In the first volume of The Witch and the Beast by Kousuke Satake, we met Guideau, the girl with feral eyes, fangs, and a propensity for murder, and Ashaf, the mysterious man with whom she travels, a member of The Order of Magical Resonance, and bearer of a very large coffin with something extremely terrifying inside.

In volume 2, we meet some of their scarier, more powerful, more bloodthirsty friends.

No. No, I’m not kidding.

Hold on to your wands.

When last we left our intrepid murder duo, they were helping the police track a witch who was committing particularly grisly crimes. Turns out, the witch isn’t a witch. It’s a duo of undead. Not vampires or zombies or anything like that. Risen undead. The work of a necromancer. In this universe, necromancy is legal, provided it follows certain guidelines.

These two have not been revived legally and have most definitely not been getting their regular “make sure they don’t go off the rails” treatments.

Guideau and Ashaf are witch hunters. Phanora and Johan are necromancers and so, Ashaf enlists his colleagues to assist in the new investigation.

I love this. I love this so much.

The plot, yes. It’s been all supernatural manga pretty much all the time up in here lately, and I cannot overstate the joy it brings me. And supernatural tinged with horror no less – it’s a subgenre I find exceptionally easy to get lost and wander around in, which is a thing we all need at the moment but I wasn’t getting from prose reading material the way I usually do.

But. I also think this is a particularly masterful way to expand The Witch and the Beast universe around the core of Guideau and Ashaf, their mission, and The Order of Magical Resonance. Like Guideau and Ashaf, Phanora and Johan are a duo with each member having different but complementary abilities. They work for, but don’t necessarily answer to, The Order. There’s a connection in that Ashaf recommends Phanora to people he has been working with. An expanding web growing into its own mythology, which is just… so much yes.

At the conclusion of the chapter, we find out not everything is as absolute as we’ve been led to believe – not even the “truths” Ashaf has been telling Guideau. And even though we’re early in the story, we can imagine her response when she discovers his honesty has been relative, which is a perfect hook to keep us coming back, even though they don’t feature as heavily in this volume as they did in the first one.

It’s interesting that visually, Phanora and Johan’s part of the book has less grayscale than Ashaf and Guideau’s. Is this an allusion to the fact that the dangers of raising the undead are more absolute than the condemnation of witches? A stylistic choice? Perhaps both. It also allows Satake to add detail to the faces of not only the living characters but also the undead as well – to demonstrate they too are, or were, people. Individuals. Which makes the explanation of what happens to them after their second death that much more horrifying. It also allows for the expression of a lot more blood and guts, so keep that in mind when you’re deciding whether or not to pick this one up. It is certainly more graphic than volume 1.

I’m definitely all in on The Witch and the Beast (gore never bothered me anyway). I can’t wait to see who else drops in for a visit and how it’s all connected to Guideau’s curse and her mission to fight free of it. And we still don’t know the whole story on who’s in that coffin and why Ashaf’s responsible for both of the beasts.

Good thing there’s a lot more to come.