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A good horror manga is worth its weight in gold. Magaka like Junji Ito know how to twist the world around us into something both familiar and yet hauntingly alien at the same time. That is why I’m so excited that Sayuri by Rensuke Oshikiri is finally getting an English release. The dark, twisted, and beautifully haunting manga is coming to the US in Fall 2025 – just in time for a Halloween reading.

The premise of Sayuri isn’t far from many ghost stories you’ve seen or read before. Norio and his family move into their first home together, which would be cause for excitement and celebration. However, within a month, Norio’s father is dead and everyone else is on edge. It is a classic “haunted house is killing people” setup, with just enough twists to the plot to keep it from feeling predictable.

What gives Sayuri a chance to become your new favorite horror manga is the overwhelming sense of claustrophobia that is present throughout Rensuke Oshikiri’s story. The artwork is creepy, yes, but everything feels closer than you want it to be. Even in pages where there is nothing outwardly sinister happening, there is the creeping dread that feels like it is watching you through the pages. It is remarkable that Oshikiri has shown such aptitude for tension and horror, considering his most well-known work to date has been the romantic comedy Hi Score Girl.

There is a devastating sense of escalation to the story of Sayuri, with Norio having to face increasingly disturbing images and behaviors from his family. They attack each other when possessed by the ghost, fall dead on the front lawn, and mutilate themselves without warning. There is a touch of body horror in Sayuri’s pages, but the second half of the story is very focused on gore, with ample blood, broken bones, and other viscera dominating the story.

Sayuri feels like a wonderful introduction to Japanese horror for fans who aren’t as familiar with it as they should be. It is straightforward enough to feel accessible; there isn’t the focus on the unknowable that has become a hallmark of Junji Ito’s work, nor does it focus on the local yokai that require you to be at least passingly familiar with the mythology of Japan to follow characters’ logic. It is a simple haunting, but with the slow-burn tension that you find in Japanese horror. If you like Sayuri, it will open up a whole new world of the macabre for you to enter.

It has taken a long time for Sayuri to get an official English adaptation, which honestly surprises me since it has already had a live-action film, House of Sayuri, which opened in Japanese cinemas in 2024. When Kodansha publishes all 15 chapters of Sayuri in Fall 2025, you’ll be able to pick it up and read it all in one sitting. While that is going to put you on one heck of an emotional rollercoaster, it makes this a perfectly accessible entry point for fans wanting to test the waters of Japanese horror for the first time.

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