Within the halls of an enormous mansion, live a girl and her black cat. They try to have oodles of fun each and every day, but ever since her kitty ran away, something's seemed a bit off…Still, with her trusty companion by her side, even if a bunch of strange, scary things are happening all around her, there's nothing to fear when Kuro is here!

Kuro has story and art by so-ma-to. English translation is done by Taylor Engel. Lettering is done by Abigail Blackman. Published by Yen Press (May 26, 2026). Rated T.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

There's something deeply sad about Kuro, creator so-ma-to's pre-Shadows House series. The whole thing is collected here in a single volume, and I have to say that that was a good call. While I absolutely would have bought all three books individually, putting them together makes it easy to get lost in the mysteries without having to come up for air. And since those mysteries build organically over the course of the series, that dramatically increases your investment in them.

Set in a strange world where black monsters roam the forests and anyplace not hemmed in by specially-formulated white lines or roads, Kuro follows Coco, a little girl living alone with her “cat” in a large mansion. Through a series of carefully spaced flashbacks, we learn that Coco is alone because her parents died in an accident, and that she sees Kuro as a normal cat, when to everyone else he's a toothy-mawed, many-eyed abomination. How that came to be is one of the series' central mysteries, and by the time the truth is revealed at the end of the omnibus, you have a real feel for both the love and tragedy that led to Coco's life being what it is.

The manga is done in both black-and-white and full-color. The main story (about three-quarters of each collected volume) is the color part, while side stories are in black and white. The use of color is excellent; not only does it emphasize the importance of the monsters' coloration, it also makes good use of deep burgundy tones, like Coco's eyes. Her friends are noticeably blonde while she has dark hair, something which sets her apart from the townsfolk and perhaps deepens their suspicion of the girl who lives alone in the mysterious mansion.

The story's world is a harsh one. The monsters are deadly, and not only are Coco's parents dead, but also her friend Maria's older brother, and both girls witnessed the respective demises. The danger is omnipresent, with only Coco, who missed out on a special vaccine, unaware of what lurks off the paths. While she's not entirely a Little Red Riding Hood figure, the idea that people oughtn't to stray from the path does bring that fairy tale to mind, because there are more terrible things than wolves lying in wait.

I don't want to say too much about this. It's a book best discovered for yourself, and if you're already a fan of Shadows House, do not miss this. With its strange blend of reality and fiction being only separated by perception and an ending that's open to interpretation, Kuro is one of the good ones.

Kevin Cormacl
Rating:

One part Shadows House and one part Cthulhu Cat, this three-in-one fantasy manga omnibus tells the entire, unsettling story of adorable little orphan girl Coco and her completely-normal-in-every-way-honest lamprey-toothed cat Kuro. Manga creator duo Nori and Hisshi (together known by their pen name so-ma-to) would later go on to create Shadows House, which shares a similar cute-but-unsettling vibe with Kuro. Fans of that series will find a lot to enjoy here.

The art is definitely a little rougher than in so-ma-to's later works, though many of the pages are presented here in full color, unlike in Shadows House's English language versions. The color can appear a little muddy and smudgy, though that could be an artifact of the slightly low-quality preview scans I was given access to. Coco's young, innocent appearance is very reminiscent of Shadows House's protagonist Emilico, and she lives in a big old empty and abandoned mansion, following the death of both parents in an accident.

It's clear from the very start that something is deeply wrong not only with Coco's jet black cat, but with her entire world. Kuro's disturbing mouth isn't his only bizarre feature – his entire body is covered in eyes, Biblically-accurate-angel-style, and he shoots massive pointy metal lances out of his mouth to impale threats. The grounds outside of the mansion are stalked by massive, misshapen monstrosities that are unable to cross the white lines etched on the sides of the paths built by humans. It's a very fairytale setting, though more like those old, violent fairytales where everyone dies horribly, and not the sanitized Disney versions.

We learn more about Coco's world and about Kuro as the story progresses, and it only gets creepier. Throughout most of the book, Coco is almost deliberately unaware of the dangers surrounding her, adamant that Kuro is just a normal cat, despite what the well-meaning villagers and her friends say.

A large chunk of the omnibus is comprised of “extra” stories, presented in black and white, and they were presumably initially placed at the end of each volume. Here, they do interrupt the flow of the narrative, though they do often provide hints to the true nature of the story and the characters within it. The final black and white story, in particular, is very sweet. The color main story pages comprise only 198 pages of the entire 393-page volume, which means it can feel a little padded. Otherwise, I really enjoyed Kuro and recommend it to manga readers looking for cozy fantasy with a little more bite to it.