and taken to Kakuriyo, the spirit world, to make good on his bill. Her options: marry the head of the inn her grandfather trashed, or get eaten by ayakashi. But Aoi isn’t the type to let spirits push her around, and she’s determined to redeem her grandfather’s IOU on her own terms!

Aoi is finally ready to open her restaurant on the grounds of the Tenjin-ya inn, but not everyone is as excited about it as she is. Some of the chefs of the main restaurant are doing everything they can to destroy her business before it even has a chance to start! Aoi is determined to keep going, but her detractors are deadly serious about stopping her.

Review:

In this volume, Aoi is finally opening her new restaurant, Yugao. They're setting everything up, preparing, and even having a soft opening. They're trying hard and getting good responses from the people who come, and yet someone is trying to make this harder on her. Someone doesn't want this restaurant to work, and their plans are working, since no one is showing up. Their location is just too hard to find, it seems.

This volume was all right. Aoi is working hard, and she's a good cook, but she's fighting against yokai who have been there a lot longer than her. Her relationship with the ogre seems to be getting better, and I like how it appears that he likes her. They're forming a kind of friendship, I think, or at least growing more comfortable with each other, which I like.

It's very clear that this is trying to be a food manga, and yet I forget that, because there just isn't enough food in it. The things Aoi makes sound good to me, but there isn't enough detail or description in any of it, for me to consider this a food manga.

This is an all right shojo. I don't mind it, but it feels very meh and not fleshed-out enough, still.

Manga Review: Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, Volume 3, by Waco Ioka, Midori Yuma, and Laruha

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: May 2019

Volumes: 6+

Spoilers?: Light.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 1. 2. 4.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Faced with the choice of being married to a strange spirit or being made into dinner, Aoi creates a third option for herself!

Aoi Tsubaki inherited her grandfather’s ability to see spirits—and his massive debt to them! Now she’s been kidnapped and taken to Kakuriyo, the spirit world, to make good on his bill. Her options: marry the head of the inn her grandfather trashed, or get eaten by ayakashi. But Aoi isn’t the type to let spirits push her around, and she’s determined to redeem her grandfather’s IOU on her own terms!

Aoi wasn’t the only orphan her grandfather Shiro took in. Before she went to live with him, he rescued the spider demons Akatsuki and Suzuran and put them to work as unpaid servants! Now Aoi is questioning everything she thought she knew about her upbringing. What was Shiro up to? And more importantly, does that make the spider demons family?!

Review:

Aoi ends up helping this spider-yokai couple at the inn. There's tension and misunderstandings, and one of them works at the inn. Aoi gets between it and so tries to help them resolve their issues. This involves going back to the human world, which is dangerous for the yokai, and could mean an escape for Aoi.

It says a lot that Aoi decides to go back to the yokai inn. She's seemed to have grown closer to the ogre, as well; they've formed some kind of friendly understanding through all this.

The end of this volume felt a bit like an ending, even though not much has been resolved. It felt like Aoi had accepted her position, that she's at the inn for good and will continue finding her place there, whatever it is.

But it's clearly not the end, I have two more volumes to read right now. Honestly, the characters and plot felt rather forgettable to me in this volume. I'm very meh about this series, but I guess I'm going to try for a bit longer.

 A review copy was provided by the publisher, VIZ Media, for an honest review. Thank you so, so much!

Manga Review: Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, Volume 2, by Waco Ioka, Midori Yuma, and Laruha

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: March 2019

Volumes: 5+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 1. 3.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Faced with the choice of being married to a strange spirit or being made into dinner, Aoi decides to create a third option for herself!

Aoi Tsubaki inherited her grandfather’s ability to see spirits—and his massive debt to them! Now she’s been kidnapped and taken to Kakuriyo, the spirit world, to make good on his bill. Her options: marry the head of the inn her grandfather trashed, or get eaten by ayakashi. But Aoi isn’t the type to let spirits push her around, and she’s determined to redeem her grandfather’s IOU on her own terms!

Aoi’s having no luck finding a job at the Tejin-ya inn, but a chance encounter with the tengu Matsuba might give her another option! Her home cooking and kind manner impress the crow demon, and when he finds out why she’s in Kakuriyo, he offers to welcome her into his family as a daughter-in-law to pay off her debt! Can the still unemployed Aoi afford to turn down such a generous offer?

Review:

Aoi's standing at the inn is still very shaky at this point. She's temporarily staying at the empty building connected to it, of a recently closed restaurant that didn't work out. Aoi's good at cooking, but it's questionable whether they need another restaurant. She refuses to marry the ogre who owns the inn, but she's having a hard time finding a place to work off the debt.

In this volume, she makes friends with an influential tengu, though not on purpose. It helps her, at least a little. And when another girl at the inn attempts to sabotage her, she forms a possible agreement or even friendship with her, when she tries to help her.

There was an extra story at the end of the volume, and it was sweet. A nice look at Aoi before all this, her sweet interactions with yokai, and a peek at her relationship with her grandfather.

I didn't mind the first volume, but I understood some of the comments during this second one. As the volume kept going, it definitely felt more one-dimensional to me. The reactions and characters were feeling less complex, and the relationships and developments weren't really hitting me. I want to like this a lot more than I currently do, so I hope it gets better.

Manga Review: Kakuriyo: Bed & Breakfast for Spirits, Volume 1, by Waco Ioka, Midori Yuma, and Laruha

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: January 2019

Volumes: 5+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Faced with the choice of being married to a strange spirit or being made into dinner, Aoi decides to create a third option for herself!

Aoi Tsubaki inherited her grandfather’s ability to see spirits—and his massive debt to them! Now she’s been kidnapped and taken to Kakuriyo, the spirit world, to make good on his bill. Her options: marry the head of the inn her grandfather trashed, or get eaten by ayakashi. But Aoi isn’t the type to let spirits push her around, and she’s determined to redeem her grandfather’s IOU on her own terms!

Aoi wants to work off her debt to the Tenjin-ya inn, but she only has one day to find a position and none of the managers are willing to hire a human! If she can just get someone to see past her family background, Aoi is certain she can prove her worth!

Review:

 

 Aoi's grandfather just passed away, and she's trying to clean up his affairs, his belongings. Unbeknownst to her, her grandfather made a deal with a yokai, and thus sealed her as a bride to a yokai inn owner. She's always been able to see yokai, as she bonded with her grandfather over this, but she hasn't dealt too much with their world.

Now that she's thrown into this yokai inn, she refuses to marry this yokai, and thus tries to prove her usefulness in other ways to pay off the debt. But the inn is already being taken care of as it should, and the other yokai aren't so welcoming to her.

This was definitely a start to a new series. Aoi finds one friend in the inn, but her betrothed, the ogre, doesn't seem too bad to me. Aoi's grandfather put her in this position, and didn't seem like a great guy, but she was still close to him.

I'm feeling optimistic about this series at this point. I don't feel like I got enough to go on quite yet, as I'm not sure where the romance is going or even where her place at the inn is going from here. It could be interesting, though.