YMMV / Mieruko-chan

• Adorkable: Yuria cannot wink to save her life. This is her best attempt◊.
• Awesome Music: The opening's "Yamete! Yamete! Mou, Yamete!" describes Miko's predicament and her desire to no longer see nightmarish ghosts whilst also being a bop.
• Base-Breaking Character: To an extent, but there is a growing split over the Ichijou sisters. Supporters like their dynamic and creepiness factor, as well as potential Ship Tease vis-a-vis Miko. Detractors find their Yandere stereotype tiresome and overdone, and dislike said Ship Tease as they believe that any sort of romance will undermine the horror aspects of the series.
• Genius Bonus: Several parts of the manga will make much more sense to people who are familiar with Japanese culture, religion or history.
  • In chapter 3, why does Miko uses a hand sanitizer against the ghost? Because in Japanese belief, alcohol is one of the items able to banish or exorcize spirits.
  • The convenience store ghost of chapter 9 seems to have died of a violent robbery, due to the several bullet holes in its body. Given that it keeps insisting that the tax for the item Miko buys is 3% instead of the current 10%, it might have died during the 90s, when Japan experienced heavy economic recession and increasing crime rate.
  • The powerful and terrifying female-looking ghost made out of a barrel and chains that haunts the tunnel seems to be a reference to the horrifying murder of Junko Furuta in the late 80s.
  • Several of the ghosts seem to be based off traditional Japanese monsters and entities. The fact Zen's mother's ghost is a giant half-spider woman, beyond reflecting her manipulative and possessive nature, might also be a reference to the jorogumo yokai, while the ghost Miko encounters when first seeing Romm might be a nod to the legend of the Kuchisake-onna (it is a female ghost dragged behind her a male corpse, and who wears a mask hiding a monstrous mouth).
• I Am Not Shazam: The protagonist is named Miko-chan, not Mieruko-chan. "Mieruko" is a pun on her name and the Japanese verb miru (to see) coupled with the feminine particle ko (basically the equivalent of the -ette suffix in English), so the literal translation of the title is "Little Miss Seeing Girl Miko", or "Little Miss Priestess Seeing Girl" for a different meaning of Miko.
• Memetic Mutation: Your favorite Studio Mibli film^Explanation During Miko and Hana's first visit to the mysterious shrine, Hana remarks that the environment reminds her of a "Studio Mibli film", with Studio Mibli being an obvious stand-in for Studio Ghibli. In line with this, fans went ahead and renamed Studio Ghibli's famous titles with fun variations or spoofs of them of their own, like My Nearby Tororo and The Dog Returns (as Hana named them in-series).
• Moral Event Horizon: Zen's mother has already crossed this for being mentally and emotionally abusive to her son, especially having murdered every cat Zen owned. After making an attempt on Miko's life when she tried to stop the abuse, this finally reveals the monster the woman truly is, both inside and outside.
• Paranoia Fuel: At least one dangerous ghost has been able to take the appearance of a living person to deceive Miko and check if she can see them in order to be able to kill her, something the ghost tries as soon as it confirms she can. Miko is saved that time, but that means that other seemingly ordinary people that she sees around every day could be other hostile ghosts too.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: As aforementioned, the anime adaptation OVERALL received decent reviews with many anime-onlies enjoying it. Manga readers' opinions, on the other hand, were far more mixed, with a substantial majority agreeing that there were generally three base-breaking alterations:
  • The first and most notable complaint was in the anime's unnecessary amount of fanservice that some felt was egregious to the plot's narrative. Given Studio Passione's reputation, this was to be expected. Nevertheless, although there was some fanservice (Which was mild in comparison to the adaptation) in volume 1, past chapter 17 and the number of fanservice material in the manga dropped to essentially zero as the series becomes much more serious. However, the anime continued and even magnified its fanservice to even moments that are meant to be serious or emotional. Suffice to say, detractors absolutely loathe Passione's take on the manga as it ruined certain serious moments and completely changed Mieruko-chan's entire atmosphere. It comes to the point that in some fan forums, there is a distinct divide between anime-onlies and manga readers; literally splitting the fandom in two.
  • The second base-breaking change amongst manga readers is the final episode of the anime, where it outright rushed and spoiled one of the major twists of the Shrine Arc before it even began: Showing the true face of the Shrine God whereas, in the manga, it was a long build up before finally revealing the true nature of the God as most of the arc was a set up for the character development for both Romm and Mitsue.
  • The third and final divisive point was the depiction of the ghosts and monsters. Whilst some did not mind the adaptation, others felt that the horror aspects was diminished when almost every ghost is coloured in a purple haze. For detractors, the reason why the ghosts of Mieruko-chan were so frightening - other than its design - was the sophisticated use of black-white contrast and shading, allowing certain horrifying features to stand out so much more. Whereas when coloured in, the contrast gets muddied in the process. As such, some felt that Mieruko-chan would be better off animated only in black and white.
• The Woobie: Miko Yotsuya. It seems the entire series was made to watch her suffer. She has to see nightmare-inducing ghosts every day and she can't do anything about it. She is forced to be a Stoic Woobie in this face of all of this, not even afforded the luxury of looking scared for fear of attracting the ghosts' attention. All her attempts of dealing with the ghosts are doomed to fail and nearly get her killed. And she's rarely given any Throw the Dog a Bone to make up for her suffering. Throughout the series, you just wanna give the girl a hug for what she's been through.