School Zone 1

by Kanako Inuki

More than in the US, in Japan, schools are often the source of a variety of ghost stories and horrific tales. Japanese public schools tend to be large concrete prison-like structures, with lots of wood doors and creaky windows that seem to squeak and rattle from the moment they are installed. Because of clubs, sports, and other after-school activities students are often in the industrial-type buildings after most teachers and other students have gone home. Older kids tell younger kids ghost stories about their school as a light form of hazing, and stories grow from rumors to legend quickly. It isn’t so hard to see how the Japanese school can be the home to as many demons as the American graveyard or abandoned house.

In the first volume of this elementary school horror series, School Zone, writer Kanako Inuki takes advantage of all these factors to create a multi-layered, progressively spooky story. The School Zone itself is the safety zone around the school before the start and after the end of classes each day. This is for kids to walk together to and from school (Japanese schools generally don’t use school buses). Ironically this safe area for the elementary school students is almost as scary as the school itself.

The book is broken into five parts, yet the stories involving a handful of different students overlap and intertwine with each other. The foundation of the story begins with the lore of 13 ghost stories about the school. Supposedly, once you learn all 13 stories, you will begin to see ghosts in the school. A girl named Kimi has supposedly learned all 13 stories, and is now afraid of going to school (and has also been singled-out by her classmates). Kimi is one member of the School Zone group, (a group of neighboring kids who walk together to school), led by the 6th grader, Nanka. The stories in Volume 1 revolve mostly about the members of this small group, and each story sounds like the typical ghost stories young Japanese students might pass along to each other: Nanka finds himself trapped inside a giant mirror (which might remind the reader of Scary Book 1), a young boy is chased by a confiscated doll, a shadow lures a young student away from her School Zone group, a ghost roams the halls, creepy twin girls play kokkuri-san (Japanese Ouija board), and the like.

The stories in School Zone zig-zag from place and theme, with familiar characters (like Nanka, Kami and the twin girls) popping in here and there. It’s not always clear if time is linear and the frantic nature of the story-telling seems to be told from the perspective of an elementary school student. What does advance logically is the level of spookiness as the reader progresses deeper in. What begins as rumors and finger-pointing leads to “Did I just see what I thought I saw?” There is a terrific “Where’s Waldo?”-type display of the ghost of Reiko, who may be a dead teacher looking for her class. By the end we can be well assured that these ghost stories are not simply figments of the students’ collective imaginations.

One interesting touch about School Zone is that because this is an elementary school, the students still have faith in the adults. Some still think that as long as an adult is around, nothing can go wrong. This is the case for a while, but eventually the adults succumb to the spirits in the school as well, in some fantastic and frightening ways, but the addition of this child-like tendency added a tender, if not sad touch to the story.

School Zone falls somewhere between the Scary Book series and Hino’s Lullabies from Hell in terms of style, scares and gore. Any fan of the recent horror manga coming to us from Dark Horse will want to make room on their shelf for School Zone. Volumes 2 and 3 are available now.