Cute Devil by Hiro Madarame
Tohru is the strong silent type. He wears glasses and serves in the student council. One day a boy with an angelic face named Fuuta asks if he’ll be his friend. Due to Fuuta’s striking looks, he’s treated like a princess by everyone at school. Fuuta pleads with Tohru with limpid watery eyes, and the two start hanging out together. While Fuuta might look like an angel, he’s actually a sexually rapacious demon and he’s picked Tohru to be his lover. I didn’t care for the story very much, because there wasn’t very time spent on character development. Also, I don’t find the fairly typical in yaoi dynamic of one character forcing himself on the other very entertaining. The chapters in the manga are all fairly similar, as Fuuta and Tohru play out the same dynamic in their relationship over and over again. That being said, Fuuta’s rapid personality shifts were funny and Madarame has some very attractive character designs.
Blood Honey by Sakyou Yozakura
Yuki is a vampire with a very sensible job of working at a blood bank. His favorite blood donor is Mayuzumi, a teacher who seems to enjoy donating blood more frequently than the average person. It turns out Mayuzumi is so hot blooded, he needs to get rid of excess blood so he doesn’t lose his temper. When Yuki is propositioned by his boss, Mayuzumi comes to his rescue and offers to give blood to Yuki for the rest of his life. Blood Honey switches the point of view for various chapters. Yuki’s featured at the start of the volume, Mayuzumi deals with temptation and his feelings for Yuki in the next, and the third story focuses on Yuki’s vampire nephew Kiri. Kiri’s a notorious playboy who keeps trying to insert himself into Mayuzumi and Yuki’s life, so they send him off to live in a temple along with a slightly corrupt priest. Yozakura’s art is simple and a bit on the cartoony side, as Mayuzumi’s temper seems to always show him overreacting to everything. I liked the linked short story format of this volume.
Review copies provided by the publisher
