Title: Bloody Mary Vol. 8
Author: Akaza Samamiya
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 168
Genre: Fantasy, Yaoi
Publication Date: September 5, 2017
The Story
In Volume 8 of Bloody Mary, Maria finally decides to tell Bloody the truth about “Mary.” Upon hearing the fact that “Mary” is inside of him, Bloody converts his personality back to his original self. Bloody states that he has business he needs to finish that no longer concerns Maria and disappears. This causes Maria to enlist the services of Hydra in getting back the power of exorcism. Hydra, Maria and Takumi head to the Sakuraba estate and find Yzak’s body, but they are ambushed and Hyrda goes into battle to protect them.
Meanwhile, Bloody finds Aldila and simply wants to kill him, revealing that this was the business he wanted to tend to. Aldila gets overwhelmed by Bloody and he begins to remember how he and Eye were betrayed by Bloody so long ago. They note that Bloody is simply just a killing machine that wants to see more and more blood and that’s where our volume comes to a close.
That wasn’t much of a cliffhanger, but the events of the volume, overall, were enough to get you to want to see the next installment. There were a lot of flashbacks for character development purposes mixed with story progression and action, making this a very balanced volume. Volume 8 gave me the impression of things wrapping up and with only two volumes left to go, this seems like the perfect time to start tying up loose ends, which is what this volume does.
Characters
While the character development in this edition of Bloody Mary isn’t really significant, it does bring a lot of the stories to a close… or about as close as they can get to closing.
First off, Bloody finally regained all of his memories and it seems that “Mary” is now being sealed away inside of him. His original personality seems to be back for good (for now) and it caused Maria great pain in knowing that he’s the one who set Bloody free… even if it was the right thing to do. Takumi even noted that Maria felt the same way when his father died and he had worn a fake smile ever since then, but when he met Bloody, things changed inside of him. This caused Maria to have a bit of internal turmoil, but in the end, Maria decides that he wants the power of exorcism to “kill” Bloody and “save” Mary. It’s pretty clear that he simply wants to try and separate the two personalities and erase the Bloody one permanently.
Bloody also told Maria the truth about his father Yusei. While Bloody was the one who killed him, it was because Yusei requested to be killed. Yusei was nothing more than a body created for experimentation. Since he was immortal, he was tortured to the brink of death many times over just to see what would happen. When Bloody managed to kill him, Yusei died with a smile on his face because he knew that by doing so, he would be protecting Maria.
This should wrap up the backstory on our two main characters as every seems to be clear. We even got a bit of backstory on Hydra and Eye and how Hydra was the one who turned her into a vampire, but Eye admitted that she only used Hyrda to become one. Once Eye didn’t need Hyrda anymore, she left, but Hydra did give her a warning that she was incomplete and there would be a time where she would realize that. Even though it wasn’t stated, this seems to be the reason as to why she’s after Yzak and the di Maria bloodline. Something about their blood must be the key to making her complete. That’s just my guess, though.
Final Thoughts
Things are certainly interesting this time around. I feel like all that is left is to flesh out the rest of Eye’s backstory and then wrap this whole thing up. Saving “Mary,” stopping Eye and gaining the power of exorcism seem to be the only goals left in this series. This volume does a great job of setting all of the conclusion points up.
The “splitting of the personalities” ending to Bloody’s story seems to be the safe way out, though. I am a little bit disappointed that Samamiya is leaning towards that direction, but I guess there does need to be a happy ending to the series. There were even some flashes of that direction as we saw “Mary” inside of Bloody’s conscious beginning to awaken. Either way, things seem to have a clear cut route to the end, but maybe… just maybe, Samamiya will surprise us over the next two volumes. We’ll have to wait and see!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
