I received an e-arc of this manga in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and Viz Media for this opportunity!

I love Rumiko Takahashi (InuYasha and Ranma 1/2 are two of my most beloved stories), and this did not disappoint. The very first short story I would love to see a full comic made of, although it does give me Rin-ne vibes. All have some element of spooky, cute, and humor in only a way Takahashi-sensei can create. Definitely picking this up to add to Rumiko Takahashi collection!

Horror. (Check)
From the creator of Inu Yasha. (Check)

What more could you ask for from a story like this really? It's got the school girl characters and demons we're used to seeing from this creator, but in a different context. In much the same way that their retelling of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter was a refreshing step into Japanese culture, this collection harkens to Japanese horror alongside the everyday. The art is sinister without feeling overwhelmingly creepy. It's very much the standard manga style drawings for their era and it is almost disarming because of that. With creators like Kazuo Umezz, Gou Tanabe, or Junji Ito, there are style differences that let the readers know they are in the fantastical world of horror where anything can happen. They ooze on the page. Rumiko Takahashi does not do that. The characters feel often that they are classmates with Kagome from their main series and then horrible stuff starts to happen around them. It is a pleasant surprise when you're plunged into these malevolent situations with these average people.

This manga was a collection of horror short stories by Rumiko Takahashi. There are six stories included in the collection: Came The Mirror, Revenge Doll, The Star Has a Thousand Faces, Lovely Flower, With Cat, and My Sweet Sunday. Came the mirror was about mirrors appearing on people's hands and forcing them to cast out monsters or suffer the consequences. Revenge Doll was about a struggling manga artist who receives a doll in the mail that can supposedly curse, and even kill, people. The Star Has a Thousand Faces was about an actress who thinks that she accidentally killed someone and is dealing with the consequences of that. Lovely Flower was about a woman who's stalker is leaving her flowers. Everyone else thinks that they smell amazing but she thinks that they smell absolutely horrible. With Cat was about a boy who gets possessed by his childhood friend's cat. And the last story was about Rumiko Takahasi and Mitsuru Adachi.

I really enjoyed most of these stories. A favorite is hard to choose so I'll do a top three. I really liked Lovely Flower, With Cat, and Revenge Doll. It was a struggle to get through Came the Mirror. I'm not sure why, it just wasn't for me. I did like the story at the end that was more autobiographical about Rumiko Takahashi and Mitsuru Adachi.

This is not the first time I've read stories by Takahashi. She is an amazing artist with decades of work behind her. I have read Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku, Those Obnoxious Aliens, and many others. Given my familiarity. I'm not sure that this latest collection is quite up to the skill in storytelling that I've seen previously. These particular stories didn't do a lot for me. A couple verged on horror, which isn't my genre, and the others had some pretty disagreeable characters and/or failures to communicate. I did like the history and culture of manga, both in autobiographical pieces (one from her and one from one of her mentors) from the perspective of growing up in the 1965-75 era and a decade or two later (her) into the present time, and in some of the other stories that were about manga writers and the industry.

This manga was a little too dark for my middle school readers. I don't think I would put it in my library, but a high school library would be perfect!

It's a joy to see Came the Mirror & Other Tales be released in English. The volume collects various short stories from Rumiko Takahashi's career, showcasing a range of genres including horror and comedy. A nice touch in the book is that it denotes the release year of each story, allowing the reader to trace the evolution of Takahashi's artwork. While not every story in the book is flawless, it demonstrates Takahashi's versatility as a storyteller. The standout piece from book is easily "My Sweet Sunday" which covers Takahashi and Mitsuru Adachi's development as mangaka alongside their growing friendship and rivalry. I'm definitely glad I read this manga, and I hope to see Takahashi's other short story collections be released in the future.

Another great addition to the Rumiko Takahashi canon. While most of the short stories are typical Takahashi fare, it ends with a short autobio about getting into drawing manga, unexpected but delightful. If you like Takahashi, you'll love this.

