Presents: Volume 1 by Kanako Inuki, Kanako Inuki (Illustrator)

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Martha Cornog - Library Journal

Cruelty, gift-grubbing, and greed always bring disaster in the 13 stories beginning this three-volume series. Most often, a little miss snot nose takes advantage of her classmates to snag more and better gifts than she deserves. Then her bad karma-helped along by the weird and bug-eyed Kurumi-bites her in the butt, and she finds herself with a gift that brings horrible consequences. Several stories tell of well-intentioned suitors mistreated by heartless ladyloves; in one story involving an artist, the gold digger's skin melts like the surface of a poorly prepared painting. It turns out that Kurumi has become something like a "spirit of presents," since she didn't receive any presents on a childhood birthday and never aged since. The best stories are not about presents at all, but they trap the cruel one in a supernatural paradox. A girl who tells lies to scare kids about walking home at night ends up following and scaring herself in an endless loop of doppelgängers. Despite the "mature" rating, the plots are more creepy than horrible, although there are occasional panels of guts, dismemberment, and dissolving faces. Entertaining comeuppance theater, for older teens and up.