Review by Frank Plowright

Orochi 3 presents another two of Kazuo Umezz’s distinctively flavoured horror stories. Although Orochi is the title character and can display unusual abilities, she’s generally just a passive observer, in the first story seeing a child who can barely speak identifying a TV personality as the hit and run driver who killed his father. Where Umezz heads from there is plain weird, but isn’t that what we want?

‘Stage’ is the shorter of the two inclusions, although still clocking in at over 130 pages, and in broad strokes the direction is a frankly bizarre and implausible story of long-harboured revenge. That noted, it’s impeccably constructed step by step, with Orochi checking back in every once in a while to see how Yuichi is progressing. It encompasses horror in the form of a child not being believed, TV talent shows and how they’re not always as impartial as they might seem, and the single-mindedness cultivated for what must be almost twenty years. Umezz has a reason ready for what seems to be the wrong target, but this is a jumpy story taking too long in the telling.

Despite being far longer, though, ‘Combat’ doesn’t have a wasted panel in occupying two-thirds of the volume. Tadashi Okabe is the focus, beginning with a prize-winning essay he writes about his father’s generous character. The essay refers to his father’s wartime service and his being the only survivor of a battle, and that becomes key to what plays out.

It’s interesting that Umezz would use a child as the perspective for the story being told, but it fits the pattern of his material. All five tales since the first volume have at the very least begun with young boys, and Orochi herself has become increasingly passive, although that changes with ‘Combat’. Umezz also continues to place human emotion at the heart of his horror. A strong sequence features Tadashi’s infant sister running around with a grenade, the horror generated from readers knowing the possible consequences while she remains unaware. For all his determination, we also feel for the situation Tadashi finds himself in, suspecting what he doesn’t.

When other Japanese creators were increasingly diving headfirst into more and more fantastic areas, Umezz seems to be pulling back and influenced by then obscure storytellers like Yoshiharu Tsuge, who prioritised realism in their work. ‘Combat’ has all the elements of an Alfred Hitchcock drama, and told a different way the similarities would be even more obvious. There’s a forty page detour into the past introducing a different form of horror when the truth comes out, and as gut-wrenching as it is, Umezz has something to top it planned for what follows, playing on what readers now know. And even that isn’t the finale. Umezz ramps up the tension yet another level.

There have been excellent stories in earlier volumes, but ‘Combat’ is a suspenseful masterpiece. It’ll make you sad Orochi 4 is the final volume.