Yurara Volume 3

Yurara Volume 3 by Chika Shiomi 4/5 stars (amazon)

I’ve been reading all three of Shiomi’s series that are available in English; Canon, Night of the Beasts, and Yurara. I somehow missed volume 3 of Canon, and I was disappointed when I picked up volume 4 of that series to find that it was devoted to a rather incoherent climatic battle between warring vampire clans. I haven’t picked up the final volume of Night of the Beasts yet, but I’m glad I have a few more volumes of Yurara to look forward to.
In the third book, the love triangle between spirit hunters Yurara, Mei, and Yako is more explicit, as Mei has proclaimed his love for Yurara (and many of the other girls in their class) while it is clear that Yako is in love with Yurara’s “older sister” – her spirit guardian. Yurara starts to come into her own, controlling her possession by her guardian spirit, and exercising more will over her spirit vanquishing powers. There’s also a new element of comic relief – the wacky grandpa. While wacky grandpa characters are very common in manga and anime, I thought the spirit of Yurara’s grandfather was particularly amusing as he comes back from the dead to check on his granddaughter, sees that she’s hanging out with cute guys, and promptly changes over to a younger version of himself with horrible fashion sense in order to fit in with the high school students who can’t even see him. Yurara is much more light-hearted than Canon or Night of the Beasts, and it is a very enjoyable example of the people who can see dead people shojo genre.