Manga / Zekkyou Gakkyuu

Welcome, readers, to another Screaming Lesson.

Zekkyou Gakkyuu (Screaming Lessons) is a Shoujo Horror Anthology created by Ishikawa Emi, which was serialized from 2008 to 2015.

All stories begin with a narration by a teke-teke, who is eventually revealed to be called Yomi, talking about an event that will become the focus of the current story. She also gives another narration at the end, mentioning the Aesop of the story and warning the reader that they could end up trapped in the same situation as the protagonist has just been in.

Despite the series being published in a magazine for preteens and older (Ribon), a large portion of the stories are surprisingly dark and terrifying. Cruel twists and terrible fates are the norm, though some stories became a bit more lighthearted over time.

A live-action adaptation was released in June 2013. It took elements of the two stories expanding on the background of Yomi to form an original story.

This series is complete at 20 volumes. A sequel series with new stories, labeled Zekkyou Gakkyuu Tensei (Screaming Lessons Reincarnation), debuted in summer 2015.

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Zekkyou Gakkyuu contains examples of:

• Addictive Magic: The chair from "Execution Classroom" seems to have an effect that, the more people have sentenced people in the chair, the more they want to make people be executed in it. The protagonist, An, slowly succumbs to this too.
• Afterlife Express: The titular bus in "The Bus Bound for the Underworld" leads to underworld. Anyone can board the bus, even if it is not their time yet, as Miku notices. She refused to get off the bus when it arrived at its destination, leading to her waking up in her home and learning that she fainted at the bus stop and was in a coma for the past three days.
• All Just a Dream: The "Human Ranking" chapter turned into a dream partway through.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Bullying is a theme in a lot of chapters, leading to several characters getting isolated and abused. Special mention goes to "Scarecrow Teacher", where the entire class bullies its shy teacher.
• Alpha Bitch: Some of the protagonists are revealed to be entitled jerks who believe they're the most beautiful girl in school, or are shown to behave like this since the beginning.
• Alternate Universe: The spirits can transfer victims into different realities, which is sometimes brought used for That Was Not a Dream twists. "The Fish Family" ends with the reveal that Rie now lives in a flooding version of Earth where humans surgically add gills.
• And I Must Scream:
  • "Mary's Dining Table": Rika is an extremely picky eater and decides to slip any food she doesn't like to an old doll called Mary. Eventually, Rika decides to become less picky about her food, but notices that she's not feeling any hunger anymore. Mary has become more human as she ate food, with the opposite happening to Rika. The last page shows that Mary has become a human and replaced Rika in her life, with the latter now stuck as a sentient doll.
  • "Best Friend": Miho wishes to have some friends and begins to get mysterious notes from someone that lift her spirits. Thinking that the sender is one of her elementary-school friends, Miho happily replies and even manages to make friends with some of her current classmates. Then the mysterious note-sender says they are coming for her. The sender turns out to have been a stone statue near the school that had become obsessed with Miho, knowing she was lonesome like the statue. The statue smashes Miho to death while happily repeating Miho's name over and over, turning the girl into a statue herself so that they are now never lonesome again.
  • "The Endless Game of Tag": Hiroko was bullied and mocked for being bad at playing tag back in 1st Grade, leading to her staying behind after school and practicing running, until she was hit by a car. And with a rumor of a monster appearing in people's dreams that forces them into a terrifying game of tag, it's believed that the deceased Hiroko's spirit may be behind it. Since Chika is the best when it comes to playing tag, she's not worried when the time comes for her to have the nightmare. Unfortunately, Chika gets caught. Years pass and it's revealed that Hiroko didn't die during the accident, but has been in a coma since. And so has Chika by now, with both of them stuck in nightmares, playing tag.
  • "The Toilet Goddess": Years ago, a plain girl wished to be beautiful and got her wish granted by the Toilet Goddess, becoming so beautiful that nobody even recognized her. It's implied that the girl was dragged into the toilet and replaced by the 'toilet goddess', leaving the former to become the new 'goddess'. In the end, the plain girl returns by dragging Suzu into the toilet, fulfilling her wish of being reunited with her best friend, Rena, whom she had previously wished to disappear.
• Animal Eyes: Yomi herself has eyes like a cat. Explained in "The Birth of Yomi" as being fused with a cat-like god,
• Artistic License – Biology: "The Land of Mermaids" has Nana get a lot of plastic surgery done and she's seen shortly after, now with a bigger bust, different face and long hair and looking beautiful like a doll. It's common knowledge that a person is not beautiful after getting surgery done, due to swelling and bruising. Realistically, Nana would require a few weeks to look that good after getting so much done.
• Asshole Victim: Being a Jerkass in this series is almost a guaranteed death by the end of the story, which often includes the protagonists as well.
• Backstory:
  • The two-parter "The Truth About Yomi" gives one to the narrator. She used to be a regular girl called Yumi Akimoto and had one friend in Makoto Housaka. Yumi was horribly bullied in her class and told Makoto to not interfere or the bullies would go for her next. When the bullying became too much for Yumi, she blew up the home-ec room and killed herself, along with the leader of her bullies, and came to only having an upper body.
  • "The Birth of Yomi" expands by serving as an interim between the above and Yomi's role as a narrator. Yumi's spirit haunted the old home-ec room of the school. When some bullies decide to rip off the protective charms from a nearby shrine, the unleashed spirit was going to devour the bullies and other students. Yumi sealed the spirit inside of herself and gained her unusual eyes and apparent joy for horror.
• Bad Santa: "The Last Christmas" features a man in a Santa costume who gifts toys... from the children he killed to the children who are going to be next.
• Beauty Is Bad: In some stories, the beautiful and well-liked people are actually selfish and cruel on the inside. "The Bonds of a Curse" makes it clear that, while Sakahara-senpai is quite good-looking, the person's character is anything but pleasant. On the opposite end, Kurosawa is described as gloomy, but turns out to be wonderful.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: If there's any way to make a wish come true, it usually isn't going to come true in the way you'd like to think.
