The Black Queen
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Kyousuke Motomi
English Adaptation: Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane
Translation: JN Productions
Touch-Up Art & Lettering: Mark McMurray
Design: Julian [JR] Robinson
Editor: Amy Yu
What They Say:
Fumi Nishioka lives with Kyutaro Horikita and his family of “Sweepers,” people who specialize in cleaning the minds of those overcome by negative energy and harmful spirits. Fumi has always displayed mysterious abilities, but will those powers be used for evil when she begins to truly awaken as a Queen?
Fumi finds out that she has both a White Queen and a Black Queen inside of her, and she must train her mind and body in order to become the true Queen. Kyutaro vows to protect Fumi, but will he be able to do anything when other gatekeepers go after her power?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This volume is all about the queen. And furthering the lore of the four clans that protect the various gates, this time delving into the Seryu clan, who kidnap Fumi, believing she is the Black Queen and must be killed.
Of course, Genbu, Byakko, Seryu, and Suzaku are characters from YuYu Hakusho–I mean they’re the mythical guardians of the four cardinal directions in Japanese folklore. They’re also present in other Asian folklore (Chinese and Vietnamese are two that I found upon a quick Google search), but I honestly don’t know about them beyond their modern cultural references. But I digress. Genbu is who Fumi and Kyutaro belong to and Seryu are the ones that they’re directly feuding with, at least right now.
The very nature of the Black Queen is something that is interesting. She’s depicted as a form of black goo vaguely shaped like a child inside of Fumi’s mind, and she’s either legitimately troubled or emotionally manipulative—or both. I’m not sure if the direction of the manga will be to sympathize with this creature, but that would be something interesting to see as she has been seen much more than the White Queen. Perhaps having to overcome the Black Queen by way of quelling the feelings she brings to the fore?
In any case, she’s released once again by the Seryu clan’s brutality in kidnapping and torturing Fumi, and then hurting Kyutaro during Fumi’s rescue. She shows off her incredible power in the volume, but also her relative tameness, I would think, given that she stopped attacking the Seryu clan the second Kyutaro asked her to. She either has more plans ahead of her, or she wants something more out of human relation than just destruction.
Also Kyutaro’s sister, Mutsumi, shows up and she cleanses things by music and honestly she should have been in here from the beginning because that sounds awesome, no pun intended.
In Summary:
Queen’s Quality continues the trend of keeping on this larger overarching story with this volume, going away from the smaller QQ Sweeper-like story in the last volume (though finishing things off in the first few chapters, which was honestly a refreshing reminder of why I liked this manga in the first place). The story of the queens is obviously going to dominate the rest of Queen’s Quality, and I’m glad it’s holding up and staying interesting at least through the first few volumes of this sequel series.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: March 6, 2018
MSRP: $9.99
