Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror. (See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)

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9. Cowa!

Cowa! is simply adorable. Set in a town where monsters and humans coexist peacefully, it follows Paifu, a kid who’s half-vampire, half-werekoala (that’s right, werekoala). He spends his nights playing with Jose the ghost and fighting his rival, a demon named Arpon. When the monster population starts getting sick from monster flu, Paifu takes it upon himself to find a cure. Paifu and his friends enlist the help of a human named Maruyama, a scary dude who even frightens monsters, and set out into the big bad human world.

In my review from last year I called Cowa! Yotsuba&! with monsters. Both series are sweet and funny and share a childish sense of wonder. As I wrote in my review, “If Halloween is your favourite holiday (or at least in your top three) then this is worth checking out. Cowa! is a cute and funny all ages manga that is all treat, no trick.”

I don’t think I really need to spell out why Cowa! is a Halloween manga, but since that is kind of the point of this list I will do it anyway. Aside from the obvious point that most of the cast is made up of classic monsters, Cowa! really captures how it feels not only to be a kid, but to be a kid on Halloween. The monster kids set out into the world with a sense of excitement and apprehension that is similar to what every kid feels when they set out trick-or-treating for the first time.

To read my full review of Cowa!, go here.

Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror. (See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)

- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -

11. D.Gray-Man

So many shounen series deal with monsters in one form or another, from Bleach’s hollows to the ghosts and demons in Yu Yu Hakusho. So what makes D.Gray-Man more  Halloween-y than any other shonen action series featuring the supernatural? In the end it comes down to aesthetics. D.Gray-Man is partly set in an alternate version of Victorian England, a setting already ripe for gothic horror which the manga then amps up to eleven. The buildings are all crumbling and the perspectives skewered. Even inanimate objects have a sinister, childish look, like they might come alive and attack at any moment.

As for the characters themselves, the akuma (the monsters the main characters must fight) are all uniformly creepy. However, there is one character in particular that stands out.

That would be the Millennium Earl.

Only Naoki Urasawa’s Johan has a creepier smile. Giving a sinister character like the Earl with such a fantastical, weird look only makes him scarier. The little flourishes like the hearts that litter his dialogue make him seem even more heinous as talks people into doing horrible things, like resurrecting their dead loved ones so they can be living weapons.

The series is basically a fairy tale set to a shounen action series formula, and everyone knows that not all fairy tales have happy endings. D.Gray-Man embraces the darker, bloodier aspect of classic fables and runs with it. It’s this aspect and the Tim Burton like art that makes D.Gray-Man a worthwhile Halloween manga.