Danica Davidson
March 6, 2014 
I always enjoy a good supernatural story, and Anomal has its share of them.
The back of the book describes itself as “weird tales of horror and the bizarre,” which could lead a reader to expect horror in terms of, well, horror. Blood and guts and gore and terror and all of that. Anomal‘s stories involve yokai and creatures you might find in horror stories, but most of the tales in here are quirky and funny.
Anthology manga usually have stronger stories and weaker stories, but Anomal is solid as a whole. No story stuck out as a favorite, but at the same time no story felt worse than the others. They all felt fun. Sometimes stories will touch on melancholic issues, but mostly they go for just being entertaining.
What sort of stories are we talking about? There’s the story of the exceptional detective who is so shy he needs to wear a mask in front of most people. However, he doesn’t act so shy when he gets his assistant to do some yaoi scenes with him in order to solve a case.
There’s the boy who’s friends with a man-eating yokai, and she (the yokai) has fallen in love with him and wants to get married. The fact she eats his brethren seems like a non-issue to her.
There’s the masochistic high school inventor who only comes up with good ideas if he gets punched first. When a beautiful girl floats down to earth saying she’s looking for a cute boyfriend, he says she can stay with him if she hits him. That makes things get uncomfortable interesting fast, and the inventor can’t understand why she’s not interested.
Most of the characters star in their own isolated story. However, a few stories carry the same characters, like the girl who thinks yokai are so cute she just has to hug them. She wants to become an ayakashi-nushi (master of spirits) so that they’ll hug back. The fact that some yokai are exceptionally dangerous doesn’t seem to concern her or even cross her mind.
Anomal is a short but sturdy manga collection. Some of the stories I wished could go on a little longer, though I also understand the point of ending them where they did so some mystery and brevity could be left. While doujinshi may vary in terms of artistic skills, everything here looked solid and professional. This is definitely a must-read for people who like their supernatural manga to have a little quirk.
Publisher: GEN Manga
Story & Art: Nukuharu