• Berserk Button: Yomi despises bullying. When she directly involves herself into stories with bullying, she puts a quick end to it. And is fostering friendship and giving people the strength to endure.
• Big Brother Is Watching: "Execution Classroom" has the class themselves begin to monitor everyone and know instantly when something goes against the class-code.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Several protagonists have sweet personalities only to later to be shown to be pretty nasty on the inside.
• Break the Cutie: Some protagonists are generally good-minded until pushed into wanting revenge.
• Break the Haughty: A common protagonist role is that of a haughty facing her come-uppance.
• Broken Aesop: "The Bonds of a Curse" has Yomi tack on a moral about how killing is wrong, though this is one of the few early stories that had a genuinely happy ending. Ai and her new friend, Kurosawa, face no consequences for cursing Sakahara. While Sakahara died, he was an utter jerk who deserved to die for torturing a helpless puppy to death. And Ai and Kurosawa are moving on with their lives, now that the puppy has been avenged. The more obvious and better-supported Aesop for the story would have been the typical don't judge a book by its cover.
• Cats Are Mean: "Black Cat Saya" has the titular cat shapeshift into Ayako's mother and terrifies the girl when they are alone together. It's revenge for Ayako telling her father to leave Saya to die when he hit her with his car. Saya eventually kills Ayako and shapeshifts into her.
• Chain of People: The rumored mermaid in "The Land of Mermaids" turns out to be all past victims merged into some sort of tentacle.
• Christmas Episode: "The Last Christmas" and "At Emily-chan's House" are Cristmas-themed stories.
• Close-Knit Community: The residents in "Friendly Apartment Complex" take care of each other, the adults and older children tutor the younger ones and they have a vegetable garden where they grow all their food, so there's no need to head out and buy any groceries. And they get strangely obsessive over any neighbor in the complex that wants to go outside.
  We have everything we need right here.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The ending pages of "Black Forum" show Yomi chatting with protagonist from earlier stories, namely the protagonist from "The Devil's Game" and "The Kind Mama's House".
    Mio: Poor Misa-chan!
    Anna: Is it Noriko's turn yet? (That's so scary!)
    Yomi: That story is for next time... let's meet again soon.
  • "The Slit-Mouthed Woman" has one of Miya's friend mention "The Girl Under the Bed" as a story she mentioned last time. Someone asks Endou if he heard the story, who replies, "I think it was in a manga". The same story is mentioned again in Zekkyou Gakkyuu Tensei's "Thirteen and a Guest" as a ghost story, to which one member of the group declares "I already know this one!"
• Cozy Catastrophe: The epilogue to "The Boyfriend Story" reveals that virtual humans have replaced the majority of humanity and the birth rate is at zero. Why bother going to the trouble of finding a partner and raising offspring, if one can simply create the perfect one with a few clicks? And the AIs are so pleasant to be around that even the Prime Minister's response is to 'let nature take its course'.
• Creepy Child: Yomi would just be a Cute Ghost Girl if she wasn't a Nightmare Fetishist with Hellish Pupils.
• Creepy Doll:
  • "Mary's Dining Table" has the titular Mary, an old doll that's been in the classroom for ages. She becomes more human as she ingests food.
  • The entire doll collection in "The Home of Dolls" are made of the skin and clothes fabric of real people.
  • "At Emily-chan's House" has Emily. An awesome doll that will bring good fortune to its owner for playing with her. She's also a knife-wielding Yandere that kills anyone her owner may befriend. And she doesn't take kindly to hearing that her owner is too old to play with dolls anymore.
• Cruel Twist Ending:
  • "The Kind Mama's House" has Anna realize that her new internet-friend, Mama, is not only stalking her, but is planning on killing Anna's real mother and taking her away. Anna stops Mama and yells at her to go away, which she does, and it seems like the horror has passed. Anna comes home from school and realizes that Mama is in the house, who proceeds to kidnap her. The end shows Mama blogging about how spoiled her new daughter is, but she loves her anyway.
  • "Black Cat Saya - Side Story": Years have gone by and it's implied that Saya eventually ate Ayako's parents, too, and her current job as a teacher may just be a simple method to eat children.
  • "Hell's Clock": At different points, each of the protagonists appears to die from abusing the clock, but in the end, the female lead is just left in a coma for five years because of her willingness to go to any length, even sacrificing herself, to save the boy she loves.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Yomi may be an eerie spirit who finds joy in creepy things, but she’s pretty friendly and, in stories where she does play a role, quite reasonable with her deals.
• Dead All Along: "The Ocean Is Calling" first implies that the protagonist was Dead All Along, before revealing it was actually everyone else in the story who was.
• Dead Person Conversation:
  • Anytime Yomi is actually an appearing character in the story, the protagonists may or may not be aware that she's Dead All Along.
  • Kasako-san is a ghost speaks with her chosen victims in regards to her umbrella.
• Deadly Prank:
  • Often a protagonist tries to take revenge on people who've wronged them by humiliating them. Usually results in their own death, and sometimes others.
  • "The Devil's Game": Mio's character encounters a murderer in-game and realizes that she's in danger in real life, too. She hides in the bathroom, but realizes that she's cornered and the murderer is closing in. Mio then chooses to erase her save file, hoping that it'll save her, just as the door opens... and reveals her friends having dressed up creepily to scare her. Too late, Mio has already erased herself from existence.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • "The Devil's Game" has Mio obtain a videogame that she's been wanting. This one says that anything that happens in the game will occur in real life, too, and to not delete your save. Otherwise, all your progress will be removed. Including yourself.
  • "Hell's Clock" has the titular clock being given by the school ghost, if you ask her for it. In exchange for using the clock, she takes your most treasured thing away. Rui ends up losing Kei in a car accident when she first uses the clock. The second time she uses it, she chooses to try to kill herself to keep him safe, but Yomi is so touched by her earnest demeanor that she merely takes five years of "her future".
