Youkai Encounters

A lighthearted and fun read to pass your time with laughs and giggles! A supernatural anime condensed into the highest form of entertainment: fiction books. 

Opening Comments:

Okay hello, I'm writing this before I have started reading the book and I just want to say I am excited. I am pumped. But first of all, I already want to apologize in advance because I know this critique is going to take forever to publish. 

I also want to say that ever since I accepted your form, I was already so excited to read your book I almost wanted to rush through the critique I was working on. This is because I am a fan of anime, specifically, supernatural anime. And the moment I set eyes on your cover and read your blurb, I just knew I'm going to enjoy this one to the fullest. I guess you could say you hit your target audience with me. 

But more than  that, I'm also interested in how you're going to write a book in a way that it keeps the essence of an anime, slice of life series. I aspire to create a book as such, but has never really gotten to doing it. Alas, maybe this is a calling. 

However, I know I must be adding a lot of pressure and high expectations on your book right now, so I'm going to keep as much of an open mind as I can. Enjoy the critique!

First Impressions:

Cover - It's beautiful. It may not look that striking or any impressive color blending and such, but the simplicity and solidness of its colors really make it look neat and fitting of its genre. 

Title - Again, so fitting for the genre! It also somehow gives me an anime-like feel, probably because of the term 'youkai'. And I like that you didn't change that word into whatever it is in English, since it gives a sense of authenticity and anime-like feel.

Description - Yet again, fitting for the genre. It gives a fun, exciting aura that I usually feel when I want to start a new anime. The description does well in giving visual images to the reader and makes us excited for the book.

However, there are just things I want to address. First, let me just add here the whole blurb so I can have something to refer to.

Here, I highlighted "At dito papasok sa kwento." The transition from the beginning paragraph to this new topic could be done better. Now it isn't that bad, but again, it could be better because it sounds like you (as the narrator) is actively inside the story, it creates a little inconsistency with the narrative point of view. 

What we can do here is to simply omit what I have highlighted and enter the subject of Mayumi immediately after the beginning paragraph. 

"Si Mayumi ay isang eighteen-year-old senior high school student (I just realized the whole onslaught of 'student student third year blabla' adjectives could be omitted too). Hindi na bago sa kaniya ang..."

Despite the absence of any sort of transition words, this makes it a lot shorter, straightforward, and less clunky. There's also another thing I want to address here about consistency but as I read your book I realize it's something to do with Writing, so I'll leave that topic to that part of the critique now. 

First chapter - Starting it with the main character going to school is a classic, I've nothing wrong to say about that. It's just a good thing it didn't start with Mayumi waking up. Instead, it started with her going to the park, earphones on, riding her bicycle. The description of the wind and the park was really good and relatable too; the crisp morning air is always a delight. 

Though this part of the scene was good, I kind of wished we could have a little dialogue of her saying goodbye to her mother or her parents. Since majority of the book was of her in the supernatural world or doing missions and stuff, I kind of got worried and curious where her parents were especially at the first chapters. It's not much of a change anyway, but I think it adds to the accuracy and believability of the book. It's a good place to introduce your character's voice early on too.

But then after that, we meet the racoon. The description of Goro was really cute, I liked it. Overall the whole chapter wasn't a bore and a lot happened in the span of it without making it seem too fast paced, that's a great thing! In a 'did it hook me' sense, it did, but the blurb and whole premise already had a huge hold on me so if the first chapter was or wasn't 'hooking', I wouldn't know because I was already rushing to the next chapter. 

Characterization:

At first I had mixed feelings with Mayumi because of how disrespectful she's being to the youkais, though at some point she started growing on me when I saw the youkais don't seem to mind her antics. That said, Mayumi is very likeable. She's honestly funny and has an interesting and vibrant personality. She stands out on the screen and doesn't seem like a passive character. 

I love her interactions with Goro and Haru; her and Goro's banter is something I look forward to in their interactions. And despite them roasting each other in every way possible, you didn't forget to show heartwarming and wholesome scenes of them taking care of each other. They're honestly like siblings, though I'm not sure who the older one would be here XD.

