Hiroshi Shiibashi’s Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan began in Weekly Shonen Jump on 8 March 2008 and ended on 28 December 2012 at chapter 218, collected in 25 volumes. Rikuo Nura is in line to lead the Nura clan of yokai, but only a quarter of his blood is yokai, and he spends his days as an ordinary middle schooler trying to avoid the position.
At night his form changes and the yokai Rikuo appears, and that doubling is the frame of the series. The Nura clan is not a boss with underlings but an alliance of yokai from different traditions, and fear, in the specific sense of the awe a yokai can command, functions as the rule that sets how strong any of them is. The opposing clans, including the one led by Hagoromo Gitsune, operate under the same rule.
It draws widely on Japanese yokai folklore while laying the structure of an organised crime story over it, and the brush-like handling of the art is often mentioned. Complete at 25 volumes, with an animated adaptation.
