If you don't pay attention to the story, the dialog, the art.. you can get lost very quickly and find yourself confused, especially since (if memory serves me right) it *jumps* a lot through time and pulls a lot of that "it was all a dream" thing. But that's what makes this series so hard to follow: half of the time, you don't know what you're reading. Well, that doesn't take away anything.

... Last updated on June 22nd, 2008, 1:25am

Izumo no Ryuu describe the manga so well in one short sentence: the basic, the essence and the beauty.

Both the art and the story-telling are top class. You will read and reread all over again to capture the feelings, emotions. Story is twisted all over the place.

Well, words cant describe this enough. Read it! You wont regret it.

I'm not into blood and gore, however this manga is an exception. perhaps because there is a sort of romance behind the story. definately a must read.

very nice and bloody I haven't gone through a lot.. but I still think you should read it.. very gory and explicit.. so don't go crying if you don't like it.. very interesting thing about vampires back in the day..

also the romance being in this kind of story is a bit odd..

This story lacks depth and most of the ideas have been expressed by other authors. It has nothing to do with Yoshitsune just that it borrows his name to popularize this work. The characters almost all look the same except with different hair styles. Alot of the scenes are unnecessary and just feel like fillers to me. But some of the action scenes are just amazing.



Overall, aside from the action arts, this serie is disappointing as the idea of imortality keeps changing.


Ideas are thrown in with no development or that its altered as the story progresses. Rules of imortality transformation applies differently to different characters just to fuel the story. Well I guess I'm just reading too much into this.

Wow, I was totally blown away by this story, it is so unique and thrilling that I couldn't stop reading. Don't be thrown off by the relatively low ratings, this is really a great story (and if it weren't for spiteful people who judge stories based on their biased opinions and don't read through the story completely before rating, this would be rated much higher) The artwork is well drawn, but due to the dark ambiance that the author tries to portray, some of the actions (images drawn) can be quite difficult or straining to make out, especially during some of the fighting scenes. I finished the story in about two days, only because the first day I didn't want to finish it and have nothing to do the next, but even then, it was hard not to think about it. I really loved how the story spanned over great lengths of time, it really added another dimension to the story, keeping the reader wandering what is going to happen next and really emphasizing the love between the two main characters (though in my personal opinion this author should stick to seinen and action titles since he could use work on his interpretation of love and how to really show it).This manga really kept me guessing on what was going to happen next, always moving forward, it sometimes got overwhelming. There really is a lot fit into these short 10 volumes and if you don't read carefully it is quite easy to get confused (I know I had to go back and re-read a bit to grasp some of the concepts). In my opinion, I felt that the ending came to soon. Though it was satisfying, it left me feeling like I had forgotten something, but couldn't quite figure out what. I couldn't be more pleased with the ending though, because it is probably the most hopeful and fulfilling ending that a dystopia could possibly offer, and even though I felt like I wanted more, it was probably the wisest time to end the story since this type of story could probably continue on forever. But overall the story is quite fulfilling, even for a dark, apocalyptic, dystopian world, such as this and I recommend it to anyone who is interested.

... Last updated on July 21st, 2010, 12:20pm

While there wasn't much chapters about their romance, I loved Kuro and Kuromitsu, Kuromitsu is beautiful yet mysterious character, I would have loved more about Kuro's past and Kuromitsu past, but oh well, great story hope there will be a sequal ^^

great manga.

Somewhat a mix of blade of the immortal, blame, with vampire stuff.

Little confusing on the start, but gets better after.

... Last updated on December 10th, 2006, 5:24pm

A promising if a bit strange manga about vampires (no, really). It's a bit slow (after 4 volumes not much has happened) and quite explicit.

There are times when I thought about giving up on this manga just because it jumped around a lot.

While reading, I was always confused if it was the present or the past but I think this is really a successful part in what the mangaka was trying to portray: the confusing timelines of what MC Kuro can and cannot remember. This was a really unique part as readers are forced to accompany Kuro on what he can recall what his memories may be. Even though we may not entirely understand his relationship with Kuromitsu, we are aware that they have endured decades of suffering and as fugitives. This part was truly powerful and if focused on this part alone, i think it would have a larger impact...

The downfall for me was the later half of the manga in which Kuro is working for the Red emperor, fights against the White Empire (like a poor inspiration of Alice in Wonderland with color-alternating armies), and gain unlikely allies of clones and what not. The plot ties together and made sense eventually but I thought the clones and the Red Emperor was a twist that was incomplete. There are some brief backstory about the clones and why they are created. They play a significant part of Kuro's life, both as enemies and friends, but are left basically as such. Not to mention, the very last clone who had a very brief role (i.e. Red Emperor's clone) had a much more significant role. With this said, if the mangaka expanded on these characters and give them a lot of room for character development, it would have been a fantastic read.

My rating went from 7/10 to 4/10. I realize that there are a lot of reviews which really appreciate this manga but for the reasons above, I can't truly appreciate this manga as just a dark mystery romance when there's a really out-of-place action/shounen/syfy going on. It didn't tie entirely well but I thought this is still a generally good read and would still recommend this to any and all readers.

... Last updated on September 27th, 2020, 11:55am