Born to follow destiny or create your own?
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Aya Shouoto
Translation/Adaptation: Su Mon Han
What They Say
Born together and locked in endless struggle…that leaves us but one fate…
Envy, the final Stigma appears at last…on Kana! To protect her, Aki resolves to battle Eriya in earnest and sets out for Tsubakiin Manor. The tale of the love and blood red bonds shared by the beautiful vampire twins and their thrall comes to a thrilling conclusion!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Final Volume: Aki decides to return to Tsubakiin Manor even though Kana is no shape to travel with the final stigma appearing on her. A holy relic is at the Manor that may be exactly what they need to defeat Eriya. Though Inori leads Aki to the relic, he imprisons Kana for the twin vampire’s sake.
Kana gets out of her cell to find Eriya has confronted Aki about his plans. She invokes her blue flames as thrall and tells Eriya what he feels for Aki is not love and he no longer has the capacity to love. This puts Eriya into hysterics and he slices Kana’s throat. Eriya declares he no longer needs love, but Aki, now seeing Kana bleeding on the floor, is in shock.
It turns out it was Inori disguised as Kana. Eriya is devastated and in pain at the loss of his thrall. He retreats, but Kana and Aki look into Inori’s diary. It is here they learn the truth and what the stigmas really are. Inori reminiscences about the time he meant Eriya and how he was taken in by his lofty ideas. He also reveals that Eriya was born with a stigma, and though he wished to be a leader, he had no intention to incite violence.
Inori goes on to reveal his sister feel in love Eriya. She became pregnant, but Eriya’s followers, who had been quite up until now, bestowed an illness on her and her unborn child. Facing death, Eriya chose Inori’s sister as his first thrall. Though she survived the illness, her child did not, and was stricken with grief. Those who wished to incite a violent revolution, planted the idea in Eriya’s mind to transplant the stigma on him to the child. This ritual was to create a second stigma and new Eriya.
The ritual weakened Eriya and he became a puppet for those he originally led. With the second Eriya bearing two stigmas, it meant that every ten years a new Eriya was born with another stigma and the goal was to have an Eriya that would bear all seven stigmas. However, the last time, twins were born.
Aki, now that he has the holy relic and a means to defeat Eriya, will need to decide if he can go through it. When Aki cannot detect Kana, he goes and looks for her, only to find that Swallow allowed the green stigma to be stolen from Jin for Eriya to have. Swallow did this only to make the stigma count even with Kana as the deciding factor. Swallow wanted Aki to take a stand, but Swallow didn’t go unhurt during this confrontation with Eriya.
Kana gives the envy stigma back to Eriya. It does not kill her, as she is an immortal thrall. A small battle turns as Aki, who has the upper hand, embraced Eriya for the first time and announces he returning all the stigmas back to Eriya in order to restore him as whole. Eriya’s body cannot take the strain of stigmas return and disintegrates.
The Tsubakiin Manor is destroyed and everyone else moves on. Aki and Kana move into the darkness, as Aki now is the possessor of all the stigmas. They have their own happily ever after by themselves.
In Summary
Did this manga save the best for last? I think it did. The art is beautiful, but the story lacked some cohesiveness, or so I thought, until the last volume tied it all up in a neat little bow. I really expected a long drawn out battle between the twins, but surprisingly they just hugged it out. I guess we could all learn a thing or two from this manga!
As always, Yen Press does a beautiful job with the color inserts and the cover. As a whole, this series had a deeper side to then I expected. Mixed with pretty boys over and over, it’s well worth the read!
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: March 21st, 2017
MSRP: $13.00
