By: Youka Nitta
DokiDoki/DMP, 191 pgs
Rating: 16+

Kaname and Hide were once coworkers who collaborated very closely in the police department. But an unspecified accident sent them both into the private sector, Hide as a “stalker buster” and Kaname as a sound engineer. Kaname’s abilities to hear things that most people cannot go far beyond extraordinary and into the supernatural, and not only can he identify a person’s build and life situation based on the sound of their voice, but he can also hear the voices of the dead. Hide’s brother is still among the top brass at the department, so the two get called in to consult on a case that lands them both in hot water with a crazy stalker and other supernatural oddities.

Reading the description, I thought this would have a lot more ghosts, but I was quite pleased with the story as it was told. It’s a well-structured mystery/action/thriller hybrid, with two cases that make it seem episodic but are so interlinked that the whole book reads like one story. It’s easy to get drawn into the dark, noir-ish plot, and I wound up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

A lot of the appeal comes from the main characters, Hide and Kaname. Hide is relentlessly upbeat and is willing to stick his neck out to help complete strangers for little or no pay. His generosity leads to him sharing a living/office space with Kaname, who sleeps in a soundproof room with a noise-cancelling machine in order to override all the sounds he can hear. Kaname’s sound engineer gig is never explained in great detail, but his feats as a forensics investigator in the police labs are legendary. Kaname is a bit more pessimistic than Hide, and the two do a good job of checking and balancing their strengths and weaknesses. A relationship is implied, but more because this is a shoujo manga with two hot guys living together. The story lacks romance completely for the most part, and a short story at the end of the volume reveals that Hide has a lost lady love. They do have a strong friendship, and worry quite a bit about one another, but nothing more than friendship is ever directly shown.

There is a long introduction story that serves to set up the characters and situations before leading into the real meat of the volume, the much longer first case. The introduction story involves a case where dead young women keep showing up in odd places. The young women are linked by the fact they all attended the same high school, all received creepy voiceless telephone calls before their deaths, and all the murder scenes were discovered with a man taking photographs of the women. The man is a red herring, but he is plenty creepy and has a supernatural ability similar to Kaname’s hearing. Kaname solves the case by listening to the telephone calls, but not before Hide lands himself in a lot of trouble. The second case involves a terrorist who seems to be targeting the police specifically, and there’s a side plot involving a strange stalker abducting Kaname while Hide was led away with a phony call. Both stories were excellent mysteries, and were structured with the reader in mind. Nothing was too obvious, but the reader had just as much a chance to solve them as the characters.

It was a wonderful read, and it does a good job of going beyond the boundaries of shoujo and BL and making the story something more. It’ll be interesting to see how future volumes develop the characters.

Volume one of Otodama: Voice from the Dead is available now.

Review copy provided by the publisher.