Mayumi and Haru are also really nice. I am not as invested in their romance, but they're a nice duo. Mayumi balances out Haru's rather dry and straightforward personality, which I love in any romance trope. 

Mayumi's a bit of a tsundere, but her motivation is lacking. Though the story and her experiences themselves strengthen her reason for staying with the youkais, the very root of it is missing. Like why did she even want to keep seeing the youkais in the first place? It almost seemed like something bothersome to her in the start of the book when she kept on ignoring them. 

It's only when she finally immersed herself in the youkai world that I could understand why she'd want to keep seeing them, but at the very root of it, I want a more concrete motivation. Like maybe she was saved by a youkai once and despite her ignoring them, she feels indebted and actually tries to help them in the real world as much as she can. Or maybe because she's been seeing these youkai for so long, she also witnesses how they protect humans and forms a sort of 'we're good' outlook on them. Though even that won't be enough of a motivation. She needs a concrete reason on why she wants to keep seeing the youkai, given all the trouble she got through just to get the bracelet. For entertainment? That's hardly a motivation.

Also I could see a lot of anime inspiration here for the characters. Unless I'm wrong? For one, Haru and Hatsu's character description resemble Tomoe from Kamisama kiss, but that's reasonable since they are fox yokais. And it helps with establishing a familiar connection with Haru's character for people who have already watched Kamisama kiss. Though, I still would advice maybe a mention of something unique to them so the thought that you're just copying the basic anime blueprint for hot supernatural characters wouldn't cross the reader's minds. 

Another one is the evil twin trope. Hatsu reminded me a lot of Tsukasa from Toilet bound Hanako kun. But that's only on his introduction parts. After we get to learn more about him, we could immediately establish he is not psychopathic, and is actually more of a broken character. He's just always in the shadow of his brother, even when he's trying his very best. It's relatable and sad, and I like it. 

Conflict and Plot:

For this to make more sense, I would like to summarize the whole book. If you are a reader who's interested in reading this book and don't want to get spoiled, I suggest skipping this review altogether (why are you even here?).

Okay, let's see. 

Mayumi is a high school girl who has been seeing youkais all her life. As the first chapter suggests, she seems quite annoyed by these creatures, but do find them a little cute. Still, she doesn't want to get involved with them. Now she randomly encounters an (adorable) youkai that seem to have been drinking alcohol unknowingly. By a random turn of events, she accidentally reveals the fact that she can see these supernatural beings and gets dragged to the youkai's shrine. 

(As I was revising this I realized there's a bit of a plot hole here regarding: if this possibility that she could be discovered by the youkai has been prevelant all her life, why now and not when she was younger and more careless? This could again be solved by simple tweaking of motivation or maybe even backstory as we weren't really shown Mayumi's backstory)

Apparently, she was now in danger of other evil youkais who could hurt her. Okay, pause, I have something to say on this part. First, through the book no evil youkai actually...attacked her? Like I forgot this was even the initial driving point of the story. And it can stay that way, it won't hurt the plot much. Except it could be done better by first introducing these evil youkai. I suggest creating a scene right before Goro (The racoon youkai) says she's in danger. Show it to us. Put Mayumi in danger. This will make us understand exactly why she even needs the youkais protection. 

Or, in the current plot's case, why she needs to stop seeing the youkai. The problem is this motivation for seeing the youkai comes off...sudden? As I've said before, her motivation doesn't resonate strong enough for me to be convinced. Convinced she's a fully well rounded character. Here I suggest once more: Introduce us to her first. For example, I imagine Mayumi to be someone who...wants to be special. She wants to be someone unique and someone who is worth paying attention to, someone worthy to be loved. And as she sees it, this peculiar power of hers, is something she actually sort of cherishes as something that molds her idea of self. This is a very relatable drive for her motivation, and helps the character feel more complete (though she's already a nice character, I see many potential for even better). First, she resonates with the reader. And second, her motivation will become fairly high with this. A person's identification of self is something poetic, and strong, and driving. And everyone wants to feel like they're someone special sometimes. 

