Story by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Art by Shin Yong-Gwan
DMP, 200 pp.
Rating: 16 +

From Hideyuki Kikuchi, the mind behind Yashakiden: The Demon Princess and Vampire Hunter D comes Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist. Megumi is your typical office lady and she leads a fairly nondescript life until one unfortunate night she finds herself the prey of an enigmatic, leather-clad, seemingly inhuman, whip-wielding woman by the name of Inran and her associates. Stumbling through the dark alleys of a popular Korean shopping district, Megumi stumbles across the one person who can save her: Akamushi Fujiwara, the Red Spider Exorcist himself!

I have to admit that it’s the kind of setup that I find hard to ignore. Someone with special knowledge, skills or powers helping people who inadvertently stumble into a world beyond their ken is just a premise that I’m a big fan of, ranging from Kikuchi’s other works like Vampire Hunter D, to Mail, to American takes on the idea such as Midnight, Mass and more. That said, I can’t help but feel that unlike those, there’s something incredibly cliché and derivative about Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist.

At times the manga almost feels like a checklist of Kikuchi’s clichés and tropes. Enigmatic pretty boy protagonist? Check. Helpless damsel in distress? Check. Supernatural beings threatening sexual assault? Check! But again, unlike Kikuchi’s other works, which often contain these tropes and can still be quite fun and entertaining, this just comes off feeling okay, maybe even a bit bland in a certain paint-by-numbers way. Maybe it’s because we spend most of our time with Megumi, who in turn spends most of her time scared and wondering why this is happening to her. She’s hardly an engaging character and I never really found myself caring about what happened to her one way or another, though admittedly the mystery does give the events of the manga a slightly melancholy tone in retrospect.

Maybe it was Shin Yong-Gwan’s artwork. While it’s perfectly acceptable and serviceable, I never really felt like it clicked with the story. Everything is depicted clearly without being overly stylized. While this does make the few action scenes easy to follow, it also does nothing to encourage an atmosphere of mystery or horror. The inclusion of a few, awkward, chibified, comedic overreactions certainly doesn’t help in this area, either.

All that said, he does a rather good job at depicting Akamusha himself. The poses, the clothes and more all lend him a certain level of inhuman grace. When he leaps from a stage and seemingly floats down to protect Megumi, it really does feel like it was an effortless movement and that he’s floating calmly downwards rather than leaping defensively to her aid. On the other hand, Yong-Gwan’s monster designs suffer, so when several people turn into giant centipedes with human faces, the end result is something that looks a bit blander and sillier than it probably should have.

Despite the odd fit with the artwork and the cliché-riddled story, I still found myself enjoying Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist. It’s really hard to explain, but with regards to the formulaic story, well, it seems to be a winning recipe for Kikuchi, so why mess with success? As for the artwork, like I said above, there’s nothing inherently bad about it and there are a few shining moments, as well. So, while there’s nothing new or groundbreaking here, it still manages to be a fairly entertaining and quick read in the horror vein.

Volume one of Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist is available now.

Review copy provided by the publisher.