#MangaMonday 30 “This Monster Wants to Eat Me” by Sai Naekawa

#Monsteat (the official, if unfortunate, abbreviation) is a horror/yuri(?) #manga about Hinako, a gloomy girl who lost her family in a tragic (to the point of verging on comic) accident. It’s heavily implied that she has thoughts of #suicide, so she is unfazed when the beautiful transfer student proves to be a mermaid (the scary kind) and declares she will look after her… until she reaches full ripeness.

There’s an idea that the appeal of yuri for young girls is that it offers a taste of romance without the messy business of boys’ bodies. This threatens to invert that, with Shiori’s actual form implied to be truly monstrous. (We’ve only seen partial transformations so far, and it's ambiguous if Hinako has seen her completely transform.)

Ongoing with two of nine volumes in English (Yen Press.)