Review by Ian Keogh

Mamoru Yamaemori lives a unique life. Due to an ancestral curse he’s become a Shrine Guardian destined to remain isolated tending the family shrine and protecting the area from cannibalistic beasts known as Tengu. Doing this means he’s become part Tengu himself. He knows he’ll die young, but hopes to prevent his younger brothers Kei and Yu from the same fate. His life is then complicated further by a fellow Tengu hunter undecided if Mamoru’s transformations merit him being also treated as a monster, and slaughtered.

It’s a viable set of troublesome emotional conflicts to set the scene, but Three Exorcism Siblings never really comes to life in this opening volume, although Shinta Harekawa’s greatest strength is his dark, kinetic art. In action Mamoru is a deadly blur, and even during the calmer moments his eyes blaze with repressed anger. The family shrine is a tatty, dishevelled place, perhaps representing the unwilling nature of its protector, and the Tengu themselves formless, shifting beasts supplying a visual shudder.

Harekawa isn’t one for having his cast use their indoor voices, and everything is shouted at considerable volume, as if that alone will keep the Tengu at bay. There’s no great progress beyond the set-up with training session after training session only interrupted by a mass slaughter of Tengu. The ultimate objective is to bypass the small groupings of Tengu scattered around the land and instead deal with their main source. Perhaps we’ll come nearer to achieving that in Three Exorcism Siblings 2.