There are plenty of horror anime, but there aren't any quite like the upcoming series Mieruko-chan. Based on the 2018 manga of the same name, the series follows a high school girl who can see and hear undead spirits. This might seem like the makings of a cut-and-dry supernatural series, but Mieruko-chan is anything but.
Mieruko-chan subverts expectations by having its protagonist literally ignore the ghosts around her, turning the paranormal into little more than spooky inconveniences. The original manga has proven to be a hit, leading to the upcoming anime adaptation. Here's what we know about it so far before it premieres this Fall.
The Story of Mieruko-chan
The series centers on Miko Yotsuya, a high school student who one day discovers that she can see and commune with ghosts and spirits. While this development might send lesser folks headlong into a lifetime of fear and torment, Miko simply tries her best to outright avoid and ignore them. One of the biggest problems with this approach is that Miko's friend Hana seems to attract the spirits as much as she does, making them pretty much unavoidable.
The anime is based on the manga by Tomoki Izumi, which is published by Kadokawa Shoten and has been since 2018. Yen Press handles the English releases, with nearly all five of the currently available volumes having been released in English. The anime was announced earlier this year, and it's set for an October release, obviously going for the Halloween tie-in, echoing the series' horror-comedy premise. Given that the manga is still ongoing, however, it's unlikely that the anime will have a definitive ending.
Miko Is an Unwilling Ghost Whisperer
One interesting element in Mieruko-chan is that the often horrifying spirits aren't consistent in their appearances. This changes things entirely and makes it difficult to figure out a ghost's intentions. More malevolent spirits can appear more docile and human, while the most monstrous ghosts in the series actually just want help or a conversation. This is part of the comedy, namely in that no matter what a spirit looks like, Miko tends to try to ignore them.
This is exacerbated if she's in public and doesn't want to draw attention to herself or the ghost. This results in a series that's more of a comedic slice-of-life series with supernatural elements than a consistently horrific one, though the story does occasionally veer into genuinely scary territory. However, this taming of the terrifying and arguable outright shunning of it in some situations helps Mieruko-chan hold its own unique place in the realm of horror-comedy, and the anime will likely do the same thing in a few months.
