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I was drawn to this manga as a fan of The Tale of Genji. It would probably help to have a certain amount of familiarity with the Genji before reading this, though most of the important plot points are very much explained. As a big fan of the Genji, I enjoyed the author's attempt at intertwining the modern day story with the more famous elements of the tale: Murasaki, the Rokujo lady, Genji's trip to Suma.

The modern day high school romance element was enjoyable, though rather cliche. So much of the story is spent on various crises that arise to call our protagonists relationship into ... question. This goes on for chapter after chapter to the point that you kind of want to roll your eyes at it all. The story starts out really strong but sort of peters out towards the end. It's not too long or too short though so I didn't feel like reading it was a waste of my time.

A good romance for those familiar with Heian period literature, maybe just a fair one for everyone else.

I became interested in this manga purely as a fan of Twelve Kingdoms and wanted to see what other things Fuyumi Ono had created. I've just finished reading Ghost Hunt and I guess I'm left pretty disappointed. Unlike Twelve Kingdoms, I felt there was little to no character development. Up until the very last volume, the manga is purely episodic stories with only the vaguest of callbacks from case to case. Even the characters themselves finally realize in the final volume that they know absolutely nothing about the people they have been working with for presumably months.

When an actual plot did emerge, I thought it ... was engaging and really well developed. Really, if the entire story had been like volume 12, I would have given this an 8 or 9. But after slogging through 11 volumes (honestly, around volume 3 or 4 I almost just gave up), we've only just finally learning some depth to the characters, but by now it's hard to even care.

So I guess, if you were like me and are now reading this review because you can't decide whether its worth it to continue, skip right to the very last volume as anything you could possibly miss is going to be summarized again for you anyway. Heck, you could probably just read volumes 1 and 12 and have a better experience than I did.

This is a manga adaption of the last three episodes of the OVA 'Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror'. After Ayakashi aired, the 'Bakeneko' arc was so well received that it got a full series anime spin-off, along with a manga adaptation of the original three episodes. Sadly, the manga adaption falls short on being able to translate the incredibly unique visual style of the OVA and you are left with sort of a flat, busy-looking story without any of the charisma of the original.

If this is your first exposure to Mononoke, I cannot recommend enough that you put down the manga and instead watch ... the last three episodes of 'Ayakashi - Japanese Classic Horror'. The manga is nothing but a panel-by-panel remake of the anime without the gorgeous woodblock-painting effect.