Manga Review: Mao Volumes 1-2 by Rumiko Takahashi
Now that I’ve finally caught up to the end of Rumiko Takahashi’s previous series, Rin-Ne, it’s time to look at her new shounen fantasy manga, Mao!
Nanoka Kiba was in a horrific accident when she was a child. It killed her parents, leaving her in the care of her grandfather and his odd-looking housekeeper. Nanoka is small for sixteen, slow and frail, despite the veggie smoothies housekeeper Uozumi keeps foisting on her. As the summer holidays end, Nanoka heads back to school. Her classmates know about the incident in her past, and assume she’s more sensitive about the subject than she actually is.
The shopping arcade in front of which the sinkhole that caused the accident appeared is back in the rumor mill, apparently certain people have heard strange noises from in there. When they go to investigate, Nanoka’s classmates can’t hear anything, but she can. Walking towards the other end of the arcade, things change.
She’s in an unfamiliar street filled with old-fashioned buildings and translucent people in old-fashioned clothing. Worse, the one solid-looking person turns into a giant preying mantis and tries to eat her! A mysterious man (see cover picture) and what appears to be a small child show up, but the man refuses to help Nanoka at first, acting only after it lops off her hand. Nanoka faints.
After she wakes up, she is told that the man, Mao, has reattached her hand, leaving no scar. He believes that she is an ayakashi, a kind of spirit creature. Nanoka doesn’t agree, and flees back through the arcade, winding up in the present day only moments after she left. But the experience has changed her. She’s now fast and can leap great distances, and there’s something weird going on with her eyes!
After some travel back and forth, it’s established that Nanoka is somehow able to go from 2019 to 1923 and return, though the trips take a random amount of duration on each side. Mao is an exorcist and doctor for youkai monsters, who are not inherently evil. He’s been cursed by a nine-tailed cat demon named Byoki, who may have something to do with the weirdness of Nanoka’s life as well. Mao’s childish-appearing companion is Otoya, a shikigami (magical doll) that he created to assist him.
After a couple of adventures to establish the premise, the trio begin their investigation of the cult of Shoko, a priestess who allegedly has power over life and death.
In this volume, Nanoka is sent undercover as a prospective convert to the cult. Meanwhile, Mao and Otoya look into the death of a man who’d been skeptical of Shoko’s powers. Things turn out to not be as they seem, or as you might have first guessed, leading to some narrow escapes. Shoko’s last prophecy is initially ignored.
But it rings a bell in Nanoka’s memory. Doing research on the Taisho Era with her classmate Shiraha (who has a crush on her), Nanoha learns that 1923 was the year of the great Kanto Earthquake. Probably not related, but interesting, is reports from that year of people in the neighborhood of the shopping arcade being attacked by bloodsucking creatures.
When Nanoka returns to the past, she learns the bloodsuckers are real. And soon enough September 1, 1923 rolls around, revealing some shocking details about the quake!
This series hearkens back to Inuyasha in many ways, with a modern girl traveling back to the past and meeting a functionally immortal young man with supernatural abilities. It’s also more plot-driven than completely episodic in the same way that manga was. But Mao’s a more mature person than Inuyasha, and there’s considerably less ambient humor than most Takahashi series. There’s a few running gags, and Otoya’s not quite human behavior is amusing in an understated way.
I’m also seeing bits of influence from the popular Demon Slayer series with the Taisho Era setting.
There’s a certain amount of mystery in the set-up. We don’t know exactly what Biyori had in mind by cursing Mao and Nanoka (or even if it was truly he who cursed the latter) and it appears Nanoka’s memories have been tampered with, so that the people she’s living with may not be the people they claim they are.
So far, so good, but it’s early days for this manga and we will have to see how the creator spins out the events.
Content: monster-fighting violence, sometimes gory. Junior high readers on up should be okay.
Overall: Rumiko Takahashi has a proven track record, so likely to be good.
