As noted in last month’s Seven Seas Pubwatch, Box of Light stood out to me as something spooky for the supernatural lovers. This manga follows the nights of a sleepy convenience store at the crossroads between life and death. With story and art by Seiko Erisawa, translation by Daniel Komen, and lettering by Brendon Hull, this slice-of-life flavored horror manga raises big questions about the role of death in our lives, the importance of convenience stores and how to never take our lifespan for granted.
Box of Light
Seiko Erisawa
Seven Seas Entertainment
July 19, 2022
I was even more curious about Box of Light after reading the first chapter’s preview. The first chapter opens with an overworked office employee, who upon stopping at the store for a bite to bring home that night is manipulated over the phone by her boss to come back to the office, which she initially agrees to do. Despite looking like the very definition of exhausted, she attempts to check out sooner and even gets an employee to open up another cash register, taking him from what looks like a minor task.
What follows next is the most ridiculous chaos: something not of this world appears within the store and the office worker’s first priority is to take photos with her cell phone. She manages to explain herself to anyone who will care: her boss will never believe her! She is more focused on repercussions from failing to get back to work than her own safety at the moment. This scene really helps set the tone not just for the rest of the chapter but the rest of the manga. This first chapter reveals just how the strange and terrifying parts of the afterlife and beyond can erupt anywhere at this place, this convenience store sitting in almost pitch darkness, and the many different characters that come through its doors.
While I’d argue that the convenience store itself, a place standing at the boundaries of life and death, has enough personality to be considered a character in itself–I’m more fascinated by the different characters, both sentient and not, and the epiphanies that they come to realize. Without jumping into deep spoiler territory, the store itself functions as a place that draws in transient souls. Some are on the way to the afterlife, but some are granted a bit of time to come to their senses and come back to the world of the living. (One employee observes that there was someone who spent five days deciding between different onigiri and another customer who spent almost a week reading magazines!) The people that end up as employees at the store have the strongest chapter arcs in the manga as the tragedies that lead them to the store pulled at my heartstrings. Seeing them adjust to their new lives and reflect on how their lives are better or worse makes for good character development, especially later in the manga when they all start working shifts together.
While the story is worth writing home about, the artwork is also not lacking or dull in any way. Erisawa uses the traditional black and white format of manga to their advantage here in this manga. Perhaps the most illustrative example of this is how the eerie look of the convenience store looks creepier in the almost pitch darkness of the night. Also, the “darkness” that manifests in the first page that goes on to morph into different forms is something that grabbed my attention throughout the book. On other pages, silhouettes played up with special screentones made scenes where someone’s life was forever changed way more dramatic. While the artwork looks simple, there is some really cool world-building that stands out thanks to emphasizing black in certain places and panels.
Box of Light is definitely for manga readers who enjoy self-contained volumes of manga. Folks who are looking for a newer mangaka to support may find this a title that appeals to them, especially if they love spooky and supernatural settings and stories. Nothing here is as terrifying as Junji Ito, and it doesn’t need to be! If you have a low threshold for horror like me and appreciate the slice-of-life approach, this is a great manga to wet your feet with. The age rating for this manga is teen (ages thirteen and up) so keep in mind that this probably wouldn’t be appropriate for an elementary-school-age reader wanting to read manga, though there isn’t a lot of blood or gore. Seiko Erisawa’s Box of Light is creepy, charming in an offbeat way and a promising debut for newer and longtime manga readers alike.
