Black Bird Volume 1

Challenge: Outdo Yourself

There is a world of myth and magic that intersects ours, and only a special few can see it. Misao Harada is one such person, and she wants nothing to do with magical realms. She just wants to have a normal high school life and maybe get a boyfriend. All that changes one day when Misao is attacked by a demon. Her childhood friend Kyo suddenly returns to save her and tend to her cuts–with his tongue! It turns out Misao is the bride of prophecy, whose blood gives power to the demon clan who claims her. But most demons want to keep her power for themselves–by eating her! Now Misao is just trying to stay alive…and decide if she likes it when Kyo licks her wounds.

My Thoughts:
This was my first ever experience with reading manga. I never really thought to read manga before and often avoided it because I felt that these stories wouldn’t offer enough for a girl who likes to read full length novels. Well let me just tell you boy was I wrong. Quick facts are that I always loved looking at anime art and did watch some anime when I was younger but just never got into the manga novels. I’m now deciding that was a bad decision on my part and now I’ve become a little obsessed with finding the best series in manga. So if you happen to know any great ones I will be open to trying them out. Ok fun filled facts are over so let me get to the review of Black Bird Volume 1.

In this manga we are first introduced to Misao who is a 15, soon to be 16, year old girl who can see demons. When she was little the boy next door, Kyo, use to protect her from the demons that only they could see but he moved away when they were young, claiming he would come back for her one day. Well that day has come because Kyo is back in town and is determined to protect Misao from the demons that keep coming after her for her blood. However, it seems that Kyo has other things in mind than just simply protecting Misao.

This was my first ever manga so I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect and I had some ups and downs with this particular book. The good points to the book were that the artwork was simply stunning. There are some great images of Kyo in this book that I think anyone can appreciate even if you don’t like manga, the images are well worth staring at for a little while. The art was what really held my attention in this book and since artwork is a big deal in manga books I’m glad I fell in love with it. While the artwork was really the strong player in this book I felt that the storyline didn’t flow nicely. The frames sometimes felt chopped up because one second the author would be showing two people having a conversation about one thing then all of a sudden those same two people are on a roof top when a second ago the boy had offered to walk the girl home. So several times I had to stop and reread/look back over several of the frames to make sure I was reading it right (the whole right to left reading is strange at first). Even when I knew I was reading it correctly the scenes just felt jumbled sometimes which made the story suffer.

Overall this book had strong characters that I really do love and the art work is something I like so much that I want prints of it to put up on my walls. The storyline was choppy which is something that I hope will be cleared up in the second volume of this series. Overall I give this book 3.5 hearts, while it wasn’t the best due to some writing errors I really do like the bones that the author has created and I’m excited for the second volume.