The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life and back to get spooooooky. Mike’s taking us back to the hallowed halls of the highest of schools for an “anti-Jujutsu Kaisen?” Well this I gotta see.
High Spirits Neoma
Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Tuesdays
Written and Illustrated by oroo0
Edited by Mireya Hernandez
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
“Jujutsu Kaisen” has me feeling some kind of way, when is it not? Especially with the ‘Shibuya Arc’ playing out right now in the anime. So when I read the words “cursed spirits” and investigations in the synopsis I had to give this a look. Three episodes in and this feels like the anti-JJK, not in a way that rejects that series’ entire premise, just tonally it is the antithesis so far. This series doesn’t begin with the main character’s entire friend group being killed or horribly traumatized by the manifestations of society’s collective unconscious. Instead, it opens with a delightful flashback to the title character Neoma’s first exorcism. Jump ahead about a decade and Neoma’s in a new high school and “High Spirits Neoma” and the strip really comes into its own. “High Spirits Neoma” might get your attention with the supernatural stuff, but it will make you stay for the high school setting.
Series creator oroo0 uses the supernatural setting to help setup Neoma as an outsider to her new school. She confidently introduces herself as being of the “moon clan” whose family is gifted with spiritual healing and purifying abilities. And in an excellent bit of tonal balancing, that entire moment, which is pushed over the top with cherry blossoms, goes over like a lead balloon. Instead of it being a cool and totally normal thing to say the class reacts with “WTF” and anxiety lines. Neoma, despite her overall charming personality, is instantly labeled: the weird girl. With all that in mind that goes on to characterize all of her interactions going forward.
These interactions are what stand out in the series. Oroo0’s art operates on that contemporary mix of extreme cartooning with that manga influence. Overall their figure work is very representational with a color palette that echoes Teo Hernandez DuVall aka Little Corvus. Unlike Teo’s work, oroo0 goes in for reductive cartooning to make a point often to highlight the disconnect between Neoma and her classmates. This kind of interaction stands out in the second episode as Neoma tries to offer some gifts to ward off evil spirits. Which are flatly rejected. In the reaction panel, we see through Neoma’s POV that one of her students is indeed afflicted with a spirit that is the source of her neck pain. Rather than this being the source of melodrama, Neoma just brushes it off with a plan to bless her classmate’s backpack later.
There is a Mean Girls quality to these interactions, wherein Neoma’s abilities help to ostracize her from her fellow classmates but also highlight the narrative tropes that the high school genre operates on. This comes through later in the second episode when the preppy girl comes and asks Neoma to perform spirit business. Not because she is interested in Neoma as a person but because she wants to enrich herself with those abilities. Orro0’s dialogue for this preppy girl is just very on point in that it is very genre typical, but it doesn’t read as flat and rote. And once again the moment is subverted because Neoma turns the tables on the girl. Neoma calls this student out on her stuff, her not-so-emotionally compartmentalized grief, and the fact it has attracted a grief eater who will eventually kill her. She offers to contact a therapist for her if she would like it. It’s such a nice turn of events that isn’t a total subversion but instead shows how entrenched that kind of dynamic is in the genre.
In the third episode things do begin to get a bit more spooky and violent, but even then there’s honestly more horrifying work on Line. The spooky business isn’t why I ended up hitting subscribe; it’s the way oroo0 writes and draws these characters. They are defined entities in just three episodes in ways that most of these strips fail to get across in five.
