Somewhere between xxxHOLiC and Hell Girl lies Hell is Dark with No Flowers. If you think I've made that comparison before, you're right – Matsuri's Phantom Tales of the Night can also be described that way. But Hell is Dark with No Flowers, based on the novel of the same name by Yoru Michio, is the better use of the description – it features a young man who stumbles upon a supernatural-seeming employer in a mysterious shop, where said proprietor ensures that curses always come home to roost.

It also feels like the story may work better in its original format. Although Ruka Tōdō's manga is readable, it is also a bit overwhelming. There's a density of information on each page, which seems to be an effort to cram as much of the novel's description in as possible when a “less is more” approach may have worked better. We're almost given too much information about each case, making it easy to get lost in the weeds. Of course, this may very well be a deliberate choice because protagonist and point-of-view character Tohno is out of his depth at all times, a sensation he's had since he was five years old.

That was the point when he suddenly began to see people as what he thought of as monsters, although the more accurate term seems to be either ayakashi or yokai. It started when a neighbor, who always appeared to be friendly, suddenly began to look like a hairy beast; Tohno refused his offer of candy, and the classmate who didn't turned up dead shortly thereafter. Since then, the same phenomenon has happened to him repeatedly: a regular person morphs into an inhuman being before his eyes. Understandably, this has freaked him out, and when the story opens, he's basically a shut-in, struggling to cope with the way he perceives the world. His life changes abruptly when, while on a walk, he finds himself in a strange alley that eventually opens up to a mysterious house. A servant seems to be expecting him, and before long, he finds himself before the master of the house, a young (looking) man named Saijo. Saijo explains that Tohno can see a person's true nature or form before offering him a job as his live-in assistant, an offer Tohno is in no position to refuse.

Thus begins what at least starts out as an episodic paranormal mystery series. The format for this volume is that someone will visit the mysterious house, Saijo will listen to them while Tohno takes in their true form (if they have one), and then the two proceed to solve the mystery. At this point, it has a very Holmes/Watson dynamic in that Saijo knows most, and Tohno sort of stumbles into helping, largely with a bit of prodding from Saijo. It's not a terrible use of the trope, especially because Tohno is so lost after a lifetime of seeing horrors he can't predict or control. Saijo offers him a stability he's never had before and, even more importantly, an explanation for what he's seeing. That means there's room for their dynamic to grow and change, or at least for Tohno to become more self-assured and comfortable in his own skin.

This volume covers the entirety of one case and what appears to be the first half of a second. The opening mystery about a woman who appears to be receiving vicious emails really does feel like it could have come out of Clamp's xxxHOLiC, which isn't necessarily bad, especially if you found Watanuki annoying. It truly begins when Tohno encounters a cyclopean monk hovering behind her in the street, asking, “Why don't you try hanging by the neck?”, which is also the content of the messages the woman is receiving. Saijo identifies this as “aobozu,” a yokai who, in Kagawa specifically, appears before young women asking them the same question. In folklore, saying “no” is the only way to get rid of him; any other response (or ignoring him) will result in aobozu hanging the woman. Naturally, in the case of this particular woman, there's more to the story, and aobozu acts as a harbinger of hell, speaking the woman's sins aloud. It's an interesting use of the folktale, and it dovetails nicely with what Saijo's true role is, which is where the Hell Girl comparison really comes in.

It's also the better of the two cases in the volume, although that may be due to it being the only complete one. The second, which involves the creature known as a nue, is also more complex, and it may be worth waiting for volume two to come out before picking this one up so as not to lose the momentum of the story. The density of the pages (in both text and image) feels like a real risk, and again, this really may work better in prose than manga form. Still, the translation is good and reads as smoothly as possible, and there are copious translation notes, which is especially important for this series. I'd almost recommend reading them first, although that risks spoiling a few details.

Hell is Dark with No Flowers isn't off to an amazing start, but it is still interesting. It almost certainly deserves a second volume to decide if it will be able to hold up or crumble under its own weight. It's not the best yokai-adjacent mystery, but it's also good enough to merit reading.