Title: Bloody Mary Vol. 10
Author: Akaza Samamiya
Publisher: VIZ Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 168
Genre: Shounen, Fantasy, Yaoi
Publication Date: March 6, 2018
The Story
We have approached the final volume of Bloody Mary! Everything gets wrapped up and despite it doing so, I can’t help but feel that it was a little rushed. First off, we get the inner conflict between Bloody and Mary as the two of them come to terms with one another. Just when they are about to finally merge into one conscience, Mary asks Bloody to borrow his body one last time. With that body, Mary pays a visit to Madam Eye and ends up bringing her to the brink of death. Madam Eye requests Hydra to finish her, but Hydra can’t bring herself to grant her wish. She only wants Eye to die a horrible death.
After those events, Mary pays a visit to Master Yzak and ends up killing him as well, granting him his wish of being reunited with his late wife Yui, but when Yzak “dies,” he finds himself surrounded by darkness with Yui nowhere to be found. Those who shared Master Yzak’s blood with him feel his pain and sorrow as he is lost between life and death. That in and of itself was a pretty powerful moment as Yzak’s pain could be felt by so many other people. Because of that feeling, some even questioned if Yzak had even died. Even Mary himself was confused as he knew he killed Yzak, but wondered why he didn’t “die.”
Hydra wants to take Mary to see Ichiro in order to get exorcised, but Mary has decided that he wants to live. Ichiro ends up finding Mary anyway and in a blind judgement moment, Mary kills Ichiro…. Sort of. Ichiro goes to the same plane between life and death as Yzak and his father Yusei, who tell him he has unfinished business. This allows Ichiro to recover from his wound. It’s at this point that Mary and Hydra wish to be together to rekindle their love, but Hydra knows that Mary will soon disappear, leaving behind Bloody. Mary and Hydra both agree to be exorcised by Ichiro and rather than destroying Mary’s body, Bloody takes it over. Ichiro wants to know what Bloody’s real name is, saying that he only called him “Mary.” Bloody simply states that he wants to live and until he can figure it out, he will keep being referred to as Mary.
This brings the series to a close.
Characters
Typically, there really isn’t any development with characters in a final volume, but Mary/Bloody’s epiphany about wanting to live was the last bit of character development to be had here. Hydra’s love for Bloody also took its final shape and it made for a somber moment as the two of them were exorcised together all for the sake of making their love eternal… which was the original promise Mary made to her in the first place in exchange for being turned into a vampire.
Everyone else weren’t really “developed” as much as they all experienced the conclusions to their own stories. Nothing was really left unresolved, which is pretty rare as there always seems to be one character or one plot point that is left out in the open. I’ve seen it far too much with anime and manga series so I’m actually quite surprised that everyone and everything saw a proper conclusion.
Final Word
I really enjoyed this series. For a series that is listed in the Yaoi category, there was very little of it throughout. Sure, there were teases that Ichiro and Mary had a thing between them and it was pretty heavily implied that by living together in the end that they really did share a love, but that’s about as far as the series went with the yaoi label. Bloody Mary was more of an action/suspense series more than anything with pretty deep characters and a plot line that, while a little hard to follow, took many twists and turns and did a wonderful job pulling it all together and connecting all of the dots in the end.
I wouldn’t let the yaoi tag stave you off on this one. The series was well-written by Akaza Samamiya and I think people should give it a chance. Nothing really seemed over the top or unbelievable, either. Everything was kept pretty grounded in a way where plot points and characters made complete and total sense. There was a reason for everything and the series made you understand those reasons clearly.
Overall, it was a joy to read Bloody Mary! It definitely took me by surprise!
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
