I guess the more correct term is "Manga" instead of comics, for this series anyway, because it IS from Japan. But I feel the term manga is more limiting since it only covers comics from Japan.
If the comic is foreign (as it most likely will be), I will give the original name, the English translation, and other names I can find. I will provide a cover art or other sample of what the comic looks like. I may provide a link where the comic may be found.
My synopsis can never do the original series the justice it deserves. All synopses somehow lose part of the original's luster and sound either boring or silly or both. You can be assured that I found the series worthwhile if I decide to put it up here, so I hope you will check it out. I have reasonable confidence in my taste, but of course you may not share the same taste so it is for you to judge.
ON TO THE COMIC ALREADY!
Okay, the one I'm currently reading and obsessing over is...
Japanese: 百鬼夜行抄
Romaji: Hyakki Yako Sho
Author: Ima Ichiko 今 市子
Translated: Nighttime Procession of a Hundred Demons
Associated Names: Selected Pandemonium, Tales of Night-Prowling Ghosts
Other beautiful wallpaper art by the original author can be found here.
I still don't quite understand why this comic would qualify under shojo, the Japanese division of manga for adolescent girls. Like the title, this manga is about ghosts and spirits, and I imagine not all girls would prefer to read about those over boys. I, for one, kind of detest most shojo manga, so I kind of hate how this lovable comic was categorized.
There are 17 volumes published, and it is still an ongoing series. I mean, I guess one of the reasons it is shojo is the drawing style. The characters are more dainty-looking, more handsome, less gritty than real life people. But still, the subject is so much more interesting than your usual shojo topics.
Ritsu Iijima is a young man who inherited his maternal grandfather Ryu's ability to see spirits, monsters, ghosts, and other supernatural beings residing in this world. He was raised dressed as a girl because Ryu believed that helps protecting him against unwanted attention from those beings. Ryu was a bestselling novelist who wrote about these beings, except everyone thought he was a fiction writer. He interacted with them and could even control some of them to do his bidding. When Ritsu was 5, one of the monsters under Ryu 's control went wild and accidentally killed Ritsu's father, Takahiro. Ryu was sorry about his son-in-law's death and made a powerful servant spirit enter Takahiro's corpse and reanimate it. The spirit, usually in the form of a dragon, is named Ao-Arashi (Indigo Storm) and under Ryu's order to protect Ritsu forever. To everyone else, it seemed Takahiro died of a heart attack and then came to life mysteriously. Only Ritsu knows the person is no longer his dad but a corpse animated by a spirit who has no particular fondness for him but is under order to protect him until his death. A few years later, Ryu dies too. Dealing with spirits has drained some of his life force.
Ritsu now lives with his maternal grandmother, his mother, and Ao-Arashi in his father's body in the old quiet house his grandfather left. He has quite a few maternal cousins, since his mother has 5 surviving siblings, all of whom hate to come to the house because they feel it's haunted (well, it is). The cousin who appears the most often is Tsukasa, a girl who's 3 years older than Ritsu. Ritsu's mother and grandmother both wish they would hook up and get married (yes, I'm aware they are first cousins, but apparently it's not borderline incest), but they feel more like siblings and therefore refuse to get together. They bicker quite a lot, and my feelings are they will eventually get together. Tsukasa also has some of Ryu's abilities, but hers are less strong and she kind of tries to deny the possibility of those beings' existence, so she is not as powerful as Ritsu.
Ritsu does his best to live a normal life and ignore the things only he can see, but somehow he always ends up tangled in supernatural events that require his assistance. He doesn't have friends, and everyone in school knows his reputation of being "spooky," so they come to him when they need "help."
Each volume has 4 or 5 short stories that are not continuous but have threads of connections, like recurring minor characters or references to past episodes. There are also some faint overarching stories like Ritsu and Tsukasa's developing relationship and the Iijima family members' life stories. Ritsu is also growing up. At the beginning of the series, he was a high school student who sucks when it comes to grades (with all those supernatural events going on, it's hardly a wonder). He had no hope of passing the college entrance exam to a respectable college, but by a freak accident he helped some gods, who asked him what his wish was and he didn't realize who they were so he said "I wish I'd pass this exam" as a joke. This is how the author was able to move on to his college life.
The stories are very touching and ... always unexpected. They all start out kind of confusing but everything makes sense by the end in a surprising way. I'm actually amazed by how the author always manages to surprise us. Things and people are never what they seem to be. Ghosts and monsters have feelings too, and they act according to those feelings.
Okay, here's that link that I may have promised you. You can find the comic in English here.
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