#there's plenty of actually gay vampire visual novels you could read for instance

[arimiaromage]

finished my first manga of the year, one that I started last year called Bloody+Mary by Akaza Samamiya. I guess this'll be a mostly spoiler-free review??

It's about a red-haired vampire named Mary who wants to die but can't because he's immortal and tracks down the human main character Maria, a feared exorcist—except Maria can't actually exorcise vampires, instead faking his powers to ward off attackers. Mary vows to keep Maria safe until Maria can regain his powers and exorcise him.

Bloody+Mary is a bit of a mess with its main saving grace being that it's a bunch of pretty boys and very pretty art. At its heart it's a vampire shoujo with some comedy elements but mainly a drama with quite a few twists—I heard it was light BL but after reading it it's definitely not, it's just a shoujo with a primarily male cast. Regardless of how intimate the cover arts are, there's shounen much gayer than this, so if that's what you were interested in then look elsewhere.

The pacing is odd. Not the worst I've seen, but it definitely felt like the author was winging it in quite a few parts, especially in one part where they travel to England, get basically nothing accomplished, and head home. I've heard some mangakas don't plan the endings before they start publication but this series feels like the mangaka only had a loose concept and winged the rest. Plot lines come up, get forgotten about, come back sometimes, and ultimately don't lead to much if they're resolved at all.

The characters are alright, I found most of them okay and even pretty funny at times. However, there's not much character growth which leaves most of them the same as when they started and you're just told they've grown so much because their goals have suddenly changed. The character I liked the least was probably the red-haired vampire Mary, as he acts 12 for a majority of the series. Considering I went into this thinking it was going to be a BL between him and the MC Maria (who's 17? he's still in school), I was offput by how young Mary acted despite being a 400~ year old vampire. It's not that he acts childish at times, its that he acts like a child most of the time. The scenes where Maria looks at him fondly feel more like an older brother looking at their younger brother rather than two people who are supposed to be around the same age (Mary is supposed to look around 16).

The world building is lackluster at best and sloppy at worst. The church both exists in this world as the main defense against vampires but also feels more like a historical relic, something that isn't a main thing that exists in current day. Vampires are creatures of folklore to most humans, except if you go out at night you'll be attacked by them?? They try to say this is because Maria's blood smells so good that he's always attacked at night, but then they show other characters being attacked at night—how are vampires staying in the shadows when so many people get attacked and are almost always killed by vampire attacks? Furthermore, we never really see anyone capable of exorcism except for a priest in England who they only bring up to give a lore dump on vampires. How have vampires not taken over the world by now if basically no one can kill them and some of them have been alive for half a millennia?

It's parts like that that make the world feel very, very small, which would've been fine if they kept it an insular story, but they didn't. It has a decent sized cast, though half of the characters become irrelevant when the plot doesn't need them and come running back as soon as it does.

Again, the art is the main saving grace of the series—it really is very pretty to look at, and I love their color work for the cover arts.

I wanted to like this series as it's very pretty and has twins and other things I won't spoil that I love, but ultimately it left me more baffled than anything. I don't hate it, I don't love it, I'm just kinda bewildered.

I wouldn't recommend this unless you just really love vampire shoujo. Don't be fooled by the cover arts, it's not really gay exorcists, but there are a couple of explicitly gay female vampires so...still not worth your time considering they're very much side characters. Go find a gay vampire visual novel to read instead, there's tons.

#manga review #my reviews #bloody mary #there's a ton of other things tagged as this so I don't feel as bad tagging a negative review for a fandom #I really wanted to like this but it really felt like they had no clue what to do with the plot otl #I've also been meaning to do manga reviews here but never started #so I guess this is my first one LOL #anyway just read something else #there's plenty of actually gay vampire visual novels you could read for instance