The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Black Night Parade

What's It About? 

Hino Miharu spends Christmas the same way every year, working alone at a dead-end part-time job at a convenience store. He'd do just about anything to land a full-time gig, but when he runs into a shadowy Santa Claus dressed all in black, he has no idea he's encountered the real deal. Well, almost. While the normal Santa Claus who dresses in red and white oversees Christmas for all the good boys and girls, his dark counterpart is in charge of handling the bad children—and Miharu just wound up on the naughty list. Gobbled up by a slavering, talking sack, he's spirited away to the Arctic, where he finds himself the newest employee of a massive Christmas operation. Yeah, the pay and benefits are great, and his coworkers sure are cute, but is this the dream job he's been hoping for, or the beginning of a Christmas nightmare?!

Black Night Parade has a story & art by Hikaru Nakamura. The English translation is by Richard Tobin with lettering by Viet Phuong Vu. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (November 07, 2023).

Is It Worth Reading?

MrAJCosplay

Rating:

When I first started reading this series, I genuinely thought it would be a horror manga. The premise set itself up as if it's going to be an episodic series where a Santa dressed in black hunts down people who are on the naughty list. In actuality, the story is more straightforward and plot-driven, focusing on rehabilitating people who have done bad but are very good at heart, so if they could put out more good into the world. It's a very unorthodox series, especially since it focuses on Christmas, and I can't think of many anime or manga that exclusively focus on Christmas as a driving force. Still, though, it is a very fleshed-out world with its system and inner workings that are properly established as the book goes on.

The speed and pace help in communicating all the exposition. There's a straightforward sense of humor that permeates throughout this entire book. Everyone just sort of tells it like it is with a little bit of a cynical edge, and I love it because you think it would clash with the Christmas season, but since this is supposed to be a sort of darker form of Christmas, it fits very well. It's also rare to come across a series that can be cynical without being mean-spirited at the same time. The story tries to have our main character embody those traits, though sometimes it struggles with making the character likable. Everybody else is OK and rides that line well, but our main lead is too self-cynical for his good. When this guy spirals every few pages to the point where it feels like it's actively delaying the overall pace of the book, then it starts to get a little irritating.

None of this is helped by the fact that the artwork in this book is genuinely ugly. Some designs, like Black Santa, are pretty cool and intimidating, but many human characters look downright disgusting. Many of their faces resemble in-between frames in a fluid animation sequence with warped heads, dilated eyes, and crooked jaws. This would be appropriate in a stylistic comic to convey a point, but this is rough and unprofessional. Some moments were genuinely hard to look at, which is a shame because I was curious about where the story was going by the end of this volume. If you could push past our frustrating lead and somewhat off-putting artwork, then something is interesting here to find.