• Death of a Child: Since most of the stories deal with sixth-graders or middle schoolers, they are not exempt from dying, and many frequently end up killed or worse.
  • Special mention goes to "Make-Believe Sisters" and "Colorful Strawberry". The former has a three-year-old dying and the latter implies that an actual newborn will be killed. Not to mention "The Last Christmas", in which the Santa there is implied to have raped his latest victim before killing her.
• Diet Episode: "The Requirements of a Belle" focuses on how Yuri and Oota out-diet each other in a race to become the thinnest and prettiest of their classroom. They eventually reach an armistice after realizing how similar they are to each other, and after they both go to the extreme and start taking out organs to keep off weight.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Murder the Hypotenuse is often a plot point.
  • "The Devil's Game" has Mio's friend playing a terrifying prank on her because she's been ignoring them in favor of her new videogame.
  • "Execution Classroom" has the class nominating their victims for less and less offensive actions.
  • "Guard of the Mountain" has the elderly couple ask people to be on their best behavior while camping there. And if one happens to litter or pee into the river they'll be killed, cooked into a stew and served to the next batch of campers.
  • "Scarecrow Teacher" has the entire class choose to bully their teacher because she made a comment about how the girls shouldn't starve themselves or be worried about how their bodies look to the boys.
  • The two-parter "The Day I Became a Demon" has Kana stand up for Erika and ends up getting bullied, with Erika joining the bullies herself. When Kana travels back in time, she chooses to side with the bullies this time and picks on Erika. Including locking Erika into a burning room. And Kana only goes back when she realizes that Erika's wish caused time to revert itself because she felt horrible over bullying Kana.
  • "At Emily-chan's House" has Noelle mention that she's getting 'too old' to play with dolls anymore. Emily does not like hearing that and proceeds to kill Noelle and her family for abandoning her.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "The Queen's Trick" was just a big metaphor for female puberty. In the hopes of being treated more like a girl, the Tomboy heroine gets a flower stuck to her head. When it blooms, she's got all the attention she wanted from boys and girls alike, but as the flower gets bigger and bigger the boys get more desperate for her nectar. The metaphor is hammered in at the end, when the resident School Idol (who also has a flower) looks at the heroine's corpse and mocks her for trying to grow it so quickly instead of letting it bloom over time.
• Downer Ending: Several stories - particularly early ones - have the protagonists suffering a horrible demise or other terrifying problems.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • "The Truth About Yomi" reveals that Yumi was badly bullied by several classmates. She decided to cause an explosion in the home-ec room to kill herself and her bullies.
  • "Last White Day" implies that an unnamed loner, who had an unrequited crush on Sakura, killed himself. He did, to bake himself into cream puffs for Sakura.
  • "The Sea Of Silence" has Minako's parents commit suicide out of despair after their daughter's disappearance. Minako's picture diary heavily implies that they were planning a family suicide and her parents went through with it after she ran away from them.
  • Asami in "Yomi-sama's Facts ~Sequel~" is willing to die just to get rid of the divination paper. Nanaya swapped in with a fake and Asami safely buried the real one.
  • Saku hangs herself in "Human Ranking" and Ren follows suit. Both cases turn out tobe hallucinations
• Earn Your Happy Ending: On the occasion when a happy ending occurs, the characters really needed to work for it.
• Education Mama: Some of the mothers in the stories are way too focused on their child's grades.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Kotaro from "The Bonds of a Curse" barking at Sakahara-senapi foreshadows the real villain of the story.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Most protagonists learn the hard way that using cursed items to get rid of their enemies typiccally backfires.
• The Fake Cutie: Moeno from "Last White Day" looks sweet on the outside to boys, but in reality is only nice to them to get tons of return gifts when White Day rolls around.
• Fake Defector:
  • "The Truth About Yomi": Nagisa is reliving Yomi's origin story in the body of then-called Yumi's only friend, Makoto. She is more pro-active than Makoto originally was and stands up for Yumi, to the point that she is targeted alongside her in the home-ec room. The bullies give Yumi a chance to be free from their bullying, by turning on her friend. Yumi pushes this Makoto out of the window, onto a lower roof. And proceeds to explode the home-ec room which killed Yumi and her bullies' leader.
  • "Best Friend Chocolate": Mari appears to abandon her friend when she gets stalked by Chiyoko-san, a loner that is said to kidnap anyone she gives her cursed chocolate to. It turns out that Mari merely pretended to do so because she was working with the teachers to catch Chiyoko-san and save Hina. Unfortunately, Hina only learns of this after pushing Mari down some stairs and moments before Chiyoko-san kidnaps her.
  • "Yomi-Sama's Facts ~Sequel~" Nanaya is suddenly desired by the girls who used to be Asami's friends due to the Divination Board saying she would be famous in the future. Nanaya leaves Asami's side with little effort even though these girls used to treat her poorly. It turns out she was only faking it in order to swap the papers out, in a plan to not only make them pay for their behavior but to dispose of the real one.
• Foreshadowing: Before the reveal of Yomi's background, omake art tended to depict her with no body from the waist down, leaving her blouse and skin to just trail off into tatters.
  • The series as a whole likes to do this with most of its chapters having small drawings on the sides of the panels usually relating to the story.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip:
  • "Make-Believe Sisters" has Hama switch Annoying Younger Sibling who she believes has everything easy. A baby in an older body makes a terrible babysitter, especially after following a bad example.
  • "Girls and Boys" has Yuuki swap with a schoolboy, only to learn that he has nearly the exact same problems.
  • "The Story About Twins" has Nono and Nana swap minds, only for Nana to learn that Nono has made some enemies.
• The Game Come to Life: "The Devil's Game" has Mio find an RPG-esque game that is said to have outcomes that affect the real world, too. And then she runs into a murderer in the game and realizes someone is following her in real life...