Next I will explain again the plot in shorter summary. 

Mayumi finds herself in the youkai world, where she meets Haru, the shinto god with long white hair, of fox origin, and a rather strict personality. He then proceeds to tell her the trials she needs to go through to get sight-seeing privileges to the youkai. Again, as she spends more time with the youkai, I can see the bond and why she would want to keep seeing the youkai again, so good job on that. The only issue anyway is the initial drive for that motivation. 

The only way for her to be protected while still seeing the youkai would be to wear the bracelet that wards off evil spirits. But for her to obtain this, she first needs to run errands for the youkai, called missions, where she and Haru goes supernatural hunting and addressing the concerns of the people involving youkai. As unusual as it sounds, I actually think Haru--the shinto god, supervising a human with these kinds of jobs is fine and even natural. A human being able to co exist with them is something huge, I assume, so it's only natural the shinto god himself would want to keep an eye on her. Plus, it makes for good romance and dynamic. 

After that, there are more supernatural anime tropes like the festival where all the gods gather together and such. I loved these scenes because they add a nice atmosphere and are just genuinely fun. Overall the middle parts, though they were simply Mayumi, Haru, and Goro going on missions, were pretty fun. I loved the comedy too, I find myself laughing out loud a couple lot of times. It was very lighthearted and cute. 

The most that stuck with me was probably the scene with the dude and his youkai girlfriend. It had some pretty nice themes for romance and youkai-human relations. Maybe my only gripe is Mayumi interrupting the couple and them watching their heartfelt moment just felt...uh... awkward to me? Overall I liked that part though.

However, we get into the more plot points of this critique. We look at conflict: apparently, Hatsu (Haru's evil twin), Haru, and Mayumi had a love triangle in the past. Where instead of the usual love triangle, it turned a one-eighty. Mayumi, who now seems to like Haru, actually loved Hatsu in the past. And in that past, Haru liked her, but she doesn't return the feelings. Honestly I liked the love triangle, I didn't expect the main guy to have unrequited feelings instead of the villain (Hatsu), so nice twist.

However, as I was writing this I fail to grasp the details of the 'conflict'. It seemed as though Hatsu isn't really a villain even at the start, he was just introduced in a devilish light I suppose. In other cases I would've gone on a rant about the importance of conflict and a solid plot. Yet, I don't seem to be upset at all. Likely because the genre is slice of life and lighthearted comedy? Though the conflict was never there, we almost felt like it was. Honestly great job on establishing Hatsu in that bad light, because we thought he'd be the one to break or wreak havoc on the main couple, and we'd been wary. 

Then you create a turn that makes us almost feel guilty for thinking that of him when we learn his backstory. I like it. Though maybe the introduction to the sudden flashback can be done better. I suggest building up on a scene and then introducing the flashback. Though I'm not quite sure what happened and how exactly Mayumi got these flashbacks? As for the flashback scenes itself, I love them. Except I was quite confused at first (likely because of the lack of buildup, or from the fact that you used 'batang Haru' and 'batang Hatsu' and I don't know I just had to reread like 5 paragraphs 50 times to get it.) However, I advice against using *name POV* or *flashback* when doing such scenes. It's much safer to simply write *500 years ago, on the same day* or *7 years ago* or phrases of same ominous feel. Good that I didn't catch much of these in your book, though I recall seeing one, just one.

Okay elaborate on 'building up on a scene', basically to create a structured series of events that lead to Mayumi getting these flashbacks. I suggest maybe dropping some clues about this past self of hers when she was in Hatsu's shrine/prefecture(?). And then drop some more clues on why exactly was it possible for her to get these peculiar flashbacks. And instead of her wandering through the forest for no reason and getting lost, she could've been searching for more clues on this past self of hers, or of the woman in the picture. This creates a more solid feel for her and makes her move the plot as the main character.

