EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Monster-girl stories grow strongest when the rules of a species are built into the course of a romance. Mononoke Kanojo stacks up that kind of construction across eight stories, and it stands in the hall as SeN's first collection.

A fox, an oni, a zashiki-warashi, a Santa, a snow woman: the heroines are not human, and each story follows a romance between one of them and someone close at hand, often a childhood friend. What sets each relationship moving is a matter particular to the species, whether a pact, the threat of fading away, or an instinct. Some of the stories are set at school, and reviewers report that every one of them closes with the feeling returned.

The first thing readers on both stores agree on is the range of expression, anchored in the way the eyes are drawn. Several also credit how the supernatural premises are explained rather than skipped, with clear reasons for why each heroine is the creature she is, which gives the stories more weight than their page counts suggest. Some pieces carry humour, such as Kakurenagusa, about a young oni.

The magazine, COMIC Unreal, has built its identity on fantasy and science fiction and on non-human characters, and this book belongs to that line. One reviewer also notes that a first collection gathering older work lets the artist's growth show.

The print edition came out in May 2018 in the Unreal Comics line, with newly drawn bonuses and limited editions at Toranoana and Melonbooks. The digital edition followed that July. It stands 117th among the hall's commercial works.