Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni

Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni
Cover of volume 1 of Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni
彼岸花の咲く夜に
Genre	Fantasy, Horror
Manga
Written By	Ryukishi07
Illustrated By	Ichirō Tsunohazu
Published By	Fujimi Shobo
Demographic	Shōnen
Magazine	Monthly Dragon Age
Original run	May 2010 - November 2012
Volumes	6
Visual novel
Author	Ryukishi07
Developer	07th Expansion
Publisher	07th Expansion
Genre	Fantasy, Horror
Platform	PC
Arcs	Dai-ichi Ya Dai-ni Ya

Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni (彼岸花の咲く夜に, lit. On the Night the Red Spider Lily Blooms), subtitled The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night, is a Japanese horror manga written by Ryukishi07 and illustrated by Ichirō Tsunohazu. The manga debuted May 2010 and was later adapted into a visual novel released August 13, 2011.

Plot

Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni takes place in an unnamed school setting and is composed of numerous self-contained short stories, each told from the perspective of a student or staff member from the school. These stories feature bullying as a major overlying theme, as each story's protagonist is depicted as being either a victim of bullying or a bully themselves. Higanbana revolves around a series of urban legends caused by supernatural beings called yōkai, each of which claims ownership of a particular "mystery" and kills anyone who tries to investigate it. There are a total of seven "mysteries" at the start of the series, with numerous yōkai fighting each other in an ongoing turf war for ownership of these mysteries, which is granted to the seven yōkai who emerge victorious in the conflict. The stories' protagonists interact with at least one of the school's resident yōkai, who force the protagonists to deal with the consequences of their actions regarding bullying.

Chapters

Mesomeso-san

"Mesomeso-san" follows Marie Moriya and Yoshihito Kanamori. Moriya, a submissive and weak student, is often bullied and falls under the protection of Kanamori, her teacher who uses his status to exploit Moriya. Kanamori frequently uses Moriya to fulfill sexual desires by taking advantage of Moriya's inability to say "no" to others. As their relationship comes to an end, Moriya learns that her cries have become associated with the legend of a youkai; Mesomeso. She encounters a youkai known as Higanbana and desires to become a youkai through death. Moriya briefly considers suicide before eventually being murdered by Kanamori. As Kanamori kills Moriya, he himself claims the title of Mesomeso, throwing the title into contention. Later, Kanamori confronts the spirit of Moriya in the same bathroom he killed her in, which disqualifies him from being Mesomeso. As a result, the legend of Mesomeso comes true and Kanamori is torn apart by having every bone in his body broken. Moriya then ascends to become a youkai known as Mesomeso.

The Spirit Camera

"The Spirit Camera" follows Takeshi Nonomiya, a photographer who stumbles upon a supernatural camera. As a young student, Takeshi was falsely accused of breaking a human anatomy dummy, leading him to become obsessed with the ability to prove the truth, leading to his interest in photography. One day, Takeshi finds an old instant film camera in the Newspaper Club Room. Takeshi uses the camera to take a class picture with all of his classmates. The class picture takes significantly longer to develop than other pictures Takeshi had taken with the camera. After the photo develops, Takeshi sees a girl in the photo that he doesn't recognize. The youkai Higanbana appears before Takeshi and leads him to the truth that the girl he cannot remember is Marie Moriya, a frequently bullied girl who recently died. All memory of Marie seems to have disappeared as Takeshi couldn't find Marie's picture in a field trip guidebook and doesn't remember her being in his class. Takeshi learns that showing the class picture with Marie in it causes people to remember her when he tracks down Marie's mother, who also had forgotten Marie existed. On his way home, Takeshi is caught up in a battle between Higanbana and a youkai known as the Headmaster, who is responsible for erasing Marie Moriya from existence. With Higanbana's help, Takeshi escapes back to his house. Higanbana asks Takeshi to show her his photo albums, which Takeshi begrudgingly obliges to. Higanbana reveals to Takeshi that a series of blurred photos that Takeshi never thought much of are a result of the Headmaster erasing someone from existence; specifically the very person who had falsely accused Takeshi in the past. Takeshi painfully remembers that he had begun to stalk the girl who accused him in an attempt to catch her doing something wrong and passing the blame off as she had done to him. However, the girl became aware of his stalking and began to break down, eventually leading to her suicide. Higanbana brings that girl, Yoko Numata, back to the human world and offers her a chance to kill Takeshi in revenge. However, Yoko and Takeshi instead make amends for their pasts, allowing Takeshi to live on and for Yoko to be redeemed from the hell she had been existing in.

Characters

Marie Moriya (森谷 毬枝, Moriya Marie)

Marie is the main protagonist of the first story, Mesomeso-san, and is a recurring character thereafter. She is introduced as a student who is constantly bullied by her classmates and molested by her homeroom teacher at an abandoned school building neighboring her school. While despairing over her predicament in the public toilet of the building, she becomes the subject of an eighth urban legend involving a yōkai named Mesomeso (derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia for weeping and sobbing) that haunts the toilet. The school's yōkai offer her the chance to become a yōkai in order to fill the new rank in their hierarchy, which she does after being strangled to death by her teacher. As Mesomeso, she appears before the series's other protagonists to support them if they are victims of bullying, or to confront them if they themselves are bullies.

Higanbana (彼岸花)

Higanbana is the third-highest ranking yōkai in the school, also known as the "Dancing Higanbana". She is a girl who takes the form of a Western doll that sits in the school infirmary and, according to her associated legend, dances on its own at night. She is the yōkai who directly offers Marie to become Mesomeso, and treats her as her personal assistant. She regularly torments cruel or weak-willed students, and is depicted as either an antagonist if she targets a story's hero, or as an antihero if she targets a villain.