Kaoru Uno lives with his elderly grandmother Umeko, who is gradually falling more and more ill. One day, after Umeko collapses, Kaoru has a vision of small bizarre creatures surrounding her. And then things really get weird. A famous novelist named Yoji Amane appears at his school the next day and addresses Kaoru by name, despite the two having never consciously met. He drags Kaoru into his car and pulls him away from school to discuss his late father’s ring, which was the only thing he gave to Kaoru before he died. Amane explains that the ring is connected to creatures called shiryo or death spirits, which devour human souls. This is something that Kaoru gets a lesson in firsthand as he encounters his grandma again, she barfs up a ton of shiryo and they all merge into one to attack him. Kaoru attempts to fight the shiryo off to save his grandma, but nothing happens until he strikes it with the hand that bears his father’s ring. This releases some sort of barbarian spirit with a rose-shaped spear that, sadly, we don’t really get to see in the first chapter, as the shiryo is then defeated by Amane. He summons his own spirit, a bug-like girl named Chitari, who devours the shiryo’s soul after Amane turns her into a sword and cuts it apart. He calls this process of fighting shiryo with shiryo “necromancy” (which is not right at all). It seems that Kaoru’s father was once Amane’s partner, and he asked him to take care of Kaoru after his death. This leads to Kaoru offering to work for Amane and the start of our story.
I have no idea where to even begin with all of the tropes this series has wound up borrowing from other generic supernatural battle manga.
I can count notes of at least Shaman King, Bleach, Jujutsu Kaisen, Soul Eater and maybe some hints of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Now, I liked all those series, don’t worry. (Bleach became a little hard for me to follow in it’s initial run, but then I read through all 50-some of the English volumes throughout one magical summer. And the anime was good.)
The shiryo look bizarre enough to resemble the curses from Jujutsu Kaisen, Amane reminds me of L from Death Note, Kaoru’s shiryo reminds me of a Jojo Stand and Chitari turns into a sword a la Soul Eater.
Sure, it’s all very standard and it’s a hodgepodge of stuff from previous and already-established series, but sometimes standard is good. Sometimes you just want something generic and mindless, and this series is still in its infancy, so the jury is still out on how it will wind up going.
That being said, I do have at least two problems with it.
One, necromancy is nothing like exorcism. Necromancy involves a specialization in the dead. Shiryo are “death spirits”, which, while connected, are not the same. Necromancy involves more resurrecting the dead as spirits or zombies. And I’m not sure how long I can overlook this for the sake of “Rule Of Cool”.
But, with all due respect, what else would you expect from non-English-speaking Japan? It’s like how they named the South American town in Dead Rising “Santa Cabeza”. And I suppose I’ve grown to more-or-less overlook that by now, as well.
Secondly, it feels like kind of a ripoff that we saw Kaoru awaken this shiryo barbarian spirit thing from his father’s ring, and then we don’t get to see it actually do anything. I mean, it’s Amane and Chitari who wind up defeating the shiryo that was plaguing Grandma. If Kaoru is the main character, then we want to see him kicking butt. But at least he does get to land one hit on the shiryo before it instantly heals itself.
All in all, I found Kyokuto Necromance to be worth my time for the moment without being too dumb (unlike that new Yakuza manga with Academia Quirks from a space rock, which I felt to be TOO standard). And who knows-that Anemone manga has turned out to be not-half-bad.
Maybe Kyokuto Necromance will be, too.
Check it out on the Shonen Jump website!
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