After the events with Zen and the shrine maiden spirits, Miko needs a break, big time. You would think going to the movies with Hana would qualify then. But no, she has to have an ultra ugly monster with many eyeballs blocking her view. Hana ends up being enthralled by what’s shown on the theater screen, but Miko soon becomes terrified at the apparition that soon turns her way. By the end of the movie and when they leave the theater, both happen to be in tears. But as we all know, they’re crying for completely different reasons.
Ah, Mieruko-chan. Managing to combine both horror and comedy, all at the same time…what a skill.
If you’re jumping into the manga after watching the anime, you’ll definitely note the material that didn’t get adapted — which would make sense if you’re trying to wrap a show up neatly. To studio Passione’s credit, it’s not completely far off from the manga: Miko considers thanking those mysterious spirits that have helped her out of her predicaments, and she ends up taking off without telling anyone truthfully where she’s heading. In the anime the scenario ends as it feeling like a dream, so if Mieruko-chan does happen to get a season 2, it could be a fine case of foreshadowing.
Here in the manga though, no actual dreams, it’s all too real: as in, man those spirits definitely have it out for her now!
Miko’s trip this time to deliver the gifts ends when those spirits melt them, and then she’s surrounded by a bunch of creepy ghouls all over the forest. She again comes close to succumbing, but gets help from a familiar face — the old lady spiritualist Mitsue, whom we remember shutting down her shady shop after meeting Miko and Hana, returns and wards off the ghouls. Once the two escape and chat at a restaurant, Miko finally — without actually saying it aloud, using only examples given by Mitsue — tells her she sees them. Throughout that conversation, the two realize Miko can even see them clearer than Mitsue does.
So the series has been consistent in only teasing Miko’s nature with seeing spirits, but now it’s starting to elaborate on the dangers she’s in — she can see them without knowing why, and she’s met a couple of spirits at a shrine that, according to Mitsue, doesn’t exist. Mitsue even explains one of the reasons why she’s returned: someone sent her a picture of Miko and Hana at the shrine. Who was the sender? Why was it sent to Mitsue? So you have that…and you even have an introduction to a new character, Rom Shindou, a seemingly certified quack who does bad spiritual videos and sells power stones to scam people, but as Miko discovers, he’s the real deal. Heck, Yuria found his You**** channel and is now a subscriber.
So new events and more characters are appearing, which means the horror-comedy will start to lean more into the horror side of things. I mean, I suspect the end of the volume bonuses will have the two together — see when, as Hana and Miko go and try out bikinis, Hana becomes the poster child for what should now be the replacement for fanservice censoring in manga and also anime — and there will be some funny moments in small dosages. But in seeing all of these terrors that Miko sees and the impact they have, we’ll soon get to the bottom of this mystery, and that means it’ll certainly shift into something really serious.
