Mangetsu offers with Shigahime a series as bloody as disturbing. In this chronicle of volume two, we will make you penetrate into the nocturnal world of these bloodsuckers very focused on physical contact…
Vampirism and action
Since the first volume of Shigahime, the young high school student Osamu has become the familiar Miwako, a creature of the night who uses human servants to bring him the blood of a human heart. She promised to save young Chika in exchange for the young man's absolute dedication. However, this promise is a lie. Having also become a creature of the night, the young man wakes up in the mansion with the same bag on his head and his arm is a huge bone scythe. Not everything he has experienced is a nightmare. He becomes a monster and panics. He wishes to commit suicide, because this new life seems hopeless to him.
However, Osamu is endowed with multiple powers and has one hope: to free himself from this status by drinking vampire blood. So he decides to kill his mistress. However, he also discovers that he is not the only familiar and the others do not have his moral questioning. Indeed, a new character does not make task in this gallery of furious madmen. Dressed as a wise high school girl, but very perverse, she comes to kill Miwako and his servant, because they killed a familiar. She wants to make amends for this mistake in protocol.
Indeed, there is no solidarity between vampires and there is even a social inequality between the four vampires, originals like Miwako and later mixed-race women. Calling themselves the bloodline, these vampires hunt each other to preserve their territory, but cannot kill each other. Only familiars are capable of this. It is difficult to understand why Miwako explains this weakness to Osamu. This new volume of Shigahime also nuances the original purpose. A mistress refuses to feed herself because she wants to die. Miwako does not embody absolute evil, but she is attached to her slave in a relationship of double dependence… Or is this a new manipulation on his part?
Sex and death
Shigahime is a dark and creepy series, but that does not detract from its qualities. The mention "for an informed public" is justified from the first attack. The new vampire uses hair to invade the servant's skull causing his eyeballs to fall. The design of the beautiful cover is terrifying: we have a view from above of Miwako in a blood-stained wedding dress and she wipes her face. Sato Hirohisa manages to be very gory, but in black and white. A vampire is literally eaten by hunger.
If Shigahime may seem feminist, because the original four are women, the series is above all a parable of sex by mixing eroticism and death, eros and thanatos. As an SM dominatrix, Miwako teaches the pleasure of the body and dominance to Osamu… but eating a warm heart. Scenes are quite explicit like sharing the remains of a heart. In Shigahime, we are closer to Sade than Ann Rice both in the two-way dialogues and in the very suggestive drawings.
However, feelings are not always negative. In love, Osamu will do anything to save Chika. However, since he tasted much spicier relations with Miwako, this teenage relationship seems bland to him and his mistress plays it perversely. In addition, Osamu cannot tell Chika everything and this silence is a brake on their relationship. For the first time since the beginning of the series, Chika understands that something is wrong and gradually enters the secret world of Osamu.
Planned in five volumes, Shigahime confirms its quality and its dark description of a perverted world.Sato Hirohisa knows how to handle the warmth of emotions and action scenes with the coldness of Miwako's chilling remarks and Osamu's increasingly dark destiny. Indeed, a double page announces a war between familiars that we will paradoxically be delighted to tell you.
If you are still hungry for horror, you can find the chronicles on the first volume and on the masterpieces of Junji Ito.
