Review by Ian Keogh

Although it wasn’t her intention, Kaoru Shinonome bought a haunted block of flats. On finding no-one would live there, she befriended the resident ghost and began soliciting ghosts from elsewhere to rent the remaining properties. Not only has she managed to tame some fearsome specimens, they’ll happily head off to work to pay the rent. Novice exorcist Tsuzumi Kusakabe realises Kaoru isn’t aware she has an innate talent for calming ghosts.

Having established the premise over one and two chapter stories in Welcome to Ghost Mansion 1, creator Nebukuro here begins to give her episodes a little more breathing space, providing longer stories. The three chapters of ‘Countryside’ conclude a story begun in the previous volume, where Kaoru and Tsuzumi accompanied a detective to a small country hotel where it turns out the hair of guests is harvested to appease a ghost. It’s a creepy scenario raised to another level by the use of dolls as a motif.

As before, there’s very much a contrast between the light-hearted cartooning Nebukuru uses for the majority of the book and the demented ghosts with distorted faces seen on the sample art. These are genuinely disturbing creations. More follow, not least the ghost of an oran-utan, memorably rendered if not particularly resembling the creature it once was, but then neither do the ghosts of humans.

While her introduction worked, it’s taken some contrivance to have Tsuzumi a continued presence, but Nebukuru has an instinct for knowing when to fix something, and comes up with a credible way to have her remain. She also builds the world further by introducing forms of ghost hierarchies and procedures.

The other multi-chapter story is ‘Matryoshka’, titled after the style of Russian toy in which one large doll houses several smaller dolls within. The one Kaoru finds grants wishes, but with disturbing consequences.

Sometimes during action scenes the storytelling isn’t as clear as one might want, but this is another fine selection appealingly switching moods from slice of life to absolute terror. A couple of shorter online bonus stories round out the book, but the main story ends on a cliffhanger to be resolved in Welcome to Ghost Mansion 3.