By Sumomo Yumeka
Aurora Publishing, 160 pp.
Rating: 13+

For those in a rush, I can offer a quick summation of Tengu-Jin: the art is dull, the characters are stolid, and the story is lifeless. Of course, stopping now would deprive you of the schadenfreude you normally experience when reading a review of something awful.

Twin brothers Shinonome and Mozuku are the central figures in this story. Both characters have equally bland personalities, so the only true distinguishing characteristic is Shinonome’s hideous monkey-rat pet-thing that sits on his shoulder. After the main island of Japan is split in two by a mysterious disaster, the split nation suddenly finds itself in a vaguely defined civil war. Yumeka lets the reader know how serious the war is by drawing little caricatures of the two leaders who argue about facial hair and body size.

A pair of ogres shows up at school one day, mistake Mozuku for Shinonome, and reveal that the God of the West needs a bride. Soon after, Shinonome admits to being the reincarnated God of the East, offers to become a bride, and proceeds to leave on a magical cloud. So much for subtlety and rich mythology. In fact, events like this happen so often that taking the story seriously becomes absolutely impossible. Mozoku and Shinonome are so one-dimensional that the appearance of the slightly effeminate, wholly generic bishounen God of the West actually breathes a little bit of life into the narrative, only to suck it right back out pages later. He reveals that he is devouring tengus (lesser gods) so he can become a tengu-jin in order to restore the planet and turn humans back into monkeys. At this point, I had to put the manga down for a few days.

Then, without any sort of set-up, the story jumps back in time to find a different incarnation of Mozuku, this time as a musician in a tiny mountain village. Here, the story fills in a few of the details that attempt to make the events of the first half of the manga a little less laughable (in the same way pouring a glass of water into the ocean would make it less salty). Mozuku feels unwanted by his father and then befriends his village’s unloved tengu. The two realize they might be good friends (or perhaps more, as every interaction between these two seems to indicate), the mountain god reveals his true, scarred face, and Mozuku calls him beautiful. From there, the reader learns that every tengu has a human master who will be reincarnated as long as the tengu exists. Between the past and the present, Mozuku’s tengu seems to have vanished and no one wants him to remember why.

A brief omake actually contains an apology from the author, which reads, “Originally, this was a story I created a long time ago, so I’m a bit embarrassed. But, I really tried my best. Still, it was really painful having to look back at my earlier works. It makes me want to faint.”

I think she sums it up nicely.

Volume one of Tengu-Jin is available now.