Saku, a Japanese orphan, arrives in Ireland in search of answers. She has been plagued her entire life by a serpent spirit that possesses her and causes her to get into fights. She hopes that by visiting a healing spring, she will stop this curse. Saku meets an irascible witch and a Farie and learns that she will have to pay a price for her soul.

Ghost & Witch is created by Kore Yamazaki. Translated by Adrienne Beck with an adaptation by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane and lettered by Roland Amago. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment. (February 3, 2026). Rated T.

Erica Friedman
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Saku is an angry, angry young woman. With no family she can remember, a life of ostracism and punishment at orphanages and rage at the serpent who causes random people to attack her—and who is now taking over her body with scales—she's just sick of everything and everyone.

She probably could not even answer why she's still trying, but here she is in Ireland still trying to free herself. Saku finds herself in a nowhere town, with a bitchy witch and a ass of a horse spirit, paying off a debt she didn't know she had and taking on other people's problems in order to solve her own.

Ghost & Witch, Volume 1 is a great volume of manga. There are so many questions and almost everyone is unpleasant in a really compelling way. Spirits and supernatural beings don't haunt these pages, they stomp through them ,causing chaos whenever they appear. I am very fond of the grumpy, annoying and annoyed witch, Rosie. Tired of pagan posers, paranormal groupies and random people who lose themselves trying to find themselves, she's a horrible old biddy with a great haircut. I love her.

Saku's search is clearly going to take her through a lot of trauma, both hers and other people's, but I am a huge sucker for Celtic folkloric nonsense and have plenty of stories of my own. (Go ahead, ask me about that time in Cornwall, when time and space stretched around a stone circle on the moors.)

This manga feels prickly and irksome, the characters all seem to be having different conversations and every time they meet up, hell breaks loose. Absolutely fantastic art, storytelling and atmosphere from Yamazaki. I'm looking forward to seeing what horrors await, now that Saku has brought the snakes back to Ireland.

Rebecca Silverman
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Count on Kore Yamazaki to get Irish mythology right. Ghost and Witch may be tangentially related to The Ancient Magus Bride (Yamazaki doesn't seem sure per the afterword), but it's also very much rooted in Irish lore, specifically the legend of Corra the snake goddess. Saint Patrick is said to have driven her and her husband, Crom Cruach, from Ireland, the basis for the idea that he “drove the snakes out” of that country which frames pre-Christian deities as serpents – which is Abrahamic religions' code for “not good.” (See: the Garden of Eden story.) But in Yamazaki's manga, Corra may be back – Saku, a young Japanese woman, has snake scales on her body and can hear the voice of one particular snake. Dubious internet research has led her to Ireland and a particular magic spring watched over by Rosie, a witch. Saku hopes to get rid of her serpent. What the snake itself wants is much less clear.

Although we don't know for sure that Saku's snake is Corra, Rosie makes some remarks about old gods returning, and the fae folk Saku encounters also make veiled references to snakes and gods coming home. And once by the spring, Saku can transform into what looks like a woman in a very ceremonial headdress, so I'm definitely operating on the theory that it is in fact Corra who has guided Saku here…and if Corra is back, can Crom Cruach be far behind?

Whatever the case, Rosie is clearly not pleased, although her Púca servant Sullivan feels otherwise. (A Púca is a shapeshifting goblin; Sullivan's horse form is just one of several associated with the fairies.) What makes me most curious here is that Rosie seems invested in keeping the old religion away; she makes caustic remarks about pagan rituals and mentions giving would-be practitioners to the church. It's an odd sentiment for a witch, although perhaps she became one against her will; a flashback does seem to hint at that. And I suppose interacting with the good folk doesn't mean worshiping them – they may seem too real to be religious.

In any event, there's more going on here than Saku can even fathom. As the book remarks, Irish fairies aren't sweet and friendly Disney fare – they have teeth and claws and occasionally a taste for humans. The Ancient Magus Bride is hardly sweetness and light, but I dare say Ghost and Witch will get darker.