Mieruko-Chan is a collection of mostly stand-alone chapters about a girl (Miko) who can see monsters that no one else can see. At this point you must be thinking that you've already seen the "girl sees things no one else can see" thing done a million times, right? Well, actually that's not entirely the case with Mieruko-Chan. This isn't your feel good story about a girl becoming the "heroine that fights and beats the monsters that she can only see" nor the "girl helps the spirits so they can finally cross to the other side instead of lingering on this earth". Mieruko-Chan is an authentic black comedy, derived by the absolute terror Miko feels when encountering those monsters in every place imaginable (from her classroom to the girls' locker room and from her bathroom to her own bed).

These monsters whose origin is still to be determined, are drawn in the most horrifying way possible. The designs are vague, as they are mostly deformed masses of flesh with some eyes and mouths thrown in there for good measure, but they get the job done in two levels: 1) It scares the living hell out of our heroine and 2) they make for an interesting visual contrast between the horrific monsters and the girls that are drawn in the most attractive way possible (and in the first few chapters, with a lot of fan-service thrown there for good measure).

It's still early in Mieruko-Chan's run (only 8 chapters out so far) but there are definitely some concerning trends should this series go the distance. After eight chapters the formula of Miko being extremely terrified for an entire chapter is getting a bit repetitive and you would like to see the story move forward in some how or way. The repetitiveness in Mieruko-Chan's formula makes its characters feel a bit shallow and stereotypical up until this point in the story (Miko's best friend Hana is your stereotypical attractive happy-go-lucky girl who has no idea what is actually going on around here, Miko's little brother is your stereotypical younger brother who is kind of concerned with his sister and her erratic behavior).

It will be interesting to see if Mieruko-Chan can find a way to build upon its formula and get closer to any sort of progress in its story and depth on its characters, because the comedy in Mieruko-Chan is not as good at this point to overcome its repetitiveness; a reaction face can only be funny for so long.