A gruesome horror series whose English release was originally funded via Kickstarter, Gannibal is the definition of "niche." That's the sort of specially targeted appeal that's looked forward to by fans of any good gore. However, the pacing of horror is also paramount to paying it off in execution. The lead-up, the looming, lingering threats that creep up on characters, is how stories like this prepare for the punishing punch lines that come in scary stories. So it's perhaps not that surprising that Gannibal, in this first volume anyway, doesn't have as much of the grimy grindhouse extremism that one might expect from its peculiar publishing pedigree. But it's getting there.

Rather, what Gannibal's got going on thus far slots into that establishing expected horror pitch. Lead cop Daigo moving into the mysterious Kuge Village is built up with a selection of almost Stephen King-esque sensibilities—his wife's remarks and the situation of their nonverbal daughter alluding to the family's own closet-stashed skeletons even before readers have glimpsed any properly picked-clean bones from human remains. From the start, there are also, naturally, signs of something being…off about many of the people of the village. There's a jerky sense of unpleasantness to Daigo's establishing early interactions with the locals, particularly the Goto family, who de facto manage so much of the activity in the town. It's the sort of outsider-hostile aggro-ness that can be expected of small-town isolationists, with characters turning to threats and ratcheted-up violence in incongruous ways.

This early, atmospheric latent terror is laid out in service of selling that "runaway" vibe a story like this ought to have, but it feels perhaps clunkier than it needs to be. The art could be part of the issue. Masaaki Ninomiya knows how to draw some grittily detailed characters over photo-referenced backgrounds, looking at the part well enough on the surface. But while it is animated in places, I feel it's going too hard on canted angles and wildly varying line weight, even in scenes that are supposed to be setting a baseline to be disrupted by true horror later. It comes off all unhinged all the time, and that undercuts the moments of true, frightening impact when they're supposed to hit. That means things also swerve incongruously in the middle portions, where Daigo seems to have settled into understanding with the initially hostile locals. Gnawing uncertainty is a key part of a story like this, absolutely, but at the outset, Gannibal feels more unintentionally uneven than anything else.

Ninomiya's presentation does seem to settle into a groove as this volume goes on, however. And to its credit, Gannibal is loaded with occurrences and story shifts just in this initial installment. Those built-up background issues continue mounting, particularly exploring the impact of other outsiders in the town beyond Daigo and family. I'm sure there will be increasing escalations, but the story's initial tease of the titular cannibalism as more of a spiritual, post-death ritual than the act of hostile violence lends some intrigue alongside setting up the more expected messy murder times. Does that also make it feel like something of a cop-out in a story that promised proper people-eating? At first pass, yes, but this is still only the first volume, with over a dozen of these filling out the full series, which leaves plenty of time for these bloody building blocks to stack up in increasing terror.

It's already getting there, too. By the end of this volume, Gannibal has properly morphed into a genuine page-turner, even as it's taking its time teasing at the actual cannibalistic elements of the story or coming off characterized as a mite inconsistently. For instance, Daigo feels like he can turn from being out-of-shape and clumsy to a high-execution badass at the drop of story necessity. It's similar to the roller coaster of rapport that Daigo experiences with the members of the Goto family. It's a story necessity regarding the escalations and revelations about the family and their level of antagonism already in this first volume. But it can still feel clunky, like each swerve is in service of what jump or shock Ninomiya wants to arrive at next. At least it means Gannibal is rarely boring, even in these early establishing points. To its credit, I was still pretty curious as to how things would turn out for Daigo after this volume's cliffhanger ending.

What this first volume of Gannibal lacks in gruesome messiness, it arguably makes up for in intriguing narrative messiness. There's plenty of raw, meaty potential in what's being set up here. Some readers hoping to jump right into the grody, schlocky stuff might be left hungrier than they hoped, especially after the crowd-funded release of this initial volume was delayed by multiple months. Still, the build-up on display betrays layers of ambition and multiple story and thematic threads that I think could be properly followed up on over its full run. As an appetizer for horror fans, Gannibal might be worth checking out to see if it's to their particular taste.