• Gayngst: Played with in "Girls And Boys". The female Yuki, in the male Yuki's body, falls in love with her male classmate Inoue. When that becomes public knowledge, it she becomes the major target of the boys bullying. To the point where the boys decide to strip her in front of the class to prove "he isn't a boy", which causes her to flip and kill the boys in class with a chair. It's implied the exact same thing went down with her alternate self, with the male Yuki in the female Yuki's body falling for his female classmate Kaha and killing the female classmates that bully him with scissors.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Girls and Boys" has Yuuki, who is a girl or boy, depending on the universe she's in.
• Gender Flip: "Girls and Boys" has alternate universes be pretty much the same except with the female Yuuki being a boy in a different universe. The final page also shows a gender-flipped Yomi, who often returns as a co-narrator.
• Gilded Cage: "Friendly Apartment Complex" has the titular area be a place where the residents aren't left wanting for anything, the residents are all nice and helpful, and everyone gets along. But woe to the person who wants to leave or get anything from outside the premises; you're guaranteed to be brow-beaten until you want to stay forever.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Background death happens quite a bit in the series, usually in the form of cutting to another scene or the bloody aftermath.
  • "Shii-chan's Diary" never shows the real scene of Tomoe's headsplatter, only the rough sketch.
  • "Make-Believe Sisters" does this for Mii's death.
  • "Last White Day" cuts away just as the scissors' tips are shown to make a dent in Sakura's pullover.
  • "The Witch of the Library Room" Riri isn't shown being crushed by a bookcase.
  • "Girls and Boys" has the scene cut away and return just as Yuuki beats up all the boys who bullied her with a chair, with their bodies bloodied and piled over each other in the aftermath.
  • Several stories include characters being hit or run over by a vehicle, cutting away until the victim is laying on the ground in a pool of blood.
  • Three similar incidents occur for "The Queen's Trick", "The Red Thread" and "Marionette's Lover", in which they avoid showing Kumi, Izumi and Lala falling to the ground from a tall height.
  • "Friend of the Science Room" doesn't show the skeleton tearing apart its victims.
  • "Beloved Plush Toy" only shows Kurumi being confronted by her angry stuffed animals.
  • "The Tale of Twins" cuts away just as Nana gets confronted by a knife-wielding classmate.
• Grass is Greener: In "Girls and Boys", Yuuki hates being her gender and only sees the bad in it, so she wishes to become a boy instead. Little did she realize that being a boy comes with its own problems, and that her situation didn't change at all just because she's free of feminine worries. Her male counterpart evidently goes through the same thing in her body.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: In "The Visit of the Ox", longtime friends Yukako and Satomi stuck by each other and had a protector/protectorate dynamic. Then Satomi got a boyfriend, and with him protecting Satomi and eating up her time with Yukako, the latter girl eventually realized she didn't want to hand her over to anybody.
• Green Aesop: "The Fish Family" warns people to prevent global warming. It's implied that global warming has caused the planet to be flooded, given the news report at the end of the story and everyone undergoing a special surgery to obtain fish-gills once they are old enough.
• Grows on Trees: "The Money Tree" is a special bonsai tree that has yen bills as its harvest!
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Yomi's body was blown apart in a gas explosion that she caused.
• Happily Ever After: On some rare occasions, the characters are allowed to have this.
• Hellish Pupils: Yomi has them after absorbing a god of anger and despair.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • "Black Forum" ends with Misa's friend seeing a forum thread with her name on it.
  • "Make-Believe Sisters" ends with a family, that heavily implies the older brother is beating and bullying his younger brother, watching the news and a shooting star crosses their window.
  • "Best Friend Chocolate" shows Mari receiving Chiyoko-san's chocolate.
  • The end of "Marionette's Lover" has Aki stuck in the same position he was in at the beginning: with a super possessive girlfriend who really cares about her own happiness. Except it's Junko this time, not Nishino, and at the very least Aki's caught on early.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • "Hell's Clock" has Kei push Rui out of harm's way and he gets run over by a truck. During part two, Rui chooses to sacrifice herself for using the titular clock, in order to keep Kei alive.
  • "The Ocean Is Calling" has Nakatani push Natsumi out of a window in the drowning bus, insisting that she'll make it out alive.
• He Who Fights Monsters: "Execution Classroom" has the class first take care of significant problems like bullying or a terrible teacher, but then the power gets to their head...
• Hope Spot:
  • "The Mountain Guard": The protagonist manages to run away from the Hillbilly Horror she was trapped in, only to tumble down the mountain and meeting people who can help her, but while she was passed out, the couple that rescued her sought shelter in the very same camp she was trying to run away from.
  • "Girls And Boys": After killing her male classmates when they start bullying for her crush on Inoue, the female Yuki tries to run away manages to return to her original world. However, when she goes back to her classroom, she realizes the exact same thing went down in this world, with her male self killing his female classmates.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: "The Last Christmas" takes place around the holiday-season, with it ending on Christmas Eve. "At Emily-chan's House" also takes place on Christmas Eve, with its climax set on Christmas Day.
• I Ate WHAT?!: "Last White Day" has Sakura eat what is implied to, at the very least, be cream puffs baked with a loner boy's blood as one of its ingredients.
  • "The Mountain Guard": Hitomi and Hikari have this reaction after finding out what the soup was made out of.
• I Just Want to Have Friends:
  • "The Last Christmas" has Hijiri want to make friends, but her rather harsh demeanor makes people tend to avoid her.
  • "Best Friend" features Miho, who has difficulty making friends after entering middle school. Not to mention the stone statue near her school, who can and will absorb lonely people into its stone visage because it seems to wants friends too.
  • "The Toilet Goddess" has Suzu, following Miho's example. But rather than attempt to strike up friendship she blames her childhood friend for abandoning her and hides in the restroom every time break occurs.
  • "Mei-chan's Text" has Lulu, who has difficulty making friends.
  • "Best Friend Chocolate" features Chiyoko-san, who gives girls chocolates on Valentine's Day because she was alone and friendless as a kid. Her method of befriending isn't exactly the best way, to put it lightly...
