Books: Nightmare Inspector Vol. #4

After a certain point, most manga hit a kind of a plateau. They’ve set up the basic situation, and for the next however many volumes they’re going to run through variations on it like John Coltrane riffing for a solid hour on “My Favorite Things”. The good manga spiral out from their original inspiration and find new and wonderful places to go, like Coltrane did; the mediocre ones just repeat themselves, or run aground.

With volume 4, Nightmare Inspector feels like it’s hit a plateau — but not in the sense that it’s becoming redundant. It’s found a groove that works and is exploring it, and it’s also taking the occasional detour back into the roots of its premises — the former life of Hiruko, the baku, among other things, which provides plenty of meat for future twists. So maybe it hasn’t plateaued at all, and it certainly hasn’t peaked. Even if the plotting runs aground in this series, I’ll probably still snap it up for the artwork, the decadent 1920s Tokyo atmosphere that drips off every page — and the grim little twist ending that caps off every chapter, like a razor between the ribs.

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.