Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of two titles a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Kerry checks in on the new series, “Our Blood Oath.” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Our Blood Oath — Ch. 1
Written and Illustrated by Kazu Kakazu
Reviewed by Kerry Erlanger
“Our Blood Oath” by Kazu Kakazu (such a fun name to say) is one of the newest series to grace the Weekly Shonen Jump app, timed effectively to coincide with the coming of fall and, more importantly, spooky season. It’s a story about vampires, promising horror with a side of sincere family togetherness tinged with angst. Our protagonists are the Hizuki brothers, Shin and Ko, the sons of vampires who have a vested interest in human-vampire coexistence.
At first, the premise feels a bit unoriginal — rebelling against the expectations of one’s society in favor of world peace, or whatever, is an old trope — but Kakazu manages to make things a bit more interesting before the chapter’s end. Spoiler alert: older brother Shin isn’t a vampire, but a human adopted by vampire parents. This revelation makes some earlier moments in the chapter make more sense after the fact. For example, a lot of what I was interpreting as sexual tension (lol wishful thinking) between Shin and Shino (the human boy they rescue in this chapter) was actually recognition. They’re both adopted and Shin can surely relate to Shino’s feeling insecure about his place in his family. It also makes Ko’s reactions to Shino more nuanced. It’s not that he doesn’t like Shino, it’s that he’s sensitive about his lamenting that blood relation is important. Ko loves his brother, adopted or not. He’s obviously protective of him.
Overall, there’s some decent character and world building in this first chapter. I was ready to not like this manga after the abrupt start. I’m not opposed to stories starting in progress, and in fact a lot of times it helps with the momentum of a new series instead of bogging the reader down in details, but the first few pages felt too in progress to me. It felt confusing. In fairness, one of my favorite series of all time also starts this way (“Fullmetal Alchemist”), so maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Either way, the chapter is able to round itself out satisfyingly by the end. However, it almost does so too effectively, making it feel like a oneshot rather than an ongoing series. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out in chapter 2, if (similar to “Fullmetal Alchemist”) we take a step back to progress more slowly.
The illustrations throughout chapter 1 do a nice job of skating the line between typical cutesy manga designs and convincingly horror. Kakazu draws some cool battle transformation scenes for Ko, which I wasn’t necessarily expecting, but perhaps should have. Manga creators love to hide power in small, adorably cranky packages. The vampire beasts that possess Shino’s family are fun too, but it’s a bit unclear from their design how exactly they qualify as vampires beyond the declaration that they eat blood. Still, the prospect of encountering different classes of vampires is an intriguing one. Will they all be animal-like demons, or will their looks vary wildly based on their type? I’m hoping for, and assuming, the latter.
Final Verdict: 7.0 — Despite feeling a bit like a oneshot, there’s enough intriguing character and plot teases with room to grow to convince you to come back for more.
