Ura Baito: Toubou Kinshi

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All, more or less, new horror scenarios tied to part time jobs. That alone should make this manga pretty popular. There is some common ground, but in general there's a ton of creativity and variety in the types of life threatening supernatural threats our protagonists meet; while we slowly get to know more about them and why they are taking this well paying but dangerous jobs.

The art is a bit stiff, you get used to it but if you pass over the pages looking for the creepy monsters you'll feel a bit underwhelmend by the general style. Nothing broken, just uninspired. But the money shots ... are there, and even if they don't hit the concept behind them is more than solid enough to carry the horror aspect. Most of this could still work as campfire tales.

By far the strongest point is the creativity, and in something as saturated as japanese horror that means a lot. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants more of that genre and isn't expecting peak artistic quality.

I really, really wanted to recommend this manga. Collections of horror stories within a shared universe, experienced by a single set of characters? Sign me up! I've been hungry since I finished 'You will hear the voice of the dead'.

I admire the creativity that goes into this series. No two 'part time job' or 'gray job' is the same. Each 'job' usually lasts around 3 chapters, so at 150 chapters, that's a lot of unique content! The art is for the most part consistent, and a bit unsettling (which it should be, being horror!) and the two protagonists are also pretty consistent in their ... characterisation.

That being said, there's something about this series that just misses the mark on a lot of occasions. Good horror makes me take that intake of breath when 'it' finally comes on page. It's the moment of 'oh sh*t' when whatever creature stares at you from the page. It's about the building of tension and the release. Ura Baito, while being incredibly creative, oftentimes does a terrible job at tension building. It's horror, but it doesn't send chills down your spine. It's not scary, just a bit disturbing. It's horror junk food. Not terrible, but not great.

My biggest gripe is the worldbuilding. Oftentimes, a lot of the jobs have too much of an implied lasting impact on the world. For example, a haunted doll will affect one family. An entire product line of cursed dolls, a commerical success, is a completely different level of impact. And that level of impact happens *regularly* in this series. And over and over again, nothing is resolved. There is no satisfaction, no closure. And while that's not entirely uncommon in horror, doing it over and over and over again in a single series, and in a shared universe at that? It's unsatisfying, it's testing my suspension of disbelief. How is anyone is this world alive? How does it operate? When will any of our characters see any growth? The answer is never. The implied apocalyse never happens. The downfall of humanity is put on permanent hold. Our characters never use anything they've learnt from a previous lesson. You could read any of these stories randomly, and it would affect almost nothing.