Despite that though, I loved the flashbacks. They created a peculiar atmosphere and you really illustrated the twins' relationship beautifully, I especially loved the love triangle twist. Not to mention past Mayumi also had a very striking presence to the story.

Pacing:

I love the pacing, it's just right. It's a short read, which right now I love more than slowburns who couldn't make me care for its characters. This pacing though, was nice and fun, almost laidback but not dragging its feet. It didn't feel slow or too fast, just right. 

Theme:

I could see some itty bitty pieces of theme that could be woven and presented even better. There's the theme with youkais and their relationship with humans. Just as with humans who aren't only bad or only good, there are youkais who blend in between. Regarding the youkai's relationship with humans however, we can deduce that even though humans aren't as thankful to them anymore, they still continue to protect and wish only the best for us. Sort of like heroes. 

These are the themes I could see here, though they weren't really as pronounced as I would've liked it to. That's fine, what's good is the readers could still see theme. 

If you would like it to be more pronounced and impactful though, I suggest first working with Mayumi's motivation as I have already said above. 

Writing:

I have some issues with the writing and I think it stems from the fact that this is written in basically 3 languages: Filipino, English, and a little bit of Japanese. 

Because it has three languages, the setting of the story (though we know it is set in Japan), becomes a little complicated.  Specifically, the narrative voice. On one hand there's the comfortable and fun Filipino narration, then we immediately--without transition--change to English, now we add a bit of Japanese. It's giving the readers whiplash. 

I do know what TagLish is, but TagLish is different from the way you wrote the transitions here between English and Tagalog. There's an all Filipino sentence, and on the next sentence there's English. Instead of the two mixing together, they're instead jumbled together with no sense of connectivity whatsoever. 

Though I did see some instances in which you managed to mix the two languages in a way that makes it TagLish and not TagalogEnglish, so good job on those. But to make the writing more cohesive, I suggest you adjust your language when you switch from Tagalog to English. 

For example:

(These examples have no connection with the story itself I just kind of made it up XD.)

1. Bumagsak ang panga ko nang nakita ko siya. He wore a black suit with a white dress shirt beneath, the first two buttons undone.

2. Bumagsak ang panga ko nang nakita ko ang suot niya. Kung mukha na siyang yayamanin noon, mas lalong lumakas ang swabe niya ngayon sa suit niyang kulay itim at puting dress shirt. Napalunok ako nang mahulog ang mata sa nakalantad niyang dibdib. 

I added a little more description to make it connect more seamlessly. But now you can see the narrative voice doesn't suddenly shift from one language to the next. I suggest sticking with Tagalog and omitting the moments I mentioned above, as this helps not only in consistency but also with voice. 

Also right here: "A green thick vein" (I lost the picture so I'm just typing it) there are issues with the order of adjectives. Adjectives that express opinion or quality come first before things that describe like color, size, shape. In this case it should be 'a thick green vein.'

I also advice against using phrases like 'the last thing I knew' or 'before I knew it' or in its Filipino counterpart, 'nandito na kami.' 'Nandito na kami' isn't the exact translation of the former examples but the problem is the same: breaking narration. It sounds like the author itself breaking the momentum and telling instead of showing. 

'The last thing I knew' or 'before I knew it' however, can be used sparingly. Though if it's possible to avoid it, I always advice so. Remove this phrases and go headfirst onto the action instead to keep the pacing quick and remove any unnecessary words. In this case though, it's fine. 

Also the first sentence I highlighted here could do even better in Tagalog than in English. 

'Hindi ko napansing unti-unti nang lumalapit ang kamay ko sa liwanag.' 

*The picture file I added decided it wanted to go a few paragraphs down so...

Flows better right?

There's this annoying trend with TagLish or Filipino Wattpad books that I absolutely despise. It's abruptly changing into English when something important or the author wants to convey something as 'cool' to the readers. First, the Filipino language is more than capable of executing 'cool' or important scenes/lines. Second, it ruins the flow of narration especially since you've been writing in Tagalog/TagLish the whole time. Switching to fluent English just doesn't do the scene justice. 

