Yuri mermaid horror. That's not word salad, it's the genre identifiers for Sai Naekawa's manga This Monster Wants to Eat Me, a dark literary folktale about a high school girl and the mermaid who's protecting her until she reaches the perfect stage of ripeness to eat. Seasoned manga readers will already know from Rumiko Takahashi's Mermaid Saga (among other titles) that the Disney vision of mermaids isn't the primary mythology for the entire world. Although, by the Edo period, cross-cultural influences had largely solidified a worldwide image of what we think of as a mermaid today. (Original Japanese “human-fish” weren't necessarily gendered in the folklore.) The best-known Japanese mermaid tale is the legend of Yao Bikuni, Takahashi's influence on her work, but Naekawa isn't working within that frame narrative, at least not in this volume, because whereas the Yao Bikuni tale is about how eating mermaid flesh can make you immortal, in Naekawa's manga, it is the mermaid who wishes to consume a human.

The human in question is Hinako, a high school student dragging herself through life. When she was little, an unspecified accident (indications seem to be that it was a boat explosion) claimed the lives of her parents and older brother, most likely at the local summer festival. As the only survivor, Hinako seems to be suffering from both depression and survivor's guilt, and both of those give her the desire to join her family in death. She appears to have been living with an aunt until recently, but now she's on her own, with only her friend from school looking out for her. Hinako thinks about suicide regularly, and close to the start of the book we see her standing on a bridge, looking at the ocean and thinking about letting it take her away.

That's when the monster attacks. More specifically, an iso-onna comes out of the water to try to eat Hinako; iso-onna are basically sea vampires who use their long hair to capture their prey. Hinako is saved by Shiori, a mermaid who isn't doing it out of the goodness of her heart; she tells Hinako that she has every intention of eating her, just later when she's perfectly ripe. Until that day, she will protect the girl, whether Hinako likes it or not. This begins an odd relationship between the two, with Shiori promising the death Hinako desires, but at the time of her choosing, forcing Hinako to deal with her emotions and continue to live for an unspecified length of time – because Shiori is very clear that Hinako will not be allowed to die without her say-so.

It's quite frankly a lot. Readers who are sensitive to depictions of suicidal thoughts may want to steer clear of this title because Hinako's suicide ideation is frequently on the page, and her (self-proclaimed) best friend Miko is clearly aware of Hinako's mental health. Miko has appointed herself the guardian of Hinako's well-being, but she's also only in high school, and she can only do so much. She forces Hinako to do things like “eat regularly” and “attempt to function at school,” and we can see that Hinako only goes along with Miko because it's easier than fending her off. The depiction of her emotions is very well done, with Hinako frequently feeling like she's underwater, barely present in her own life, and yearning for what she perceives as the peace of death under the waves. She lets Shiori and Miko drag her along, but she's always at a distance from her own life as if she died with her family but feels like her body didn't get the message.

It seems likely that she carries physical scars alongside her emotional ones. Hinako always wears a turtleneck under her school uniform and keeps her legs covered, something the creator notes she has special dispensation to do. This means that even if she wants to move on, she feels like she can't because of the constant reminder of her flesh, which perhaps makes Shiori's desire to consume said body more interesting to her. If Shiori eats her, Hinako will be freed of her scars in more than one sense, and that may be part of what involuntarily intrigues her about the mermaid. Of course, we as readers have to look between the lines and question whether or not Shiori really wants to eat Hinako, because her stated goal of protecting her until she's ready to be consumed feels a little suspicious. Hinako's relationship with the ocean and Shiori's existence as a mermaid feel like they could be related – perhaps Shiori is the reason Hinako survived? It would be just as easy to assume that Hinako's supposed appeal to monsters is a reason why the accident happened in the first place, and that's what makes this story so intriguing. We don't know which possibility to believe, and Hinako herself doesn't make that any easier to figure out.

Naekawa's art is very pretty, particularly the color pages at the start of the book, although it has a very familiar style, a bit reminiscent of Eku Tamashima's work. The way Hinako's feelings of being underwater are shown is especially well done and a highlight of the art, but it's also interesting to see how Naekawa depicts the iso-onna and Shiori's mermaid form, with the latter taking on much more monstrous overtones than we're used to seeing and a link between both sea monsters in their long hair. Characters are easily told apart and the art is busy without being overwhelming, which is very appealing.

Is Shiori a friend, foe, love interest, or some combination of all three? With the sexual meaning of “eat” also present in the text, it's hard to know. This Monster Wants to Eat Me is an interesting combination of genres that works better than it should. It's dark and difficult at times, but if the suicide themes aren't a dealbreaker, this is an intriguing start to the series.