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manga: Black Bird Vol 1
Oct. 16th, 2009 05:13 pmMisao has been harassed by demons for as long as she can remember. They trick her, pile on her back so that she can barely move, and harass her at all times, until her classmates think she’s incredibly weird. On her sixteenth birthday, however, this changes and the demons start actively trying to hurt her. At the same time, her handsome new math teacher reveals that not only is he the childhood friend who she barely remembers and identifies as her first love, but also that he’s a tengu, and wants to marry her.
Misao, it seems, is a special kind of human born only once every hundred years whose blood can make demons more powerful, so ever demon wants to either marry her, or kill her and eat her. Being a shoujo heroine is never easy. Being the only demon willing to wait five minutes and let Misao decide whether or not she wants to marry him, Kyo, of course, is her designated love interest, and is definitely of the “alpha controller” variety, though a mostly tolerable one. He also has the ability to heal her wounds by licking them. Naturally, she gets many cuts in places that lead to sexually suggestive scenes, such as the insides of her thighs, on her neck, on her chest, on her shoulderblades…
I cannot believe this is from the same mangaka as the sweet and innocent Backstage Prince! But it is. It’s a pretty openly skeevy setup, where the heroine is literally powerless in her own life and has to rely on a controlling male, and everyone wants to either eat her or get her in bed. It helps a lot that Misao doesn’t think much of Kyo’s motives just being to control her himself, and is aware of when she’s being manipulated, she’s just powerless to stop it. Also, since it’s about a tall, darkhaired man prone to black kimono’s who tends to be grabby with a younger, smaller, blonde girl who doesn’t appreciate the grabbing, I can’t help but keep mentally comparing them to Samurai Deeper Kyo’s Kyo and Yuya, though Kyo/Yuya is way more palatable.
The art is nice, if a bit typical for shoujo art, and the only really interesting character designs are the “real” forms of some of the demons. Despite all the problems, though, I find it interesting, though I can’t help but think of plenty of other mangaka who would take the same setup and manage to have the heroine way more in control of her fate, and doing more about it.
Misao, it seems, is a special kind of human born only once every hundred years whose blood can make demons more powerful, so ever demon wants to either marry her, or kill her and eat her. Being a shoujo heroine is never easy. Being the only demon willing to wait five minutes and let Misao decide whether or not she wants to marry him, Kyo, of course, is her designated love interest, and is definitely of the “alpha controller” variety, though a mostly tolerable one. He also has the ability to heal her wounds by licking them. Naturally, she gets many cuts in places that lead to sexually suggestive scenes, such as the insides of her thighs, on her neck, on her chest, on her shoulderblades…
I cannot believe this is from the same mangaka as the sweet and innocent Backstage Prince! But it is. It’s a pretty openly skeevy setup, where the heroine is literally powerless in her own life and has to rely on a controlling male, and everyone wants to either eat her or get her in bed. It helps a lot that Misao doesn’t think much of Kyo’s motives just being to control her himself, and is aware of when she’s being manipulated, she’s just powerless to stop it. Also, since it’s about a tall, darkhaired man prone to black kimono’s who tends to be grabby with a younger, smaller, blonde girl who doesn’t appreciate the grabbing, I can’t help but keep mentally comparing them to Samurai Deeper Kyo’s Kyo and Yuya, though Kyo/Yuya is way more palatable.
The art is nice, if a bit typical for shoujo art, and the only really interesting character designs are the “real” forms of some of the demons. Despite all the problems, though, I find it interesting, though I can’t help but think of plenty of other mangaka who would take the same setup and manage to have the heroine way more in control of her fate, and doing more about it.