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By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan as “Otoyomegatari” by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine fellows!. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I have reached the point in this series where I genuinely do enjoy the adventures of Amir, Karluk, and their family, and I’m pleased to see we’ll be headed back there for Vol. 8. But I will admit that my top 3 volumes of this series have all been the ones that venture away from the ‘main’ characters and focus on English researcher Mr. Smith… or rather, focus on where he ends up in his travels, as he also barely figures in this volume. Instead, we get a different kind of wedding, as two already married wives with young children find each other and we are introduced to a marriage ceremony between two women who vow to be Avowed Sisters, a concept that reminds me of Anne Shirley’s bosom friends.

Our heroine this volume is Anis, a young merchant’s wife who is married to a caring husband and has a young child, but still feels there’s something lacking in her life – she *is* happy, but knows she could be happier. After talking with her maidservant, she decides to start going to the public baths, and there meets up with the shy Sherine, who is also married, and bonds with her immediate.y And by ‘bonds’, I mean ‘falls in love with’, as we see immediately that Anis is physically and emotionally attracted to the reserved Sherine. They bond really fast – something remarked on by everyone – and eventually agree to become Avowed Sisters, with a ceremony led by one of the female elders. Of course, this being a dramatic story rather than a history, the moment the ceremony is over, Sherine’s husband drops dead.

I’ve talked before about how most of Kaoru Mori’s titles deal with repressed emotions, and that’s true here as well, even though by comparison Anis is open and obvious. Sherine’s husband was poor, and with him now gone it’s clear that she may be reduced to begging. This leads to Anis asking her husband to take Sherine as a second wife – something acceptable in these times and places – and his stunned reaction. Her husband’s been presented as a good guy throughout, who has trouble reading his wife but clearly loves her. He never took another wife as he was worried Anis wouldn’t like it, and Anis agrees that is absolutely true – except for Sherine. And so the volume ends with the two Avowed Sisters living together as co-wives, planning a trip, and feeding the birds by an ornamental pond.

The mood throughout is beautiful – after the last volume’s battles and deaths, Mori wanted to have a more peaceful story, though she jokes this just led to a lot of nudity. Indeed, the bath scenes take up a large part of the book, and there’s a fold-out color illustration with even more. For all that fashion is her first drawing love, Mori adores drawing the naked female form. But overall this is about Anis and Sherine, and another example of nontraditional brides in what is thought to be a very traditional period in time. It’s well worth your time.

Bloody Mary Volume 1 by Akaza Samamiya

Vampires! There have been plenty of options available for the manga fan who enjoys vampires, and these series are obviously popular, because it seems like most publishers have at least one or two current series featuring those who walk the night. How is Bloody Mary different from all the other shoujo vampire series out there?

Bloody Mary is a bit different because there are no clumsy high school girls who unwittingly find themselves the target of a vampire’s affections. Instead in this series the reader gets a cranky and mysterious priest and a vampire with a death wish. Mary is a vampire who has been on a quest to find a priest who can actually kill him. Maria is a priest who is the target of vampires due to his family’s position as prominent exorcists. Maria knows how to brandish a mystical cross, but he doesn’t yet have the ability to combat vampires the same way his ancestors did.

Mary rescues Maria from a vampire attack and brings him home to the church. Maria promptly kicks him out, because he’s tired of vampires constantly showing up and demanding his delicious blood. Mary explains that he only wants Maria to kill him. Eventually the duo strike up an uneasy truce – Maria will give Mary blood, in return for protection against vampire attacks. When Maria is able to gain his true powers as an exorcist, he promises to put Mary out of his misery. While Mary is over 400 years old, he’s drawn as a mischievous teenager, skulking around in a cat-head hoodie. Maria is tall, blond, imposing, and has attitude issues. There are plenty of opportunities for odd couple shenanigans ahead.

There’s also plenty of mystery to explore. Mary has amnesia issues. He’s probably the vampire boogieman known as Bloody Mary, but he seems to have patchy memories of his past. He doesn’t have the same vulnerabilities that other vampires do. On Maria’s side, his lack of access to his family’s traditional power, and the knowledge that his hidden from him hint that he has the potential to become a destructive force in his own right as well.

This first volume packs a bunch of story elements in to just a few chapters, as Mary and Maria’s relationship is established, hints of everyone’s secret past are alluded to, and Maria also has to deal with a handsome student council president who knows more about exorcism than he initially lets on. The character designs are attractive, and the fatalistic humor combined with plenty of vampire angst makes Bloody Mary a solid addition to the Shojo Beat lineup.

By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

My last review mentioned that I was more interested in the worldbuilding than the characters with this series, and it’s possible the author heard me, as this fifth novel, the first to not yet be animated, is filled with character development. Haruyuki’s personal issues still exist, but we are reminded that he’s not the only one having a bad time, and Kuroyukihime and Fuko are both dealing with devastating traumas, both involving Brain Burst and the real world, though we get minimal information on the latter. Luckily, this book isn’t simply piling up the angst – there’s a lot of fights going on here, and a race to the top of a brand new level which has a lot to offer everyone.

And there’s also that cover, as you are reminded yet again that this is a series filled with very young teens. That said, it fits well with the plot, as the overly dramatic ‘everything is terrible’ mood swings that kids get when they’re between 11 and 15 allows for dramatic speeches and loud screaming without feeling like you’ve stepped onto the cover of Shonen Jump too much. We get more development of the ‘Incarnate’ powerups, and they’re public now, so that’s a new worry. But the biggest worry is with our hero, who (as was becoming obvious) is not quite free of the killer possessive armor from Book 2, and one way that you can tell this is going to be a long-running series is that the volume is content to leave most everything up in the air.

It also resolves issues left over from the previous book about Fuko, who is at last doing something with the team, but really isn’t using her full potential due to her latent trauma over what she did to her legs in the game. I’d wanted more with her and Kuroyukihime, and I got it here, as it’s clear that both of them take the blame for the pain that each one suffered, and it’s up to Haruyuki to demonstrate that they are not a horrible person (Kuroyukihime) or to show off what her powers and avatar really is used for (Fuko). Haruyuki is very empathic, and (except of course for the increasing number of girls crushing on him, which he doesn’t get mostly for plot reasons) understands almost unconsciously what needs to be done to help people achieve their potential.

Brian Burst, for all its drama, twisted revenge antics, and continued suggestions of a dark evil villain side using it for bad things, is a game, and a fun one at that. The battles featured here are probably the best writing in the book, as they’re fast, exciting, dramatic, and uncertain. Yes, you could predict that our heroes would win, but how they won was certainly not expected, and I loved that it also required an assist from Blood Leopard and Ash Roller – breaking apart the boundaries of the ‘teams’. Given what happens near the end of this book, Haruyuki and company are going to need all the allies they can get. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next volume.