Manga Review: Yugen's All-Ghouls Homeroom

I know several people who really like Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma. I haven't personally read it, but it's one I've heard nothing but good things about. Writer Yūto Tsukuda and artist Shun Saeki took some time in 2020 to create a new special one-shot for Shonen Jump, unrelatedto their work on Food Wars! This new manga is titled Yugen's All-Ghouls Homeroom, and it's a flashy title with an interesting premise. But it has just one critical flaw.

Mishiro Sato—a pretty young woman in glasses—has just become a new teacher at Falbion Private Academy—a fancy high school where she's about to start teaching second-year girls. Things at the school are going very well, except for with just one student—a girl by the name of Saeri Midorisawa. She's been away from school, stuck at home, and apparently haunted or possessed by something.

Because of this, the school has hired an exorcist—a man by the name of Yugen Tojinbo. Yugen is a fairly conventionally attractive man in a cool all-black wardrobe and with a confident attitude. But he comes with a negative quality, wherein he seems to be hitting on women fairly indiscriminately. The first time we see him do it, at least he's hitting on an adult woman who is a janitor on the school grounds. Mishiro is a little shocked at who he's hitting on, which is kind of mean, but at least he gets to business pretty quickly afterwards.

Mishiro and Yugen get paired with each other, and together they visit the student Saeri at her house. Saeri is holed up in her room, sulking and surrounded with cursed energy. Touching her can even cause injury to someone not trained as an exorcist. Yugen once again shocks Mishiro by using flirty language with the underage student, which understandably really bothers the new teacher. Regardless, it seems like there's nothing the two of them can do at her house.

Upon leaving, Yugen tells Mishiro that the only thing that can save the student is finding the root of the problem causing her troubles. Mishiro doesn't really know what that could be, but she finds herself later examining her student's locker, finding a ripped-out page from her diary. As she stares at the page, she finds new, angry words appearing in ominous dark ink—"I'M SICK OF THIS! WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME? I WANT TO QUIT!" "YOU SAW".

Saeri's parents call Mishiro to tell her that their daughter seemingly has disappeared from the house without her shoes on. Suddenly, a large, ghoulish creature is now inside the school screaming, "YOU SAW" at Mishiro. That's when Yugen busts in like a cool dude with plenty of swag to save the day. He also comes in with his now-known playboy attitude, complimenting the scary beast on her beauty. Mishiro has plainly had enough of Yugen's messing around with women and girls, but it turns out there's a very comic-like reason why he's acting this way. Yugen can see the beauty of people's souls, no matter who they are, what they look like, or even how old they are. And despite how ugly this ghoul lady in the school is, he still thinks she's beautiful. In fact, he believes in it so much that he's essentially able to flashily rip the beast open and see the soul trapped inside. Within it is the student, Saeri, who had suddenly left home, glowing brightly like the sun. This is the real soul that Yugen appears to find beauty in, and he now has managed to free her from her ghoulish entrapment.

The next day at school, Saeri appears smitten with her savior, and every teacher at school wants to hire Yugen for a different job. There's even talk of hiring him as a full-time exorcist. In the end, it seems like he lands in the position of teacher of a particular class, whose entire student body seems to have all gone missing, possibly from some sort of demon possession. To be honest, it's not very clear. It does seem as though this would have been the moment in a more full manga wherein we would see the narrative expand to watch Yugen collect and save all the students in his class one by one and really pad out the narrative.

This is almost a really cool story, but Yugen is kinda weird about female characters. I sort of find it noble that he sees inner beauty in anyone despite whatever a character's physical appearance might be, but I don't particularly like that this also seems to carry over to prevent me from enjoying manga and anime that can be considered problematic. I am famously someone who really enjoys me some City Hunter, despite the fact that the main character is pretty bad about just straight up assaulting women. Honestly, Yugen is better about his problems than Ryo of City Hunter is about his, because at least Yugen isn't really touching people. Still, though, he comes across as a little bit of a creep, and the writing tries to play it as though it's comedy. Though not unlike City Hunter, you can really feel that this story would have probably continued on to pair Yugen up with the teacher Mishiro in the end. I mean, that's just my reading of the chapter, because hey, I've consumed media before.

I do think this chapter is worth the read. It's beefy enough to hold its own at over 50 pages, tells a whole narrative beginning to end, and I felt like I got a pretty decent sense of what kind of people the most important characters are. Despite Yugen being a bit of a creep-o, had the manga continued forward, it might have become easier to overlook. Or maybe it would have done that thing that a few recent manga have done where it's clear that the unacceptable stuff was only meant to be an early hook for readers, and then it straightens itself out from there. Hard to say because that's all hypothetical, but I think I would have at least given it that shot. The art is great and clear to understand. Shun Saeki is a wonderful illustrator, and this one-off really pops.

I definitely feel encouraged to pick up Food Wars! sometime in the near future after this, if only for more of that art. I've never heard anybody complain about the narrative, so I'll need to block out some time to sit with it in the future.

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