Fairy Cube Vol 2

[meganbmoore]

Hoo boy…where to start? And you know, no opinions of mine can be half as entertaining as just trying to recount this volume.

OK! Ian’s mother is a leanan sidhe, making Ian half-human, half-fae. Tokage is actually Ian’s twin, but he was born without a body, and mom locked him in a cave because she didn’t need a bodiless half-fae child when she had a human child. This led to Tokage being taken in by a fae village, who later decided to use him as a sacrifice to keep a god bound. Except the bound god (I think) gave him powers, and he slaughtered the whole village in his little tiff. Just for kicks, it’s revealed afterwards that his foster mother who gave him up so he could be a sacrifice tried to save him by breaking his shackles.

As far as angsty origins go, I’d say that it was impressive long before the village tried to sacrifice him to an ancient god. And I’m not sure, but I think the god is running around somewhere.

There’s also Ian and Tokage’s aunt, Lise. She is looking for mom, who is currently a goth loli 10-year-old who lives in a room full of stuffed rabbits. She’s either the guest or the prisoner of Shira, a teenaged crossdresser with a pacemaker who also goes by Scylla and Isaiah, as near as I can tell. She’s behind the fairy yakuza or some such, and has a one-eyed stoic swordsman boytoy butler named Raven, who has an angsty past with Kaito, the other one eyed guy who is the one who was hooking fairies up with human bodies.

Because way back when, Raven was Kaito’s mistreated slave with bound eyes and Kaito was the mistreated boytoy of the fairy queen. When Raven defended Kaito to the fairy king, they both got dumped in the desert. After a few months of dragging Kaito’s sorry butt through the desert, they’re attacked by a monster who gouges out Kasito’s eye, causing Raven to free his eyes and teleport them to his home where he’s some sort of lord. While I rather think Raven should have done that in the first place, I’m not sure why Kaito blames him. Yet he does, using his…uhm…vampiric-like seduction powers (he’s a cancanagh, which I gather is something of a male leanan sidhe) to make Raven’s fiancee deathly ill, and demands one of Raven’s eyes to save her. Raven surprises everyone by complying. Somewhere in there, Kaito was also sneaking off to the human world and seducing and killing women in the town of the grandmother of the boy whose body Ian is living in. Apparently, she’s the only one he didn’t kill. No idea what happened to Raven’s people.

Then there’s our actual main characters. We do have them mixed in somewhere. Kaori Yuki acknowledges what little moral discernment I can apply to her manga by having Rin mention that there’s something weird about her boyfriend being in the body of a kid. This is said during forehead nuzzling. I’m not sure she realizes that the body is technically a corpse, too. Later, Tokage corners Rin and tries to rape her. Or maybe he does. Or maybe he just wanted to rip her clothes off so he could brand her. It could be any of the above. Regardless, he fixes it that anyone she touches that she has strong feelings for bursts into flames. This actually has potential for great “WOES! WE CANNOT TOUCH!” territory. Ian certainly disagrees with it. Rin decides to try to use it on Tokage. That doesn’t work, but she has better luck later when she grabs Raven, screaming “I HATE YOU!” so Ian and Kaito can escape.

This leads to her being the abducted damsel in distress, but I think I trust Raven more than I do Kaito anyway. This also leads to quasi-not-quite-ok-maybe-but-with-death-threats friendship with Shira/Scylla/Isaiah, which was rather fun.

Somewhere in there, I think Tokage was keeping Ian’s abusive father chained up in the basement or bathrom or something and was slowly killing him. He ended up either dead or hospitalized. I didn’t catch it, what with all the wandering in the desert and spontaneous combustion and eye-exchange and being born without a body. I’m only human. Unlike anyone in the cast except for Rin. Oh, and I think the entire school has been taken over by Kaito’s customers. Or the fairy yakuza. Or maybe they’re the same. I’m not sure.

We are disappointed that Ainsel did almost nothing this volume.
 
Most mangaka are nice enough to spread all this out over several volumes, to prevent brain damage.

Comments

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

I was sent a review copy of this volume a while back, and it shattered my brain. (I'd read a bit of Kaori Yuki before, mainly in the form of a volume of Angel Sanctuary every few months, but I'm not exactly used to her.) Now I have a review copy of vol. 3, and I'm a little scared to open it. (Not for fear of reading it, but for fear of needing to write a review that makes any sense.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine trying to properly review this. i've only read a little over half of AS so far, but it's pretty tame as compared to this.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I don't even remember what I said--I'll have to reread the old review before reviewing this one.

AS confuses the heck out of me, but yeah...nothing on this one. ^^

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

With AS, you mostly just need a chart to help keep up with who did what with who in what incarnation, and what secret IDs they have. Here, you need a chart for that, and for the races, and for the subplots an...well, for everything.