Black Bird 6

Kanoko Sakurakoji – Viz – 2010 – 11+ volumes

Okay, so reading two volumes of this back-to-back is a bad idea. The overdose left me looking at the bare bones of the plot, and it wasn’t pretty.

Basically… Sho, Kyo’s evil brother, locks himself in a storehouse with Misao, then tries to have sex with her. Poisonings and bloodlettings commence, as does a tragic flashback to childhood. At the very end of the volume, there is a plot twist where… if I’m reading this right, a being so magical that human blood will poison it asks Kyo to have sex with Misao, then have sex with his daughter to share the maiden’s/Misao’s “essence,” thus curing the daughter.

Yeah.

Again, I do like the shallow naughtiness/trashiness of this series. It’s very earnest and serious without being angsty most of the time, and though there wasn’t a whole lot in this volume, it gets away with a lot of the sex talk between Kyo and Misao because those two are genuinely passionate. The romance elements are good, and the plot is very dark, which is what I like about it. And on some level, I love that Misao has it in her to poison a captor, who then turns the tables by helping himself to her magical healing blood. Yes, it’s kind of stupid, but I still like it. It makes for a lot of suspense and a pretty cool gimmick.

Alas, the characters are also rather shallow, and their best sides are not on display in this volume. The naughtier side of Kyo is M.I.A. lately, and that seems unlikely to change given the fact that the two are in the middle of some sort of sex taboo right now. And… yeah, Misao doesn’t really have a good side, she’s mostly just a damsel in distress.

One really nice thing in this volume is that the folklore elements are starting to play a larger and larger role in the story, and if that develops more it could get pretty exciting. Aside from the Tengu clan, the Tsuchigumo spider demons play a role in this volume, as do the shirohebi snake people in some small part. We don’t see members of either clan, but their powers come into play, which is the most important part (honestly, seeing another episodic story with a member that was somehow involved in the past of the characters would keep me away for good, so it’s better this way). At the end, we get to meet a member of a godlike race of dragon people. I am very excited about the possibilities of seeing more of said dragon people, along with any other godlike magical beings the story cares to present.

The bonus pages are also great, with a brief story about how Sakurakoji threw a party for her mangaka friends, then revealed she just wanted them all over to help with her bonus pages. They were all pretty recognizable shoujo artists too, from Setona Mizushiro to Shoko Akira to Hinako Ashihara. “Yasuko” was the only one I didn’t recognize.

Basically, this is not good, but it is my kind of not good. Even with a mediocre volume like this, and the promise of more dancing around the characters having sex in the future, I’m still kind of looking forward to the next volume. I do like the mythology elements, and yeah, the trashiness is the flavor I enjoy. What can I say? It’s a guilty pleasure. Not one I can enjoy frequently, or in large doses, but still.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.