I love that in the year of 2022, we still are being gifted by the work of manga creating legend Rumiko Takahashi, who, by the way, has nothing to prove to anyone! With a career spanning decades, she is bustling with a newer ongoing series–Mao, which has released a third volume this year and this more recent collected and translated collection of short stories of the spooky kind. Opening up this volume revealed that these stories aren’t new, in fact there are older pieces of stand alone work with Came, The Mirror, the titular tale being the newest by way of being published in July 2014 and one of the oldest stories, With Cat being published in October of 1999.

If anyone is squeamish to blood and gore, here’s a word of caution as the very first story, “Came the Mirror” gets into it and more: Nana and Eito are two regular middle school students just going about their ordinary lives until they are brought together by a supernatural mirrors that can be found in the palms of their hands. The mirrors can be used to purity the horrors that attach themselves to their fellow humans and the more that cling to a person, the more dangerous than person becomes. Eito becomes involved with Nana as her failure to take care of an adult she once knew, gone too far puts the other student in danger. When the two kids meet up again, they plan out working together and it’s seriously my favorite story in the whole volume. I love reading manga about kids working together.There’s a narrative thread about taking responsibility for your actions and what gets put on in life. This school life genred, horror short, is a winner!

Each story comes with a colored page or handful of them as Viz has been doing with other reprinted titles of the manga like Mermaid Saga. All the familiar wrappings of being a Rumiko Takahashi fan come to when reading and its such a great addition to her ever growing and illustrious library for English reading audiences.
I’d recommend this volume for hardcore fans of the Rumic theartre/universe and for folks who love collecting older and vintage manga. I would not recommend this to a newer fan of Takahashi as I believe reading the first few volumes of any other of many accessible and translated series, especially the older series having another life and being reprinted (Masion Ikkou, Mermaid Saga and more) would serve as a better gateway to her work.

If I was a newer manga fan or still new to Takahashi’s work, I’d be bummed out by these short stories and would want for more. I was thinking this volume was good, okay somewhere in the three to four star category until I got to the auto-biographical story towards the end of the book: both Takahashi and fellow manga creator Mitsuru Adachi have pages of how their paths came to intercat over the years and of course, their origin stories of how they came to love–and make manga. To know that we’ve been gifted such a rare treat is pure gold that I’m so thankful for!

Five short stories by renowned mangaka Takahashi Rumiko present a sample of her storytelling abilities and show off her penchant for the surreal, the grotesque, and her distinctive comedic voice. Longtime Takahashi fans (including me) will find Came the Mirror breezy and enjoyable. Unfortunately, her popularity has waned in my community, so my library's selectors chose to pass on buying it. For those who take the chance: give this to older readers nostalgic for the days when manga wasn't all about isekai and moe.

Came the Mirror - Two middle schoolers, burdened with the ability to exorcise evil using mirrors embedded in their palms, find themselves stuck in a time loop that ends in their murders.

Revenge Doll - A selfish mangaka receives a creepy doll from an anonymous fan and uses it to curse those who offend him.

The Star Has a Thousand Faces - The lead actress of a popular TV drama runs away on the eve of the series finale's last scheduled shoot.

Lovely Flower - A newlywed woman encounters the same mysterious flower everywhere she goes and seems to be the only one who notices its foul odor.

With Cat - A high school student reconnects with his neighbor and childhood friend when the neighbor's cat possesses him.

My Sweet Sunday - Adachi Mitsuru and Takahashi Rumiko reflect on the beginnings of their careers as mangaka.

Love this collection of tales by Takahashi-sensei. I'm so happy that VIZ is giving her the respect she deserves and is working to bring us more of her work.

Ya'll I LOVE the work of Rumiko Takahashi. Period, the end. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

Lovely compilation of short works that are just so beautiful and amazing and classic. You can't go wrong reading this and adding it to your library. This is on my short list of manga I need to buy right now and one I will most certainly be recommending at the store.

