Manga: In/Spectre 9

In/Spectre Vol 9 
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Even the mysterious Kotoko Iwanaga was a high school student once, but could a girl like her ever fit in with regular teenagers? There is one student who thinks she would be a great addition to his club, but can he possibly convince the lone wolf to become a member of an organization? Learn how Manabu Amachi manipulated Kotoko into joining the mystery appreciation club! 

Interestingly we're travelling to the past in this volume and we see Kotoko when she was a first year at high school! Manabu is the president of the Mystery Appreciate Club and they need more members so it doesn't get pressured to shut down, and he wants Kotoko to join because she's somewhat of a celebrity at their school. People are interested in her because of what happened to her and who she is, but she doesn't hang out or talk to anyone so he figures that if she joins, curious people will join too. 

In case you thought it was going to be a slow and boring chapter, never fear. Not only do we get a glimpse of young Kotoko and what school was like for her post her little incident with the yokai, but there's a mystery to be uncovered too and I love how, once again,  everything is presented to us one way and then Kotoko reveals something and changes your entire perception before she completely annihilates poor Manabu's plan and reveals every little detail of his true intentions. It always gives me the urge to applaud when she does it. 

We then head directly in to chilling territory as we learn all about a murderer cutting the head off a corpse with a guillotine because...curiosity. I actually found the history to the guillotine and execution in Japan quite interesting, obviously I know what a guillotine is and what it was used for and who used it, but there was some information I didn't know in here. What was also interesting was Kuro doing all the talking for once....and swiftly revealing why he usually lets Kotoko doing it because saying he was bungling is being polite. 

This particular case had some interesting twists to it, and my perception of characters and what I thought had happened changed several times as I read the chapters. It was nicely wrapped up as we continue the episodic format of the recent volumes, perhaps it wan't the most exciting case, nor creepy, but as usual the storytelling drew me in, along with the urge to figure it out before Kotoko reveals everything!