...Have you ever read something and then let some time pass and then look back at it again and have literally not even a single recollection of it? Like no exaggeration you couldnt remember a single thing? Not a character not a line of dialogue just absolutely nothing? Its telling that the score I gave this manga whenever I finished reading it was a 5 out of 10. Because in my mind thats perfectly average. If I were being a bit more harsh I could very easily replace the word average with forgettable. As there are tons of series Ive given much lower scores and the lower the score the more about that series I could tell you. But Mashuri no Hako apologies to Michiru Karakusahttps://anilist.co/staff/141040/MichiruKarakusa but Im just drawing a huge fucking blank right now. I know it was a horror manga because I definitely remember there being gore but... You know what? Hold on. 440https://i.ur.com/41fSVTl.png One Reread Later... Okay yeah I remember this now. Mashuri no Hako is a horror manga and its that sort that immediately starts off with that horror trope I am just so sick of. A character moves to a small town in the country or a rural area and theres just something off about it. Haha weird apparently a whole bunch of people disappear around here on a regular basis Thats kind of alarming But oh well 440https://i.ur.com/ynob1pC.png Our protagonist I literally just reread this and I still dont know his name. Hes glasses teacher man and hes a teacher who just recently moved to town because his brother is getting married and he doesnt want to keep living with his parents because hell be seen as a NEET or something. 440https://i.ur.com/URDbnIp.png And before we learn anything of his character or ANYTHING about him hes immediately pulled into the horror plot. Old crazy flower keeper man made him smell a red flower that knocked him unconscious and then took him to the woods where he planned to kill him but of course things go wrong for him and the glasses teacher mans life begins the process of flying off the rails. 440https://i.ur.com/thr6BzX.png Because he moved a town in a rural area and if you do that youre going to get fucking murdered or dragged into some fucking weird horror shit because you cant do horror in a city setting. No its got to be in a fucking rural area. ALWAYS. ALWAYS IN A RURAL AR 440https://i.ur.com/vbm7FEA.png Anyways turns out there was a plant monster girl in a box that the old man was protecting. Plant monster girl is of course what this manga is centered around and I hate to say it but she kinda sucks. She barely ever speaks at all she doesnt emote all she does is kill people. Which would be fine if she killed people in an interesting or entertaining way but it is always: 1. Have someone else kill a person. 2. Vines. 3. Make people smell her poisonous red flowers that then make them go crazy and also bleed to death out of their eyes nose and mouth which sounds way more fun than it actually is. 440https://i.ur.com/JdENH90.png Eh... I just really dont like how this looks. Not even in an ew thats gross sort of way but in a this isnt very appealing to look at horror sort of way. Im not against mute monster characters but theyre really mainly good if theyre killing machines in a Bmovie level schlock. https://i.ur.com/qs1Z2sN.png Could have gone with the creepy approach I guess but of course later in the manga Mashuri completely drops her original spooky appearance of being just a mass of vines and assorted plants to... shes just a normal looking girl except she has white hair. I mean shes got razor sharp teeth but again she barely talks and we never actually see her eating any of the people she kills so it doesnt even matter. She looks so much like just a normal girl that at one point for some reason shes just wandering around the school dressed up as a student of the school. 440https://i.ur.com/EHB3cZS.png But of course randomly a bunch of terrible bully girls spring up to accost her and undress her to spread pictures of her around the school because... shes just some random weird mute girl they figured they could bully the shit out of. As a person whos read so many other horror manga centered around high schools and teenagers being the fucking scum of the earth I wasnt exactly pleased at these developments. Oh. Here it is. This is a horror manga after all. The cardinal rule of horror manga is we gotta get nudity in there somehow after all. Wait why is this even necessary? Whenever shes in the woods shes basically mostly nude anyways even though she clearly has access to clothes 440https://i.ur.com/Gtu1XR7.png But then thankfully Mashuri just violently and horribly murders all of them with her vines. But then that immediately made me question why isnt this whole manga just this? The actual plot of the manga which Ill get to in a moment in a spoiler tag makes no fucking sense when this plant girl is just capable of doing THIS. https://i.ur.com/AXM9aC4.png Also actually thinking about it even earlier on there was a whole section where theres an actual ragtag bunch of horror Bmovie teen characters who show up because they want to drink in the woods. And it ends exactly as you would probably expect. But Mashuri just wandering around killing people really fucking clashes with the rest of the manga. I mean hell she doesnt even have to wander if she has Bmovie level saps just wandering into her woods on a regular basis. 440https://i.ur.com/Gt3iNQh.png It just does not sync up with all the shit about our protagonist the glasses teacher or the backstory to Mashuri at all. It feels like there was a potentially more interesting manga that the mangaka wanted to do but then also still felt the need to have plant girl go around and murder people because thats obviously the hook of the manga. I want to see a plant girl murder some fools in the woods. Her backstory could have been interesting if it was a bigger part of the manga but it only serves as a justification for Mashuris existence. Aha So thats why theres a plant girl wandering around killing people 500https://i.ur.com/ZlU53XZ.png Yet for some reason by design Mashuri is not even the main character killing people. Instead its Conclusion ...Giving this manga another chance by rereading it actually made me see the problems I have with it a lot clearer. Yet I also kind of liked it a tiny bit more than I think I did the first time I read it? https://i.ur.com/eb4JWvJ.png While there were plenty of forgettable characters that I didnt even mention at all in this review obviously the characters that matter are the teacher and Mashuri and unfortunately theyre both given the spotlight. The handful of times when shes actually allowed to do it Mashuri just cutting loose and creating a whole bunch of viscera was fun. And the teachers character and how he responded to the horror of Mashuri while very nearly bordering on unnecessary was quite entertaining at times as well. I can almost see a pretty decent monster horror manga in this if you just... just trimmed some stuff and balanced the elements out a bit more. 440https://i.ur.com/7yMSltV.png Its trying to do multiple things at once but its just becoming muddled in the process. This is actually a lot more frustrating than some of the bottom of the barrel manga Ive reviewed because I can very easily see an alternate universe version of this thats actually a lot better. After rereading it and writing this review the process of which has made me think about it way more than I did when I originally read it I would give Mashuri no Hako a 55 out of 100. Its a very minute increase in score but honestly Im the sort who usually thinks worse of something the second time experiencing it. So it was a pleasant surprise that I didnt just pass the whole manga off as just average again. It just has a whole bunch of flaws that really weigh it down. Actually that almost sounds more negative... 440https://i.ur.com/GxRlN5i.png