5, I wish this had been 5,000 pages longer it was so good, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Viz Media LLC for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

Five stories and an autobiographical tale. "Came the Mirror" is a very strange horror tale that involves two high schoolers brought together by a tragedy. "Revenge Doll" is self-explanatory except this one has a twisted ending! "The Star Ha a Thousand Faces" has anime star on the run on-screen and in real life but includes a twist on the happy ending. "Lovely Flower" has a very strange stalker. "With Cat" has a very creepy cat that means well, but being a cat does things its way! "My Sweet Sunday" is the writer's autobiographical take on the his love for manga/ A very interesting collection of manga stories that give a good feel for the writer.

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title.

For those who only know Rumiko Takahashi from her most popular US work Inu Yasha, you are missing out. She is an incredible mangaka and she rally shines when being spooky (Mermaid Saga!!!!). This is a short but sweet collection of stories ranging from cute to creepy AF, and a must for fans!

Came the Mirror & Other Tales is a collection of one-shots written by manga legend Rumiko Takahashi. The stories within this volume were originally published over the last two decades. The running current connect these stories is a sense of fantasy and whimsy. Some lean towards horror, while others lean closer to romcom. Towards the end of the title, collaborations between Takahashi and fellow mangaka Mitsuru Adachi are included.

This work is directly aimed at fans of Rumiko Takahashi. As a fan myself, I enjoyed these stories though admittedly they don't match the level she shows in her series. Still this was a neat read that hits a wide array of genres and exemplifies the genre-twisting nature of Takahashi's work overall. Also, the colour pages are a lovely addition!

Came the Mirror & Other Tales is a compilation of six one shot manga by Rumiko Takahashi.

Came the Mirror & Other Tales
Written by: Rumiko Takahashi
Publisher: Shogakukan
English Publisher: VIZ Media
Release Date: February 15, 2022

The one shots included in Came the Mirror & Other Tales were released between 1999 and 2014. However, most of the one shots are not in reverse chronological order. The only exception to this is the final one shot, which was a collaboration with Mitsuru Adachi from 2009.

Came the Mirror was originally published in Big Comics Superior on July 25, 2014. The main characters of this one shot are Nana Akae and Eito Izumida, and they both have a mirror in their palm. The mirror reflects the ugliness within others, and the horrors causing the ugliness are drawn out by the mirror, and then they can easily be stomped dead. But if the mirror-wielder doesn’t fulfill their obligation in time, they die. However, as these two discover, they are reincarnated to a point before their death, and it appears this is due to them being minors and something having to do with child labor laws. It turns out these two didn’t know each other prior to the beginning of the story, but their paths cross when Nana’s teacher, who has been consumed by the creatures, kills Eito because he ignored what he saw of the teacher due to rushing to a mock exam. When they meet after Eito’s reincarnation, which turns out to be a little over a week before he was killed, they come up with a plan to take down the teacher before either one of them is killed.

This story had an interesting concept, and I really liked the twists that were revealed when Nana and Eito launch their plan. To me, this story had a vibe that more closely resembled Mermaid Saga than Takahashi’s other works, such as Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2. Came the Mirror definitely leans a little more in the direction of horror, although a reader who is familiar with Takahashi will recognize her tone and her art style.

Revenge Doll was originally published in Big Comic on October 25, 2013. The main character of this story is Sentaro Yuda, a 33-year-old manga artist who has a title currently running in Weekly Shonen Heat. Up to this point in his career, he’s only had one truly successful manga, which was adapted into an anime. His works after that one have never reached that level of popularity. In fact, his current series is at the bottom of the readers’ poll. A fan sent him a revenge doll, which can be used if you say someone’s name and color in one of the eyes. The bigger the eye, the worse the curse is. At the beginning of the story, we see he has already colored in two of the three eyes, and what has happened to those people. After learning that one of his assistants will be given a chance to launch a new series to replace Sentaro’s, which will be wrapping up in 10 chapters, Sentaro seriously starts contemplating using the revenge doll to kill either his assistant or the editor in chief.