  • The "Friend of the Science Room" wants nothing more than to have a companion. Being a skeleton, it's a hard job to do without being noticed or seen as a freak. Good thing it can make use of human parts to cover itself.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Satou from "The Red Thread"'s extra chapter is depicted as a womanizer who, despite treating girls nicely, views his fans in absolute contempt. When he encounters a girl who doesn't immediately go gaga over him, Satou is determined to make her fall in love with him just so that he can break her heart. He falls in love with her instead.
• I'm a Humanitarian:
  • "Guard of the Mountain" has the elderly couple killing and eating people that don't respect the mountain's nature. And they feed that food to the other campers.
  • "The Queen's Trick": After abusing the powers of the flower in her head to attract male attention, the sweet smell starts turning the men around the protagonist into eager to actually eat her. When she falls to the ground, the boys after her start licking the pools of blood in the ground.
• Identical Twin Mistake: "The Story About Twins" has Nono and Nana constantly be mistaken for the other on mere sight. invoked Despite them having different haircolors.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All chapters are called Periods.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: "The Kind Mama's House" has Anna seek comfort from an anonymous poster calling herself Mama, who proceeds to stalk and eventually kidnap the little girl.
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: "The Matching Class" starts off this way before getting creepy.
• It's All About Me: Lala from "Marionette's Lover". Which is why her trying to kill her ex-boyfriend with the titular doll doesn't work. She doesn't love him, only herself.
• Karma Houdini: Quite a few girls get by without tasting punishment in these stories. When this trope does happen, it's usually centered around romance.
• Karmic Death:
  • "The Bonds of a Curse" has Kotaro, a sweet little puppy that a class is taking care of and Ai loves him to death. Even Kurosawa, the weird loner girl, seems to like the puppy. Kotaro is found dead one morning and Ai learns that the popular Sakihara-senpai has been using the dog as a stress-reliever by putting a rope around its neck, tieing it to his bike and dragging the dog along. In response to that, Ai asks Kurosawa about cursed voodoo dolls she's rumored to have power with. Last we hear, Sakihara's clothes got stuck to a truck and he was dragged to death.
  • "Black Cat Saya" has Saya make Ayako experience what it's like to be run over by a car and left to die, before killing the girl and taking her place.
• Karmic Twist Ending:
  • "Graduate Number 108": Rina and her friends are going to graduate from elementary school soon, but see a strange shadow around Rina in all the pictures from the yearbook. The shadow gets closer and clearer with each viewing of the pictures. Rina figures it must be the spirit of Reiko, a girl that went missing during the previous summer. It turns out that Rina is a bully and puts herself into the spotlight, something that Reiko is well-aware of and called her out on it. In a fit of rage, Rina killed Reiko and burned the body in the incinerator. When she's about to do the same to the yearbook and gloats about how she'll continue to bully her friends in middle school and highschool, Reiko pops up and drags Rina into the incinerator.
  • "The Sacrifice Club": Ayuko learns of a sacrificial ritual that the town used to do at the summer festival and persuades her friends to practice on doing that to Yuka, the girlfriend of her crush. At the festival, Ayuko lures Yuka away and is ready to do the sacrifice. Her friends, Yuka and even Shunsuke, who knew what was going on, got sick of Ayuko's weird obsession with actually going through with this and leave her behind, humiliated to the bones. As Ayuko wants to walk home, she encounters a person from the real sacrifice club...
  • "Miracle Ball": A positive karma example! Kaori is the captain of the girls' basketball team, but has trouble with her best friend, Miri. She tries her best, but she's not as athletic as the others and practices alone in the gym... and Kaori learns that Miri died, when the backboard fell and severed her head. Immediately after this, the team begins to play at its best. Miri prayed for a way to be able to help her team win, which some supernatural force took to killing her and turning her head into a basketball. Whenever the team plays with that specific ball, Miri's spirit is aiding her team and making them stronger. Years pass and Kaori is shown to have become a professional basketball player and holding the same ball, declaring that she can't imagine playing without it.
  • "Supplements for the Brain": Ayumi just cannot get any good grades when it comes to math. Even at cram school, she's put into the lowest class and can barely keep up a good average. She finds an ad for pills that make someone smarter and orders them, with the instructions insisting on only taking one pill per day. The pills work! Ayumi's grades improve and she gets put into the best class with her friend, Megu. But she overhears how Megu and other girls talk how Ayumi's sudden improvement is strange and she must be cheating. In her anger, Ayumi takes a handful of pills and, when she surpasses her friend in the next test, rubs it in Megu's face. When she comes home, the pill company reprimand her for having taken more than the recommended dosage and she will be collected today, so that they can perform tests on her brain. Ayumi hides in terror and gets a message from Megu, who apologizes for talking badly about her friend and admits that it was because she was envious. She struggled to get good grades, while Ayumi made it look so effortless. Realizing how wrong she was about her friend, Ayumi breaks down as the people from the company arrive to pick her up.
  • "Kasako-san Is Coming": Miharu and Youko are the sport superstars at their school, getting the same time in races and look forward to the next big sports festival. Though Miharu's parents are pressuring her to make sure to win against Youko. One day, the two of them meet the titular Kasako-san, who gives them four days to find her missing umbrella. They desperately search for it and Miharu finally comes across it on their last day... and thinks of hiding it, since Youko might disappear if she doesn't have it and the pressure of having to be better than her would stop. It turns out that Youko is thinking the same way, with both of the girls fighting over the umbrella. Miharu pushes Youko and manages to hold onto the umbrella. A year later, she's on her way to school and it begins to rain, with Miharu meeting a spirit again... Youko's.
  • "The Girl Under the Bed": The story of a girl hiding herself under the bed of traitors before killing them gives Yukina the idea of playing a prank on her friends. She hides under the bed to scare them, but instead overhears how her friends say they really don't like Yukina and wish she'd leave them alone. Unable to let go of this betrayal, Yukina begins to play more and more pranks on the girls to scare them and punish them for just pretending to be friends. It turns out that Yukina's friends knew all along it was her and tell her to leave them alone. In the end, the titular girl under the bed appears under Yukina's bed for being the real traitor amongst friends.
