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A review by roxanamalinachirila
Loveless, Volume 9 by Yun Kouga
4.0
I think I really enjoy messed up stories, as long as they're not depressing - and "Loveless" fits the bill. It's a very cheery sort of messed up, with all sorts of reveals, psychotic characters and MORE. So, naturally, the moment I ran out of owned "Loveless" volumes, I ordered more.
For a bit of history regarding the series, which I didn't know when I picked it up because it was in a bookshop and it looked cool and I liked what I read on Wikipedia on my phone, book in hand: the manga series is written slowly, not in the "one chapter per week" style of Bleach and Naruto. Yun Kouga writes slowly, and gets delayed - luckily, I ended up starting it when it's nearly done, so I won't have to wait as long as others for it.
The first 8 volumes were translated into English translation by a publisher who went under in 2009 (Tokyopop), and the series was only picked up a few years later by Viz Media, which republished the first part of the series in the 2-in-1 volumes I happened to pick up, so "Loveless" was interrupted for English fans for three years, unless they happened to arrive late at the scene, like I did.
And I'm talking about all this stuff because it's hard to review volume 9 of *anything* without spoilers for previous volumes or talking apropos of nothing.
But how does volume 9 hold up? Well, it's maybe less exciting than some others, because there have been too many reveals and now there needs to be a break or it all crashes down like a house of cards - but it's still good. While the core of the series is psychological a.f., it still had a helluva lot of elements of fighting/shonen manga complete with ass-kicking, so were introduced to another interesting pair which does battle; except this one fights by using psychological battles, so we get a bit of character development as everyone battles inner demons. It's cool, I'm still hooked.
For a bit of history regarding the series, which I didn't know when I picked it up because it was in a bookshop and it looked cool and I liked what I read on Wikipedia on my phone, book in hand: the manga series is written slowly, not in the "one chapter per week" style of Bleach and Naruto. Yun Kouga writes slowly, and gets delayed - luckily, I ended up starting it when it's nearly done, so I won't have to wait as long as others for it.
The first 8 volumes were translated into English translation by a publisher who went under in 2009 (Tokyopop), and the series was only picked up a few years later by Viz Media, which republished the first part of the series in the 2-in-1 volumes I happened to pick up, so "Loveless" was interrupted for English fans for three years, unless they happened to arrive late at the scene, like I did.
And I'm talking about all this stuff because it's hard to review volume 9 of *anything* without spoilers for previous volumes or talking apropos of nothing.
But how does volume 9 hold up? Well, it's maybe less exciting than some others, because there have been too many reveals and now there needs to be a break or it all crashes down like a house of cards - but it's still good. While the core of the series is psychological a.f., it still had a helluva lot of elements of fighting/shonen manga complete with ass-kicking, so were introduced to another interesting pair which does battle; except this one fights by using psychological battles, so we get a bit of character development as everyone battles inner demons. It's cool, I'm still hooked.