Demon Sacred 4

Natsumi Itsuki – Tokyopop – 2011 – 11 volumes

I think of all the Tokyopop series that have ended prematurely, missing the last volume of Alice in the Country of Hearts and the entire last 2/3rds of this series break my heart the most. This series is AMAZING, and I know it’s on its way to all sorts of mind-bending places. I love just about everything about it, and modern shoujo fantasy like this is hard to come by in English. Reading this book has mostly convinced me to suck it up and try to make my way through the Japanese volumes, because I really, really want to know what happens. I doubt anyone will bother to license-rescue this.

The most interesting thing going on right now is, of course, romance related, because I am a shoujo junky. K2 finds out more and more about human rituals dealing with love, and an older woman has appeared that is more than happy to school him in such things. Shinobu’s sister Sophie starts snooping around in Shinobu’s private life and finds K2. And then decides to seduce him. She is basically the only person that knows, since K2 is completely oblivious as to what’s going on and she is careful to keep it from everyone else. Meanwhile, Rina is wrestling with the beginnings of love for K2. Then Mika drops a bombshell at the very end of the book that makes me want to read the rest more than anything. I NEED to know how that ends.

Meanwhile, in the world of exploring the demons, Red Dragon makes an appearance and has an interesting talk with Mika about the nature of growing old and what it means to be a demon. Mika also reveals the three ways in which a demon can die, and why death is a blessing that old demons see as lucky, as demons are less and less likely to die the older they are. The mechanics of demon life become clearer and clearer in every volume, and it’s one of the most interesting things about this series.

Also interesting is the sickness humans catch from demons that reverse-ages them until they turn into infants and disappear. This is illustrated in the story by Mona, Rina’s twin. We haven’t heard very much about this illness other than it’s scary and that the sisters are dealing with it together, but in this volume we begin to see just how many regrets Mona has, and that she’d give anything to be an adult for one day. I’m thinking this is probably going someplace terrible later, and again, I would love to know more about it.

But really, what a wonderfully bizarre fantasy series. It has such an original flavor, and goes pretty far out there without alienating the reader. Reading the first four volumes is worth it, but it’s a shame that the rest will never see the light of day.