Well, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Manga has done many works on a host of different subjects. Heck, we even have a dinosaur zoo manga. So naturally, somewhere out there, there would be a youkai zoo manga. Hence The Youkai Caretaker!
…Yokai caretaker…or youkai caretaker? The manga couldn’t decide either — it manages to say youkai and yokai park in one page. One of these is gonna be right…or are they both right?
Anyways, one of the more popular attractions in Tokyo for this series is youkai parks, and we follow someone who started working at one at the beginning of last year: Toritsuki Hiyori. Alongside physician Mutsu Goro, two additional caretakers, and one human who also is a youkai that works weekends and holidays, they all care for the many entities that live in their park and aim to show the creatures in their general habitats and provide visitors a new way to view them.
So yes, The Youkai Caretaker is your general slice of life, daily stories work with youkai taking center stage. We meet a whole host of different versions of them, ranging from the classic Yuki-Onna to a group of Gaki who literally take one small thing and make it into the most tragic event in the world (Enough to get the media on their side and the Prime Minister to comment on it!). There’s nothing altogether dramatic or super serious. It’s simply different youkai interacting in one massive area, and their caretakers finding ways to care for them.
That generally means the scenarios involving them have to be good, and I can say for its first volume they are. We have some more mundane interactions throughout involving all the characters, but we also get a chapter where a youkai’s power, seemingly useful for bad situations, can actually be used for good or wholesome ways, or we have oni’s being more gentle or understanding, enough so they don’t listen to a human who wants an oni to end his life.
Of course, the star of this volume is our main character, Hiyori, who is unique in that she can interact and understand youkai better than her co-workers. Naturally you’d think that would lead to some jealously, but after the initial conflict, it actually inspires her co-workers to want to do better. It makes you wonder what type of past Hiyori has that allows her to interact so well with spirits. But maybe if the narrative was intending to be serious, it’d be worth knowing. But for this first volume the plot’s pretty light, and it doesn’t feel like we should be expecting any tragic or deep stories, though I say this knowing the series is gonna focus on a bunch of youkai…
The art isn’t a major standout, but I feel it conveys what it needs to do each time you turn the page. And for a series like this, it doesn’t have to be all that special or anything. It’ll only stand on what type of youkai appear in the story, and how these characters, from the caretakers to the attendees, interact with them. But for now, The Youkai Caretaker is a pretty neat read that ranges from informative to funny to quite comfy.
Now, next time, we can maybe figure out if we want to say youkai or yokai in this manga…