A good portion of the book's first half is devoted to characterization: we learn, for instance, that Reiko has periodic pangs of guilt for spending more time at work than with her son - and that care-free professor Ryiuji may be having an affair with his teaching assistant. The first point works to layer an additional level of anxiety onto Reiko's need to solve the mystery (has her negligence as a single parent doomed her son?) The second feels more like a plot detail more elaborately addressed in the book or movie.

Despite the distancing look of his figures, Inagaki's art has its darkly evocative moments: Reiko's visitation, a scene where Ryiuji seems to see his ex-wife being stalked by a barefoot bleeding figure, an effectively rendered murder by a well and our duo's attempt at recovering a body from that self-same well. That last scene, which comprises over twenty pages, is almost enough to make me ignore the artwork (the page where a rotting corpse rises from the water is a real Tales from the Crypt moment) - as is a scene where wiseacre Ryiuji sees a menacing figure shambling from within a TV screen toward him. Still can't help thinking that it all would be more effective if an artist like Junji (Uzumaki) Ito were handling the artwork, though.

Would I recommend The Ring to other manga dabblers as their first full introduction to this story? Probably not. The presentation doesn't convey the same sense of growing dread that I suspect is maintained in both the original pic and its American remake. Instead, it alternates between brightly lit scenes of characters talking to each other - and dark gray scenes of scary spectres stalking 'em. Perhaps manga Ring isn't so removed from those old hokey Dell movie comics, after all. . .