  • "Midnight Kotatsu": Yuna is jealous she didn't receive as much New Year's money as her younger cousin, steals it and hides under the kotatsu. She finds a seal placed on its underside and rips it off, although her grandmother tells her to watch out as the kotatsu was made from the wood that belonged to the portal to another world. Yuina doesn't buy the story and ends up falling asleep under the kotatsu. Without the seal, her deceased grandfather's spirit pops out from under the kotatsu and drags Yuna into the other world.
• Kids Are Cruel: Most of the characters are elementary to middle school age, so this plays a part. Notable examples are in “The Slit-Mouthed Woman” (where a girl plays a prank that ends with her teacher getting mutilated by her classmates) and “Scarecrow Teacher” (where an entire class bullies its teacher for being shy).
• Kill the Cutie: Several of the protagonists or secondary characters are killed.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • "Graduate Number 108" doesn't make it clear if Reiko actually died from her head hitting a stone or from being put into an incinerator. But Rina most certainly burned alive.
  • "The Day I Became a Demon" has Kana plan to do this to Erika. Averted, when Kana comes to Erika's rescue.
• Lack of Empathy: Most of the monsters. Some are justified in their actions, since they are looking to get revenge on those who wronged them ^note "The Slit-Mouthed Woman" and "Graduate Number 108" and others simply have no human morals or don't understand how their actions are wrong. ^note "Best Friend"
• The Legend of Chekhov: More often than not, protagonist's classmates jokingly chatter about the recent ghost myth, that so happens to be exactly what'll occur.
• "Lesson of the Day" Speech: Most stories end with Yomi commenting how the protagonists have caused their own doom and daring the reader to do the same. The most common themes are that bullying always ends in a tragedy, and not appreciating what you have will make you lose everything.
• Lighter and Softer: Later chapters have eased up on the gore or body horror, as well as getting some happier endings to them. Likely changed due to the series being published in Ribon, a magazine aimed at preteen girls, and parents found it a bit too dark.
• Living Statue: The statue in "Best Friend" isn't just a rock near the road, it's also a stalker.
• Loners Are Freaks:
  • "The Last Christmas" shows Miwako, a girl who looks like she could pass for a ghost, to be anything but creepy. Hijiri is more photogenic, but she's shown as weird.
  • "Last White Day" has an unnamed student that was always quiet and alone, with an unrequited crush on Sakura.
• Make a Wish: The events of "Make-Believe Sisters" is kicked off when Haru makes a wish on a shooting star.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Yomi means "Underworld". When it's revealed that Yomi's name used to be Yumi before she absorbed a god of anger and despair, it turns into a Meaningful Rename.
  • The protagonist of "Soprano of Miracles" is called Uta, which means song. An Ironic Name, since she can't sing.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: "The Bonds of a Curse" has Kurosawa turn out to be this. Though that rumor about her knowing how to curse people is not false...
• Murder the Hypotenuse:
  • "The Sacrifice Club" plans to do this to Yuka.
  • "Bloody Valentine" reveals this to be the eventual plan. The epilogue shows that Misaki actually succeeded in getting the Hypotenuse institutionalized because of what she did.
• Never Found the Body:
  • "Mei-chan's Text" says that the lost Mei Kuraki has been missing for a year and is presumed dead. She fell into the sewer in an overgrown field and was too injured to get out on her own anymore. The story's end implies that the same will happen to Lulu now.
  • "The Sea Of Silence" has Minako, the granddaughter of the owner, who went missing ten years ago. She hid from her parents and likely got stuck in a crawlspace of the house. Her bones are found by Liz.
• New Transfer Student: Some stories feature the protagonist to be one or have one play an important role.
• Nightmare Face: Quite a lot of them!
• Nightmare Fetishist: Yomi delights in the creepy stories, but isn't a bad person herself. It's possible that her delight comes from absorbing a god of anger and despair, who is intent on showing her the disgusting sides of humanity.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Several stories has authority figures not take the kids seriously about the horrifying stuff going on.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: It's possible to be this case, since Yomi provides the opening and closing narration for every story and is the ghost of a girl that died in middle school, it's not too far-fetched that the stories are happening in the same area.
• Offing the Offspring: It turns out that "The Sea Of Silence" involved a little girl running away from her parents, because she realizes that they are planning a family-suicide.
  • In "Make-Believe Sisters" a news report mentions a mother doing this to her infant child because they wouldn't stop crying.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: "The Land of Mermaids" shows that the 'mermaid' is nothing but a chain of people made up of those who drowned in the pool.
• Picky Eater: The trouble in "Mary's Dining Table" starts because Rika is very picky about food she'll eat.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Nana and Nono from "The Story About Twins" are complete opposites in their personalities. Nana is a loner and has difficulty talking with people, while Nono is very cheerful and popular. Subverted when the end shows that Nono was growing tired of constantly being cheerful, and she rather enjoys being left alone.
• Poor Communication Kills: Most of these stories probably wouldn’t have happened if the characters could just be honest with their feelings.
• Protectorate: Deconstructed in "Visit of the Ox". Yukako (and eventually, a boy) want to protect the helpless and passive Satomi from the ills of the world, and while Satomi is upset she can't do more, she's happy that they care so much about her. Except she's lying. After years of being protected Satomi's only come to see Yukako's insistence at being by her side Unwanted Assistance, and when she finally got a boyfriend she quickly grew to resent him because he fell into Yukako's patterns as well.
• Recursive Fiction: Ribon, the magazine where this series is published, also exists in the universe of the manga.
• Red Spider Lilies of Mourning: In the prologue of many chapters and on 3rd volume cover, Cute Ghost Girl Yomi holds spider lilies to further set the tone of the ghost stories.
• Red String of Fate: "The Red Thread" revolves around a charm which allows you to see a red string that binds you to your "fated person".
