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By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I’d mentioned in my review of the first volume that Strike the Blood reads like a series that was written in anticipation of being made into an anime. Having now completed the second volume, I’ll go a little further – it reads almost like a novelization, as if the anime had come first. This is actually good in many respects – the fight scenes are excellent and highly easy to visualize, and the normal pauses you see in these sorts of series where the plot is slowly explained are kept to a minimum. It does mean that I have the same issues I had with the first volume, though – the character types are all too predictable, as are the plot twists.

As a case in point, we have Sayaka, Yukina’s former roommate and friend and the orphanage devoted to taking girls and making them into magical superstars. She has a giant hate-on for Kojou, of the sort that we know will turn to love by the end of the book, because of course he’s not like those *other* evil vampires. She also has a pseudo-lesbian obsession with Yukina, which I expect will be promptly dropped now that it’s fulfilled its function as minor yuri bait. It’s disappointing, because while Yukina and Asagi also have elements of cliche written into their characters (elements which are exaggerated a bit more in this second volume), they both manage to feel like read young teenage girls, while Sayaka reads like a caricature.

The worldbuilding here fares better, as we once again see a series that knows it won’t be cancelled for a few volumes, so is content to spin out a few interesting subplots and not actually do anything with them. Koujo’s younger sister is clearly possessed by something, but we never quite find out what. Likewise, Asagi’s hacking abilities are starting to go beyond ‘teen genius’ and into legendary abilities. We meet another powerful vampire here, Vatler, and while he also has his share of cliched behavior, his smug “I did it for the lulz” attitude is more tolerable than Sayaka’s angry not-lesbian.

I will likely be reading more of this, despite my grumping. The prose is some of the smoothest we’ve seen in a Yen On release, with very little of the awkward narrative stuttering you see with a lot of first-person light novel narratives. And as I said earlier, the action scenes are genuinely exciting and not confusing, which is impressive given how much destruction is racked up here. The villain is a terrorist, and you get the sense that the author had seen Die Hard before writing him, as he’s very much in the Alan Rickman vein of “polite yet murderous”. There’s also a character from the first volume who returns – that did surprise me, though sadly it also involved maid fetishism. So it’s a good series, but I do wish that I wasn’t able to see the blueprint it works off of so easily.

By Eiji Masuba. Released in Japan as “Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa” by Akita Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Champion. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I’ve been a little wary of the recent influx in “monster girl” manga, even though I do enjoy several of the titles. It can be a fun genre, but its nature lends itself to a sort of fanservice that I’ve grown out of over the years, and so I always approach new titles wondering how many of them are all large-breasted succubi and accidentally spilling milk all over someone’s face. Thankfully, there are also exceptions, and to its credit Seven Seas has not really leaned one way or the other in licensing the monster girl genre, but simply spread its net wide to gather up everything. And this means that we have titles like My Monster Secret, which has the subtitle “Actually, I Am…”, a literal translation of its original title. Which is just a fun silly comedy with no fanservice in sight.

The literal title is presumably meant to be followed by a fill-in-the-blank, with the first girl on the cover conveying “Actually, I Am… a Vampire.” She’s Shiragami, who is supposed to be cool and aloof, and who our hero has totally fallen for. In reality, she’s mostly cool so that people don’t see her fangs, and the aloof becomes goofy fairly quickly, though at times you can see the author struggling to see how “ditzy” he should make her. Acting as her foil is Asahi, a boy whose poker face is entirely absent, to the point where he’s actually shunned a bit by the class for his total inability to keep anything a secret. The trouble is that Shiragami’s secret isn’t just a love letter, she’s in big trouble if it’s found out. What’s a boy who can’t lie to do?

The plot and characters spin out as you’d expect. There’s the teenage newshound girl we’ve seen in many an anime, only this time she’s portrayed as straight up evil, which is refreshing. We also see another supposed stoic cool girl, only this one turns out to be an alien – something that should have been more obvious from the giant screw on the back of her head, which opens up to reveal her much tinier self. If you think all of this leads to over the top reactions and lots of falling over, you’re absolutely right. The goal here is comedy, with I expect some heartwarming interspersed as the series goes on.

The main reason I really enjoyed the first volume of the series is the art style, which is appealing yet odd. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, with very wide mouths and expressive screams. No one’s really attractive here, which is not what I was expecting – I’d thought the vampire and alien would be standard “beautiful”, but even they’re drawn to look strange more than anything else. Basically, the art helps the comedy. If you’re looking for a “monster girl” title just to say that you’ve read one… well, wait a month and get Franken Fran. But if you want two, this is a good choice. It’s relatively clean, especially for a Champion series, and genuinely amusing.