Takahashi establishes very early on in this one shot that Sentaro is supposed to be an unlikable and unsympathetic character. Even before the existence of the revenge doll is revealed, it’s very clear that Sentaro is a jerk, completely full of himself, and treats those who work for him like garbage. One of Sentaro’s victims finds the doll and tries to get rid of it, but it keeps coming back… which causes Sentaro to become obsessed with it. I liked the twist at the end with the doll, though. I couldn’t help but think that Sentaro deserved what happened as a result.

The Star Has a Thousand Faces was originally published in Big Comics Spirits on October 18, 2010. Kana Hishino is the lead actress of the show, The Star Has a Thousand Faces. She is on the run because she thought she accidentally killed someone associated with the project when she pushed him down the stairs. Unfortunately, the last scene of the final episode hasn’t been shot yet, so the cast and crew are trying to find her. She goes to a remote inn in disguise, where it turns out the son of the inn owner is a fan of Kana’s. After he figures out who she is he makes a tweet, which the crew sees and leads them to her.

The one shot opens with a scene from The Star Has a Thousand Faces, although the reader doesn’t realize it right at first. And it’s interesting to note that the plotline for the show sees Kana’s character being framed for murder and disguising herself with multiple disguises until she can find the true murderer. I really liked how Takahashi found a way to have this serve as a kind of parallel to Kana’s reality. Although I can’t help but think that Kana’s co-star, Kakeru Hokuto, has a face that kind of resembles Rinne from RIN-NE.

Lovely Flower was originally published in Big Comic on November 10, 2003. The main character, Rikako, is introduced to a flower that she thinks smells terrible, but everyone else loves the scent. Her friend got it for free, and apparently it’s a newly developed hybrid. Rikako’s husband is out of town, and she keeps getting spam emails from someone she doesn’t know that come across as creepy. At the same time, she keeps encountering that flower wherever she goes. She comes to the realization that she’s being stalked, and that the spam emails and the flowers are likely related to each other. There are a couple of twists that happen at the end of the story that have to do with the stalker and why Rikako can’t stand the smell of the flower.

I thought Takahashi did a great job building up the mystery of the stalker. As the story progressed, I honestly started feeling as creeped out as Rikako was. It’s not easy to make a reader care about and empathize with a character in a one shot, but she succeeded at doing just that with Lovely Flower.

With Cat was originally published in Shonen Sunday on October 27, 1999. This story focuses on a young man named Shuta, who looks an awful like Ranma Saotome from Ranma 1/2 (but without the pigtail) and also doesn’t like cats. When he was a kid, he tried to save a cat stuck in a tree but fell and broke his arm. The cat belonged to his friend, Miya, and he didn’t want to see her because of her cat. Unfortunately, Miya thought Shuta hated her, and the two of them grew distant. However, their paths are forced to cross when the cat, who is now 20 years old, is dying and decides to possess Shuta’s body. The two of them have to work together to try to figure out how to break the curse and get the cat to leave Shuta’s body.

Unfortunately, as I read this one shot, I had a hard time reconciling that the character I was seeing wasn’t Ranma, because that’s how closely the two characters resemble each other. Shuta was given a couple of expressions that are exactly the same as the way Ranma was depicted whose those expressions. While the story itself was interesting, the resemblance to Ranma was just a little too distracting.

My Sweet Sunday, a collaboration with Mitsuru Adachi to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Shonen Sunday, was originally published on April 1, 2009. This is an autobiographical one shot, with Adachi and Takahashi taking turns with each chapter and telling their part of the story. They both talk about how they became interested in manga when they were growing up, how they broke into the manga industry, and how their paths ended up crossing. I thought it was kind of interesting that in a couple of Takahashi’s chapters, she specifically calls out seeing Adachi’s name first as an up-and-comer, then later when he broke through, in manga magazines when she was growing up and when she was trying to break into the business. I thought this was a nice way to acknowledge him, and it helps to tie the two manga authors’ chapters together for this one shot. Putting this one shot at the end worked perfectly as the final one shot to be included in this volume.

