...If you don't mind a healthy dose of absurdity in your horror fiction. Each chapter is only 10 pages long, and there's no rhyme or reason to most of them: just a bunch of random occurrences that somehow or other lead to creepiness, blood, gore and death (though not all of the stories end with the characters dying). This is not a complaint, at least on my part, because the situations are atypical and creative and the outcome is often unpredictable, though tragedy - or, at the very least, severe mental/physical discomfort - is always on the menu.

Another somewhat puzzling aspect is that characters are very obviously recycled between instalments, with people who were killed off in, say, chapter 2 showing up unscathed again in chapter 5 (not a true example), albeit in a different setting. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it's not really a big issue.

In the end, Gakkou Kaidan is a prime example of what I like to call "classical Eastern horror." As distinct from Western horror, which is required to have some form of credibility and be frightening at all times, horror as portrayed in manga/anime seems to focus more on being odd, gross and unique, to the detriment of being logical or truly frightening. It's a pretty refreshing change in formula, imo, but I can never see this type of story becoming well-liked; it's just too absurd.

... Last updated on March 16th, 2017, 2:10pm