Black Bird 9

Kanoko Sakurakoji – Viz – 2011 – 13+ volumes

Hmm… I was pretty curious how things would turn out after the Big Event at the end of the last volume. I thought it would be a game-changer. I was pretty disappointed, then, when Kyo and Misao spent a good portion of this volume apart because Kyo just loved Misao too much. That’s always a terrible reason for couples to split up, and one that only exists in shoujo manga. I don’t care if you are a demon that’s going to eat your girlfriend. Whatever.

The story was shortened this time, due to a two-chapter side story about Jiro and Taro in the back. I’m not a big fan of extraneous characters in any context, and the 8-member datengu guard around Kyo is almost impossible for me to keep straight, given the relatively… shallow nature of this story. I just can’t be bothered to remember personalities and backstories for characters with almost no facetime. Granted, the guy with the wife and the three triplet children are the most distinctive among them, and they are usually the only ones that get story time. That doesn’t mean that I want to read side stories about jealous brother issues.

On the plus side, Jiro and Taro are very cute, and it’s neat to see them both with their tengu wings.

Anyway, with the side story in the back, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to recover from the stupid split. The story gets a whole lot darker, with a rival clan manipulating Misao by possessing humans and making them kill other humans. This makes Misao feel very, very guilty, and the issue then becomes whether she decides to stay a human and sever all ties with demons, or choose Kyo and leave humans to this suffering.

Kyo “recovers” from pushing Misao away by… pushing her away even harder, then making it look as if he does terrible things to her against her will. This scene was pretty hard to handle, and pushed even my limits for dark drama/slightly smutty shoujo. The book ended on this note, and I’m not entirely sure… what Misao thinks of all this. I’m a little worried. And confused.

This volume is definitely a bit of a rough patch, but I enjoy this series so much that it’s hard not to imagine that I’ll fall in love again when they make it past the current crisis, especially since Kyo and Misao are… so much closer now.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.