I thought that Came the Mirror & Other Tales was a great compilation of one shots that highlight Takahashi’s work, and it helps to show what other work she was doing at this point in her career in addition to Inuyasha and RIN-NE. I enjoyed many of the one shots in this volume, and I think these stories worked well in this limited format. These were stories that would not have worked as long-term serializations.

I would recommend Came the Mirror & Other Tales to fans of Rumiko Takahashi and her work. However, you don’t necessarily need to be familiar with Takahashi or her work to enjoy most of these one shots. I think this release would also work well as a way to introduce someone to Takahashi and her style, because the hallmarks of her art and her storytelling are present here. Came the Mirror & Other Tales also works well as an introduction to Takahashi, because it’s much less of a time commitment than her long-running series.

This is such an interesting collection of horror manga! I really recommend this for all fans of horror manga!

I received an eARC of this title through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This short story selection from legendary Rumiko Takahashi is everything I wanted it to be.

I enjoyed this short story collection a lot more than I expected. I am a huge fan of Rumiko Takahashi as she introduced me to manga through Inuyasha when I was young.

The first title in this series of stories was definitely one of my favorites. The idea itself was an interesting concept. In this society, you are randomly selected to have a mirror on your hand. This mirror comes with the duty of getting rid of evil spirits within humans you may cross. If you do not do this correctly, you will be killed. If you satisfy your duty, then the mirror is transferred to another human. how the story unfolds is truly masterful in my opinion. The two main characters band together to try and stop their untimely deaths, but doing so may not be within their abilities. I would love to see a short anime series of this as I think it would do well.

The second title is about a washed up manga artist who is sent a doll which can curse 3 of his enemies if he so chooses, and the last curse can be used to kill someone. He uses 2 of these curses almost as a joke or not really thinking it worked. However, this story brings up some really interesting ideas of manga artists in general. About finding passion in drawing manga again and helping the next generation of manga artists grow rather than bring them down.

The third title honestly did not stick in my mind too much. I almost forgot about it when writing this review until I checked the manga again. It is about a star who thinks she murdered someone and goes into hiding. Definitely not my favorite in this series of short stories.

The fourth title had elements of horror to it which I was not expecting from this series, but in a good way! This is about a woman who keeps seeing this flower pop up everywhere with people raving about how wonderful it smells. However, when she smells it, she finds the scent horrific. Soon, she believes someone is stalker her as the flower shows up no matter where she goes. This story honestly scared me more than some other horror because it is almost realistic in the sense of a woman having a stalker and trying to grapple with someone following her without her knowledge.

The fifth title is honestly tied for my favorite in this collection. It is about a girl and boy who used to be good friends when they were young. But what tore them apart was a cat, maybe not how you think though. The girl has a cat and the boy does not like cats. However, they end up stop talking to each other for many years. When the cat is within his last days, he decides to curse/possess the arm of the boy which forces him and the girl together again. This story is cute, fun, and honestly gave me very cute Sailor Moon vibes (for some odd reason). Just a cute story with a good ending.

The last story is more autobiographical about Rumiko Takahashi and her love for manga from a young age and

I really enjoyed this, and loved some of the stories that Takahashi had in this collection of short stories! Definitely some of my new favourites, and it just goes to show that you can never go wrong with Rumiko Takahashi!!

It's creepy, disturbing and I couldn't put it down. Came the Mirror & Other Tales is an atmospheric manga that keeps you engaged, creeped out but at the same time really marvel at the artwork.

The stories were disturbing and left me feeling uneasy but at the same time were very charming. Which is exactly what you want out of a book like this! Fans of Rumiko Takahashi pick this up it's a great peak into the imagination of this wonderful creator. If you're a fan of Junji Ito style horror you should also give this volume a try. The art is not as disturbing as Junji Ito's work so this can also be read by people who want horror but not so intense. Some of these tales ended rather abruptly which really added to the sense of unease I got from them. If you enjoy this stand alone compilation I suggest you also pick up her other ongoing series Mao.

* I received an eARC/e-galley of this book via Netgalley. All opinions in this review are my own.