Daigo Agawa is a police officer and he is dispatched to the small mountain village of Kuge after the local officer Osamu Kano went missing. He moves there with his wife Yuki and their daughter Mashiro. The villagers in Kuge welcome Daigo Agawa and his family kindly with open arms. The very day he arrives, the corpse of the village leading family's matriarch, Gin Goto who had gone missing is discovered in the mountains by her grandson Keisuke. The other Gotos insist that she was killed by a bear, but, after checking her body, Daigo notices teeth marks from a human that couldn't be self inflicted. As he stays to investigate the murder the village reveals more and more oddities, the people seem to know everything about everyone, there is a lack of children. Not to mention there is a strange man roaming the place at night, over two meters tall and reeking of death, who the Goto family adress as "That Person" privately, but denies exists to others.
Written and illustrated by Masaaki Ninomiya, the series was serialized from October 5, 2018, to November 26, 2021. It has since been published in 13 volumes. A live action drama series was released on Disney+ on December 28, 2022. Season 1 adapts the first half of the manga, and season 2 will adapt the rest. The special chapter B of the manga was released in celebration of the Drama's release.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Context Change: In the manga Mutsuo threatens to shoot Doctor Nakamura to get him to comply, in the drama he has one of his men hold his dog Muffin hostage instead.
- Always Identical Twins: Taichi and Yoji Goto. Keizo and Yone Goto's sons. Taichi is more bloodthirsty while Yoji is more mild mannered.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: The "cattle" children are cleaned and groomed the day before the sacrifice.
- The Clan: The Goto family. They run the local lumbermill, which is the source of the town's income. This basically makes them the town leaders, plus the mayor is Kiyoshi Goto, the former head's son in law.
- Close-Knit Community: The villagers in Kuge look after one another. This is shown to come with drawbacks, as when Daigo shows the slightest irritation towards their ways, he almost becomes a social pariah. As they say; in this village everyone, knows everything about everyone.
- The Conspiracy: Daigo comes to believe that the Gotos eat people and when the villagers refuse to help him in his investigations he starts to think that the entire village is in on it. He can't tell the police about it, because the chief grew up in there so he thinks he’s in on it too. He's wrong, the chief is trying to bust the Goto family but Daigo's investigation is messing with his own.
- Cursed with Awesome: That Person got afflicted with Kuru at 6 years old and is over 75. Since Kuru kills it's victims within two years, Doctor Nakamura theorizes that That Person has a new strain of the disease that isn't fatal to the host.
- Eats Babies: That Person.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Gotos take care of eachother and are willing to give everything to protect the rest.
- Even Evil Has Standards: In the drama Mutsuo has a little dog held to a shotgun to get his owner, Doctor Nakamura, to do what he wants. When he’s done he lets both live, when he could easily dispose of them both.
- The Family That Slays Together: The Gotos. According to Gin, they are not individuals, because individuals endager the family.
- Harmful to Minors: Daigo shot a pedophile that held Mashiro hostage, but since he was holding Mashiro close the entire time, when he was shot she ended up getting pieces of brain in her mouth. She looked at her father saying she could taste blood and passed out. Since that day, Mashiro has not spoken a word.
- He Knows Too Much: Osamu Kano found the place where the Gotos keep the sacrificial children, unfortunatly, that’s where That Person is kept most of the time so anyone who finds it is dealt with.
- Human Sacrifice: According to priest Kamiyama, hundreds of years ago the village had problems with the harvest as the earth was unsuitable for farming. So to decrease the number of mouths to feed, they'd sacrifice children to the gods by burning them alive. Nowadays they just burn decorated effigies.
- I Have No Son!: Gin disowned her daughter when she interrupted a ritual.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Averted: the high rate of stillbirths (once a year) in the village is one of the major clues that something is amiss.
- Love Hungry: Gin was seemingly this, everyone in town spoke kindly of her but secretly feared and resented her, too afraid of her and her family to voice their true feelings. She tricked her grandsons into believing their mother didn’t love them, hoping to redirect the love they had for their mom to her.
- Names The Same: According to the family registry, Gins mother and father were both named "Sada" but written with different symbols.
- Never a Runaway: Everyone in the village assumes Osamu Kano crippled himself with gambling debt and ran away. His daughter denies this, sayng he wasn't a gambler. It comes as no surprise that she is right.
- No Name Given: "That Person". The tall reeking man is only referred to and credited as such.
- PædoHunt: Before Daigo was transferred, it turned out a convicted pedophile lived in his neighborhood and was violating his probation. Daigo who has a young child does not hold back for one second whenever he sees him. When Mashiro goes to visit the pedophile, Daigo crashes into his apartment, leading to Mashiro being held hostage.
- Scatterbrained Senior: According to her family, Gin Goto was demented and getting worse by the day, eventually wandering off never to return as they found her corpse 3 days later. They aren't lying, but she didn't have dementia, she had Kuru.
- Too Dumb to Live: Mashiro. Befriended a convicted pedophile, Tsubasa Konno, under the belief that if she was nice to him he wouldn't harm her. It had the opposite effect as it made him determined to die with her.
- Town with a Dark Secret: While it might be obvious to the viewer what it is, the exact circumstance and culprit is uncertain.
- Tragic Stillbirth: Kanako became miserable after the loss of her son. She always believed the midwife Gin lied so she could steal him, she was correct.
