Scared and powerful.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Mai Tanaka
Translation/Adaptation: Amanda Haley
What They Say
Haruaki Abe is the kind of guy who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But when he starts his teaching career at a high school full of creatures that go bump in the night, he soon discovers that his students have no such qualms, and they’ll have him screaming “eeeeeeek”!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Abe tried teaching and was spooked by delinquents and quit teaching for a year. He finally gets back into teaching and starts anew at Hyakki Academy. It doesn’t take long for nervous Abe to realize that this school is not for humans, but yokai. He is to be the academy’s first human teacher, that is if he can get over his fear of being eaten by his students. However, both some of the students and the principal give him an incentive to start taking classes seriously.
The incentive gets a lot of attention from a tanuki and Abe ends up chasing him to keep what’s inside the bag a secret. One of his students, who’s a bit rough around the edges, reaches out an olive branch to help him cope. Turns out that Abe may have powers of his own. Turns out he is from a long line of powerful humans who were able smite yokai and Abe didn’t even know it. And the incentive happened to be a sailor uniform catalogue in which the professor promised to get him a new with each paycheck, since sailor uniforms are Abe’s guilty pleasure.
With the first day of school completed, Abe heads to the faculty dorms. He meets fellow teacher and yokai who lives next door and also have classrooms next to each other. The next day another student shows up, Hijita, and he has a strong dislike for humans. Abe struggles horribly between being assaulted by Hijita and his yokai magic that he can barely get through the lesson. With a bit of encouragement, he makes it to the end and Hijita even apologizes for his behavior.
It’s time for a school picture, but Zashiki has not come to school for a year. Abe decides to approach Zashiki in the girls’ dorm after hearing she’s become a shut-in gamer. With the help of two other students and his own power, he convinces her to come to school. The picture is taken with all the students, and Zashiki is there to stay. Despite some successes, Abe still struggles to manage his class. Fellow teacher, Miki, suggests Abe sits in on his yokai class in order to learn more about yokai. However, Miki goes on a rampage after amping up his spirit energy with sake. Abe, again with a bit of encouragement, uses his power and saves the day. In the last chapter, the class explores club together.
In Summary:
I’m totally new to this series and while it wasn’t something super amazing, I liked it. It was well paced, funny and had a lot of unique and interesting characters. I’d imagine after reading a lot of this book, one would get to know all the different kinds of yokai well. It almost has the feeling of Assassination Classroom except Abe is nothing like Koro-sensei. It was much better than I expected!
For packaging, it has a standard cover, but has color inserts and bonus panels on the inside covers. There are also bonus pages at the end. There seemed to be a lot special attention to details when it came to translation with a couple of page of translation notes at the end.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: December 19, 2017
MSRP: $13.00