Danica Davidson
January 25, 2022 
In Ghost Story Loop, Azusa has creepy nightmares when she sleeps, and it’s no wonder. During the day, the seventeen-year-old takes photographs of supposedly haunted locations. That’s because her brother is obsessed with ghosts and runs his own ghost site, where people can report strange things happening in Yokohama.
Azusa goes where her brother asks her and takes the photographs, but the truth is she doesn’t believe in ghosts. She just does this work because her brother pays her in sweets and she has a major sweet tooth. Her latest assignment is to go to the Kuroboshi shrine, because a well with a torii with three pillars is by it, and the well is supposedly cursed.
If you get cursed by the well, a creepy ghost woman with long black hair over her face will follow you. If you actually see her face, you’ll die at midnight.
Of course skeptic Azusa doesn’t believe any of this . . . until she starts seeing the ghost woman. A strange email shows up, telling her she’s been cursed and to return to the Kuroboshi shrine to try to fix it. At the shrine she meets up with an exorcist who literally eats monsters (or bugs, as they’re referred to in the manga). But sometimes the bugs are so powerful they’re not that easy to deal with . . . including what Azusa has unknowingly unleashed.
This manga opens with some creepy scenes, then backs off on the horror, and is even quite funny sometimes, with quirky characters. But then the horror comes back with the curse, and it’s effectively sinister and moody. By the end of the first volume, it’s totally gripping. When the scenes are normal scenes, they look like any other manga. When the horror comes in, it’s pulling from Japanese horror and folklore with its supernatural elements and imagery. It’s still rather unclear where the story will go and what is behind the curse, leaving readers guessing. A fun read for fans of horror manga.
Story & Art: Jun Yagi and Tsunami Katou
Publisher: Mangamo
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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, and its sequel, Manga Art for Intermediates, with professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