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: When Yumi was a regular spirit haunting her school, some bullies tore off the seals from a nearby shrine and unknowingly unleashed a terrible god. When the entity tried to devour the bullies and Yuu, a boy that had become something like a friend to Yumi, she sealed him inside of herself to save him. The god threatened to get out of Yumi's body eventually, but settles to stay with her and expose her to the ugliness of humanity.
• Scare Dare: "The Abandoned School at Midnight" is set up by one of these.
• Scary Scarecrows: The aptly named "Scarecrow Teacher".
• Scary Shiny Glasses: The class representative in "Execution Classroom" develops these.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Averted with a vengeance. Whenever it appears, the story shows how much pain it causes to the victim. Especially since Yumi was bullied so badly herself, she chose to cause an explosion and kill herself, along with her bullies.
• Secretly Selfish: The titular "Do-Gooder Club" and its newest member Kaho all seem to be helpful and selfless, but they only do so because they want to be fulfilled and get a constant stream of accomplishment from helping others. It gets to the point where they start making problems for themselves to solve just so that they can continue "helping" their school.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: "The Slit-Mouthed Woman". Miya provokes her classmates into thinking that their new teacher, Akimiya, is the titular monster. When the class thinks that Akimiya may do something to Miya, they viciously attack her until her face becomes horribly disfigured. Akimiya went insane from the disfigurement and now roams the neighborhood as that exact monster.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong:
  • "The Day I Became a Demon": Kana wishes for Erika to 'disappear from this world' after she betrayed Kana and bullied her. Kana finds herself sent back into time shortly before her friend turned on her and thinks this means that she has to be the bully this time, to make Erika want to die. It turns out that Erika had made a wish first, wanting to go back to the time when things were okay and felt bad for bullying Kana. When Kana realizes what she was about to let happen, she runs back and saves Erika.
  • "Hell's Clock": Miu regrets confessing to her childhood friend, Kei, because it ruined their friendship. She wants to go back in time and is given the titular clock, with the warning that using it comes at the price of 'your most precious thing'. Miu goes back to the day before and doesn't confess to Kei, preserving their friendship. Kei gets hit by a car and is killed. A year later, Miu is still full of regret and finds a second clock and uses it go back to the year before. She confesses to Kei, after all, and tells the spirit to take her as payment for the clock's use. Yomi saw how earnest Miu's resolve in this was and decided to merely take five years worth of 'her future'. Miu spends the next five years in a coma, with Kei visiting her every day and the two are reunited when she wakes up.
• Single Tear: "Mary's Dining Table" as Rika shed one after realizing that she has turned into a doll.
  • The same happens to Miho at the end of "Best Friend".
  • As well as Kumi when she falls off of the school roof to her death at the end of "Queen's Trick".
• Spirit Advisor: "The Bus Bound for the Underworld" has a handsome guy sit near Miku and lends her a sympathetic ear, gives her some advice and encourages her keep on living and enjoying life. He turns out to be the spirit of her grandfather, who died before his daughter was born, and was waiting for his wife to join him.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: As a Ribon manga, you'd be hard pressed to find a bullying situation that wasn't this already. Ostracism, writing on the desks, and passive aggressive banter are the play of the day among these children, and not even adults are safe.
• Super-Intelligence: "Supplements for the Brain" features a pill that increases a person's latent intelligence, as long as they make sure to only take one pill a day.
• Taken for Granite: Happens to Miho at the end of "Best Friend".
• Taking You with Me: Yumi aimed for this when she caused the explosion in the home-ec room.
• Teens Are Monsters: For the middle-school-age characters, this plays a part.
• Together in Death:
  • Implied to be the case in "The Toilet Goddess".
  • "The Bus Bound for the Underworld" has a romantic example with the spirit of Miku's grandfather, who died as a young man, remaining behind and waiting at the bus stop for decades, until his girlfriend's time to die came and they could leave for the underworld together.
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  • Appropriately enough, "From The Land of Mirrors". The land of mirrors is real. It's just that what we believe is 'our world' is the reflection in the mirror.
  • "The Boyfriend Story". Mei turns out to be a digital person created using the "Best Friend Story". Mei is deleted from reality when her best friend, Jun, decides that 'Mei' has become too much of a nuisance and she'd better make a new one.
• Tomato Surprise:
  • "Bloody Valentine": Misaki is a delusional yandere and never actually dated Naoyuki. She was the manufacturer of the threatening letters, and it's implied that she threw a ball through a window to make the glass injure Sasaoka. Said Sasaoka is Naoyuki's actual girlfriend and he merely pretended to break up with her to keep her safe from Misaki.
  • "Graduate Number 108": Rina is an attention-seeker and bully, putting herself into the spotlight to get liked. When Reiko told her she'd never suck up to Rina and calls her pitiful, Rina shoved her to the ground and Reiko hit her head on a stone. To get rid of the evidence, Rina put Reiko's body into the incinerator.
  • "The Family of 5": The little girl was the small finger of a girl's hand, with her family members being the other fingers and thumb.
• Too Dumb to Live: Izumi, the protagonist from "The Red Thread" tries to prove to her crush's ex-girlfriend that the guy really do reciprocate her feelings by jumping off the school roof, believing that her beloved would come to her rescue. This is stupid on so many levels since: 1) her crush have no way of knowing that she's going to jump, since she's doing it on pure whim, and 2) he'd have to somehow be close enough to her proximity to be able to save her, which is unlikely. Even her love rival seem to think this is stupid and tries to stop her from jumping. By happenstance, her crush does happen to be nearby. But since he's actually a playboy and not the Prince Charming she thought him as, he's too busy kissing another girl to notice her fall.
• Transformation Horror: "The Fish Family" has Rie become terrified and convinced that her parents are turning into some kind of fish-human creation with scales and round eyes. Merely delusions caused by guilt over letting a fish die... although her parents do have fish-gills on their necks...
• Villain Protagonist: Some of the protagonists are the nastiest people.
