Reviews in Brief: Yun Kouga's Loveless, Vol. 1

Loveless by Yun Kouga is a series I've been eyeing for a while now, and I finally broke down and started it. It's cryptic, bizarre, and fascinating.

Ritsuka is twelve years old, has recently lost his older brother, and is sharing his head with someone else. Or it may be that his difficulties stem from amnesia: he doesn't remember anything of his life before the past two years. His mother is convinced that, whoever is inhabiting her younger son's body, it's not her son, which, as you might imagine, leads to a somewhat problematical relationship between the two. However, Ritsuka shows himself to be a self-assured boy, very intelligent and used to taking charge of his life, on his first day at a new school, where he is greeted by, among others, Yuiko, a classmate who refers to herself in the third person and is desperate to be liked.

All of this is complicated by the appearance of Soubi, a friend of his brother, whom Ritsuka is willing to accept at face value, even if he is a grown-up. It gets even more complicated when Soubi, who seems to have many, many secrets, declares that he loves Ritsuka (although he doesn't want to have sex with him) and he will do anything Ritsuka says -- because Seimei, Ritsuka's dead brother, told him to. While they are talking, they are accosted by two children who call themselves "Breathless," a team of some sort, who are appalled at finding Soubi defending Ritsuko: they were to bring him back to Septimal Moon -- the entity, it so happens, who murdered Seimei.

I think one thing I find appealing about this series so far (it's presently up to eight volumes) is that Kouga doesn't tell you what's going on. You, the reader, discover information as Ritsuka does, in pieces and bits. The oddness of the story is evident from the very beginning: children have cat-ears, in addition to their human ears, and tails. (It sounds grotesque, but they're adorable.) We gradually understand that there is a connection between the ears and having sex -- one assumes, after a few hints, that once you've done it, the ears disappear. (I've really got to figure out what it is with the Japanese and pets. Any hints would be appreciated.)

There are also the battles: Soubi is a fighter unit who was part of the team "Beloved" with Seimei; he has now linked up with Ritsuka, who, unknown to himself, is "Loveless"; this is supposed to be impossible, but Seimei, who obviously suspected he was a target, seems to have made arrangements to protect his little brother. Soubi is a top-notch spellcaster, which is how the battles are fought -- it doesn't hurt that he's an adult, or at least that's the impression one gets. (And we're not sure that he's entirely human.)

Nor are we sure who Ritsuka is; neither, it appears, is he, except that he's pretty sure that he's not really Ritsuka.

Graphically, the story is very well done, with the open, sometimes free-form narrative flow I've come to expect from manga in general. Character designs are wonderful -- Ritsuka is one of the cutest characters I've seen so far, and Soubi is what I can only call a quiet beauty, composed and enigmatic. The drawing is exceptionally expressive and sometimes very subtle, especially in facial expressions, and the battle scenes are wonderful -- clear, direct, with a terrific sense of motion in them.

This one's from Tokyopop, and I can tell where all my extra money is going for a while.