First chapter spoilers only.
I've been following this artist for a while and it feels like this is what this artist's style has slowly been transitioning towards and though it's only six chapters in while I'm writing this. I feel it's the best thing this artist has made yet, combining all the good parts of prior titles.
What we have is a rather unusual setup in a male protagonist who ticks all the boxes of a Byronic hero. He's aristocratic, beautiful, passionate, lived a life of mystery, has a lot of blood on his hands, hates himself and the world he lives in, and sees himself as unworthy of love and most importantly he's a vampire who laments his requirement to consume humans and kill them to survive and how much he isn't disgusted by it any more as he used to.
Enter his love interest, a mysterious female characters whose thoughts beyond basic sexual pleasure are never shown to the reader as of chapter 6 who is also the protagonist's former former Nanny when he was younger. The art when they were younger implies the love interest is older than the protagonist purely due to how they interacted and the fact that the former was taller back then, but nothing has been stated for certain yet. The protagonist struggles with his hunger and not to consume this love interest and kill the latter, who seems to for mysterious motivations be okay with being consumed and has also lost the will to live it seems though still seems to deeply care for the protagonist after they re-unite in the first chapter after having been separated for many years.
The part that defines Sugi Shippo's style is that the perspective largely switches during all the, really very good sex scenes. Quintessential of this artist's style is the depiction of very beautiful male characters with a sort of “frozen beauty” to them and a bit of a painful, almost doll-like face, but you will never ever see them naked or in any state of undress and the same applies here. The sex scenes obviously come down to the male protagonist losing his self-control and essentially raping the semi-willing female love interest, focusing purely on the latter's physical pleasure, which is the only time said love interest's thoughts are shown to the reader which come down to nothing more than how good it feels. The female love interest is also frequently in a state of complete undress during these scenes and in general heavily fan-serviced. As said, the protagonist looks very beautiful and dignified in his suit, and his father even more so to be honest, but he will never be shown in a state of undress.
It remains to be seen how long this dynamic will persist though. In the artist's last long-running serialization that ran in the same magazine for the twilight of its run, the first three volumes where from the perspective of the male character who similarly, though more comically so hated himself for what he was and mistreating his love interest, but then the perspective switched to the female character for the remaining nine volumes. I have to say that I like this character far more. This is a much more serious title with the comedy largely removed and in the case of the other title, it's hard to feel sorry for his misery because he's just a comical, self-absorbed piece of shit whereas here, the reader is very much allowed to feel for the plight of the protagonist and how he struggles with his all-consuming hunger and his necessity to kill humans to survive while being disgusted by how much the vampire world does not seem to feel any guilt about what it's doing.
It's the reason I started reading Sho-ComiX again which also became a monthly magazine rather than bimonthly purely for this title. It's by far the best title in it in my opinion and one of my favorite ongoing titles though as of chapter 6 the plot has indeed gone a bit into the “We introduce a new character to stir things up” territory so I'm not sure how much of it was planned. It is in any case to some degree a mystery title. In particular the mystery as to what the love interest was doing all that time in the time they didn't meet, and why the character seemingly wants to die.
