...but when I do, it means something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Since this manga has been getting a lot of exposure, I figured I might as well try to save as many innocents as possible before it's too late.
To be honest, I've only read the first chapter of this abominable piece of crap. But, you know, that was enough for me to see it for what it is - the aforementioned abominable piece of crap, in case you've forgotten. They say you can tell if a book is good from the first line. Well, I went ahead and read the whole first chapter. So I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of how things are gonna turn out.
First of all, the story isn't even interesting. By which I mean, it's boring as hell. I mean, if you want to read your smut, go for it, I won’t hold you back. But even for smut, this manga is lackluster. Allow me to summarize the basic formula of this manga’s plot: Blah blah blah dumb girl blah blah blah want boyfriend blah so desperate blah blah sexy boy from childhood blah blah demons and yokai blah you're my bride blah I'll protect you forever blah blah no choice blah molestation blah blah helpless crying blah. Seen any of that before? It's like the author went out of her way to pick out every horrifically overused and discredited shoujo cliché, roll 'em all into a big ball, and then bowl the whole freaking manga over with them... you know, just to make sure it's shoujo enough. And it’s boring. Oh god, is this thing boring.
The manga begins with a creepily disproportionate child saying he'll come back someday to molest our heroine once she’s actually reached the age of consent (or something like that). Said heroine is, in the present, wangsting profusely over not having a boyfriend. She’s so dumb that, when her friend asks her what she wants for her birthday, she asks for – you guessed it – a boyfriend! And she happily chirps the word twice in a row, kind of like how Max always demands his single-word object-of-the-episode in that kids’ show, Max and Ruby. It’s supposed to be cute, but all you really want to do is punch them in the face for it.
Anyway, our ever-so charming protagonist is so desperate to acquire said boyfriend that she’s ready to accept the first thing with a ding-dong that comes her way, which happens to be a pretty tennis boy school worship icon. One wonders why exactly she’s been single for so long if she can score that kind of catch. Oh, wait, but then it’s revealed that, surprise, surprise, she wasn’t so lucky after all, as he’s actually a yokai who is literally after her blood and wants to eat her. So her creepy childhood stalker, having returned as promised a few pages beforehand, shows up out of nowhere and is all, “This is mine. Don’t touch.” Then he proceeds to beat the crap out of the other guy. You know, in that animalistic, possessive, alpha male, “you are my mate/property/toy, you have no choice, don’t even argue” kind of way that werewolf fanatics seem to find so attractive. So he saves the girl, and apparently, to heal her wounds, he has to use his phallic-looking tongue to lick the area, which I can already tell is gonna be the gimmick of this series. Then he randomly grabs her boobs and sexually molests her, and god, the whole thing is like something out of an ecchi manga, only it’s okay because he’s hot and she likes him and secretly she wants it. And, oh yeah, did I mention that throughout the whole thing, she’s bawling her eyes out while having these doki-doki internal monologues about creepy-stalker-man? The chapter ends with the guy introducing himself as the new substitute teacher, which is, of course, the author’s way of pandering to all the teacher-student fetishists out there.
That’s all I actually read of this series, but let me tell you how the rest of it is going to go. The girl’s gonna get threatened/attacked/imprisoned/molested a whole lot by all the demons that want to eat her soul or whatever. Then creepy-stalker-guy is gonna have to go rescue her, which will inevitably involve him threatening/attacking/imprisoning/molesting her himself (which is okay, though, because they’re the OTP). There’s probably going to be at least one open wound of varying severity per chapter, which will, of course, be the focus for the post-rescue sexy licking session. And there’s going to be crying. Lots and lots of crying, and all of it will be the heroine’s. Maybe the author will try to sneak in a non-explicit sex/rape scene here and there for that extra spice.
So, in summary, Black Bird really isn’t a good manga by any standards at all. It’s cliché, it’s boring, and it’s offensive to men and women alike. The fact that it was nominated for, let alone won, an award is so depressing that I’m surprised most decent shoujo manga artists didn’t just drop their pens and say, “Screw it, I’m done.” Contrary to popular opinion, the shoujo demographic itself is not a subpar one. Unfortunately, it is a demographic that is cluttered with garbage like this, much like how shounen is cluttered with Shounen Jump-esque crap. It’s titles like Black Bird that give shoujo in general a bad name. But, hey, if you read through my entire review and think that Black Bird sounds like the icing on your cake, then have at it. We all have different tastes, after all. Like, for example, the bloody wounds of virgins.
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