Misato is on the run from the past he carries which is how he ends up in Tomoe, a small town with an “Abnormal Disaster Unit” in the local government, aka a department that handles supernatural occurrences. None of this would have been Misato’s first choice in life but currently it’s his only choice, although the bad luck that “his” apartment was double-booked and he’s now staying with a total stranger isn’t portending anything good for his new life.
But for both Misato and his new landlord Ryouji, a quiet town in a rural prefecture might be just what they need to escape their problems, both mundane and supernatural.
As Cross Infinite World said on their own twitter, Onmyoji and Tengu Eyes: The Spirit Hunters of Tomoe is a bit of a bromance series but not a BL story and frankly I think even “bromance” is a bit of a stretch — this story would make so much more sense if there was some romantic tension between the leads. As I read the story, Misato and Ryouji are two roommates who aren’t even super friendly with each other yet feel compelled to help each other out in dangerous situations for some unknown reason. It’s not “because of this feeling I don’t understand [romance]” or “for the sake of being a good person” either, you could possibly say that both of them are acting out of a sense of duty but that doesn’t quite fit either. I really just wish that Yoshiko Utamine had constructed whatever relationship they had (romantic or otherwise) more concretely since without a firm understanding of what their relationship is, and why they’d go to such lengths for each other, the entire climax falls flat.
Everything about this story falls a bit flat honestly. The characters are under-developed, the tension is inconsistent, the writing is more workmanlike than engaging, and the folklore/magic draws from well-worn tropes without any interesting takes on them. These are definitely details that bother me more as someone who’s read a lot of stories in this genre for over a decade but I can’t even say that I’d really recommend this to a newcomer, I’d instead find another series with better execution to hand them instead. While the cover has volume one written on it, and there are some “mysteries” left unsolved (or rather, explanations that haven’t been given to the reader yet), I have a hard time imagining this series succeeding in the long term as an episodic story yet there also aren’t enough plot beats currently present to make for a continuous storyline either. The title of the original web novel version of the story was “Daily Life in Tomoe” so I suspect it’s going the episodic storytelling route but, when the setting is mundane and the plot isn’t the biggest connecting thread in the story, then it’s more important than ever to firmly establish your characters and their values!
I feel as if I have said this about a number of Cross Infinite World titles (which are sometimes, but not always, solicited straight from Japanese authors instead of going through an established publisher like every other company does, although I do not believe that was the case here) but this story just feels underbaked. It needs more rounds of editing/beta readers/writing groups/whatever-the-process-may-be to just hammer out some basic character beats before sailing forth into readers’ hands. I was just left cold by this story; while it’s not bad in any specific ways, it also fails to provide any kind of well-done or unique takes in a well-established genre.