There are also multiple times where the English does need a little help. Here's some things I can offer help on 

Tenses-

When using tenses, it is often painstakingly obvious when something isn't right. So try reading the sentence out to help determine what part is wrong. Just remember, past is past, present is present, and future is future. They can't be mixed. 

NO - I will came to your house tomorrow. 

YES - I will come to your house tomorrow.

YES 2X - I'll drop by your house tomorrow. 

Also make sure to play around with your word choices. There are times where you could've used different words that'll work better with what you're trying to convey. Again, simply reading the sentences could already help you determine whether something is wrong. 

Here are some examples I screenshotted. 

NOTE: I screenshotted these using my phone and am writing this in my laptop. For some reason I can't add spaces between each picture so I'll just add the notes for each at the end. 

2nd Picture- Especially in the first chapters, you used 'hilaw' frequently. 

First picture with green highlights- This is the writing and description I'm talking about! I love the descriptions here because you managed to combine Tagalog and English without one, making it awkward, and two, you made it actually make sense. This is the description I'm looking for. One that doesn't just abruptly change languages. 

2nd to last picture- This was what I was talking about with 'nandito na kami.' It could be enhanced simply using a basic description of the river. Also I highlighted the dialogue here because I simply loved how you closed this chapter. Absolutely beautiful. I'm actually ashamed to say I didn't see that coming because I genuinely thought a new character will be introduced since the description in the first sentence was vague.

Dialogue:

Love how Mayumi's dialogues and way of speaking sort of changes when she speaks with Haru and Goro in contrast with how she speaks with Hatsu. I noticed how she was a lot more comfortable with Haru and Goro, while she speaks a lot more formal (?) and uses a lot more English words with Hatsu. I assume that's because Hatsu has an intimidating aura and usually speaks English, so Mayumi subconsciously tried to fit herself in that standard. 

I also love the way you describe characters using dialogue. Here are some amazing examples I screenshotted from your book. It removes unnecessary descriptions. 

The dialogues in general are amazing and I could almost hear them off the page. They sound natural with the scene, the banter, and everything. 

Accuracy and Originality:

Okay I have some questions. 

I'm not sure if I just haven't watched enough supernatural anime, but are cellphones supposed to work on supernaturals? There was also a scene where Mayumi took a silly picture of Goro and was able to look back on it on her phone. I've read Toilet Bound and there was a scene when Yashiro and her blond friend took a selfie with Hanako and he only appeared as a black floating blob. Even in real life most 'supernatural' pictures are just as creepy and definitely not as fun and detailed as the one described in that one scene. 

There's also the texting part shown in the screenshot above. I'm not sure if they have WiFi in the supernatural realm. Or even if clocks from the human realm work there. I may just be stupid, I don't know, but as a reader I was confused about this part. If I was wrong, a small line of explanation would be nice. And If I was correct, it could be changed. 

As for originality, Youkai Encounters runs on anime tropes, which is fine. These familiar scenes and tropes itself make it enjoyable for the readers who love to watch anime, and now they can read something that resembles it too. The book itself has its own, unique charm anyway, with the comedy and the fun characters, it's a nice read. 

Personal Enjoyment:

I enjoyed it! Even before I read the book, I already knew I would love it. And you did not disappoint. Youkai Encounters kept me entertained until the very last line, and actually one of the first books I've read in a long time that I could actually handle reading a bunch of chapters in one sitting (I swear this reader's burnout needs to stop). Overall, I loved it!

Closing Comments:

Hold on! Before I could leave, I forgot to add this part and I don't really know in which part I should sneak it in soo.

"He probably heard that a lot of times by the looks he was giving." The interpretation of his look was too much. No one can catch that much by a look. You could simply say 'he looked annoyed/in disbelief/down'. Plus, he confirms this by the next dialogue anyway, so it's fine to leave out that description. 

That is all for the review. I hope this helped you in any way at all and that you take this critique seriously yet not personally. All criticism are for your book's own good and is not an attack on you as a person. 

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