Published in the U.S. by TokyoPop
Slugline: Look, you can see the female lead's spine disappear before your eyes!
Yayoi is a female mystic who has to fight off and capture demons, which includes Ura, son of the Demon King. She is strong, powerful and has her own agenda.
She is, of course, doomed to irrelevance.
Because Ura is a hottie, he gradually takes over the story, becoming more powerful (or more properly, recovers to his true level of power), directing the course of the story so it is about him and what he wants to do, and while Yayoi does not suffer a depowering event, for some reason her abilities are just not as effective as the story goes on, eventually rendering her by the end of volume 1 as the helpless hostage.
Look, a woman does not have to be weak and rely on the man in order for there to be a valid romance. And I am not just saying this because Miranda would go off on a rant about it. It just would be a refreshing change of pace if once, just once, the female who starts the series competent ends the series just as competent. For once!
I actually had hope for this volume because it started out so strong, but it managed to sink very quickly into the normal tropes/tripes, and so despite being competently executed and not bad on the face of it, I give it a kick a little further down on the rating scale because this title has no reason to exist. We've seen it all before, and before, and look, over there, here is the same damn plot line of the romantic female lead becoming marginalized!
- Ferdinand
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