• Voodoo Doll:
  • "The Bonds of a Curse" has Kurosawa rumored to use them for cursing.
  • "Marionette's Lover" uses the titular marionette to allow Lala to manipulate and control the person she loves. It certainly works, but not how she intends...
• Wham Line:
  • "The Kind Mama's House":
    Welcome home, Anna-chan.
  • "Bloody Valentine":
    You're the one that's mistaken! Naoyuki dumped you!
  • "The Story About Twins":
    Nono-chan, could you stop it with the bullying?
• Wham Shot: "Make-Believe Sisters" has the mother walk in just as she sees what appears to be her older daughter trying to chop up her younger daughter. It gets worse. At night, they wake up just in time to see Haru having dropped Mina off the balcony. Even if they didn't know that, seconds ago, their souls had been in opposite bodies.
• When Trees Attack: "The Money Tree" uses its roots to pull people under the ground and then uses their body as nutrients to blossom money from its branches.
• With Friends Like These...: "Kasako-san Is Coming"; "Shii-chan's Diary", and "Execution Classroom". It was also implied to the case in "The Witch of the Library Room" but ultimately subverted.
• Would Hurt a Child: Most of the monsters really do not care about the age of their victims.
• Yandere:
  • "The Sacrifice Club" has Ayuko prepared to kill her crush's girlfriend.
  • Mika from "Colorful Strawberry" could count, not wanting to share her parents with a sibling.
  • "Bloody Valentine" has Misaki be the yandere, contrary to what is originally believed.
  • "Best Friend" has the stone statue, intent on soothing its loneliness.
  • In "The Boyfriend Story", virtual boyfriend Akira Honjou slowly becomes this over time. While starting out as the perfect boyfriend, his programming malfunctions because too many personality traits were uploaded into him, to the point where he uses lethal force on perceived obstacles to his and Jun's relationship, and he gains a huge obsession with her.
  • "Last White Day" has two: an unnamed boy who loves Moeno to the point of mutilating himself and putting himself into pastries, and Moeno herself, who does the exact same for her crush Kazuya.
  • Riri from "The Witch of the Library Room" was shown to gain a small case of this after harming her friends under false pretense they were trying to kill her. After realizing she made a mistake she didn't even care and had been solely focused on protecting Hijiri from "other girls". It was also implied through the talisman he had, which was said to protect him from evil and danger.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • "The Home of Dolls" does this twice! Granny Sakaki is shown to have survived at the end. In the epilogue, Asako has shown to have grown up and become a mother herself and then granny Sakaki appears...
  • "Black Cat Saya" shows Ayako having been run over, but being saved and wakes up in a hospital, with her parents standing over her. Turns out this is Saya and Ayako is in the grave, with the cat having taken over Ayako's life. And an epilogue shows that Saya has taken a liking to eating human flesh, too.
  • "Guard of the Mountain" has Hitomi manage to escape the horror by fleeing through the woods towards the town, falls and passes out from exhaustion. She's picked up by a kind couple who tell her that she's safe. And they've taken her to the exact campground that she had just escaped from.
  • "My Older Brother and I" has Mana realize that she doesn't want the 'perfect' brother she created, but wants her real brother and parents back. The created brother says he understands and willingly disappears, with Mana rushing off to meet her real brother and patch up her relationship with him. She overhears her brother mention that he wished for a better sister himself and Mana is last shown being pushed into the sand, with her replacement standing nearby.
  • "Bloody Valentine" shows Misaki being confronted as the delusional yandere she is and, refusing to let reality set in, attack her crush and his girlfriend with a stone and the sounds of an ambulance approaching. The epilogue shows that Naoyuki is in the hospital, but his condition is stable and he'll be released soon. We hear that the girl who attacked him was institutionalized and his girlfriend is coming to visit him. The silhouette at the door is Misaki, who managed to frame the actual girlfriend into being locked away, and has gotten off scot-free herself. Naoyuki's horrified face says it all.
  • "Soprano of Miracles" involves Uta being chosen to sing a solo at an upcoming concert. She's bad at singing, but manages to sing beautifully during practice. She also discovers a strange lump in her throat that has a face. It turns out that the lump is the one singing, being the spirit of a girl that had an amazing singing voice, but was killed in an accident before she could perform. On the day of the concert, Uta realizes that the lump in her throat is gone and is scared that she won't be able to sing well. She does. And her classmates stare in horror at the lump that is growing out of her head. And Yomi admits that the mass will eventually cover up Uta's body.
  • "Girls and Boys" features Yuuki wishing to be a boy, because she thinks that boys have it much easier than girls. It just so happens that there's a parallel universe where Yuuki is a boy, who wishes to be a girl because of similar reasons... and the two switch places. The now-male Yuuki realizes that boys are just as likely to bully and gossip as girls did and, even worse, finds herself attracted to one of her male classmates. When she lets that slip, the boys begin to mock and bully her. Yuuki blacks out, only to find herself surrounded by the boys that she bludgeoned to death during her blackout. Terrified, Yuuki wishes to go back to her real world. She does and she's happy to be a girl again, the terrible instance in the other world ready to be forgotten. Then Yuuki realizes she's covered in blood and holding scissors... The originally-male Yuuki had gone through the same thing as she had done, stabbing the girls to death.
• You Are Not Alone: In general, any story involving bullies has the victim(s) learn this. Yomi will sometimes have a part in this as well, since she herself was the victim of bullying while she was alive.
  • In "The Sea Of Silence", Liz's family tells her that she isn't alone and doesn't have to deal with scary things on her own.
  • "The Day I Became a Demon" has its two heroines learn this after experiencing what it was like to bully and be bullied by each other.
• Youkai: The Slit-Mouthed Woman makes an appearance in the anthology. But rather than it starting out as a monster, she was a perfectly normal and sweet woman who became the Woman after a group of her jealous students beat her so bad she had to be hospitalized. And this is after they taunted her about the myth as well, which can be a case of Then Let Me Be Evil.

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