This seemed like it would be right up my alley — BL! Vampires! The somewhat dystopian future of 2096! — but something about it was not working for me although I think I will still keep it for my collection for now. Haru works at a clothing boutique and one night on his bike ride home, he tries to help a man who’s about to be attacked. The man has to turn him into a vampire to save him. Before you become a full-fledged vampire, you have to go through a period of time when your body is still human and vampires can drink your blood, and then you’ll turn into a vampire at some random point. While you’re in this pre-vampire stage, all the vampires want to drink your blood because it is at peak deliciousness, so Haru faces constant attack. The man who turned Haru, Akihito, is the last of the half-blood vampires and is a leader of his territory. It’s all a bit convoluted and at the same time doesn’t have a lot of depth.
One of my major confusions was the world building. As with the vampire lore, there’s clearly been careful thought put into it, but it’s more around the edges of the narrative. For some unclear reason, most people live around the railroad station, the suburbs are in ruins, and there are a lot of orphans, so something bad has happened but it’s never explained. Instead of fleshing out the world, the main focus is on Haru and Akihito’s relationship. They do get together but their communication is not good and it causes Haru to be in danger and nearly killed due to him not talking to Akihito and getting a clearer picture of the vampire world and its concomitant threats. On the plus side, the art is very nice in terms of character design and emotional expression, and the sex scenes are good. The empty, barren backgrounds do add to my sense that the world was not fully fleshed out. I don’t know if I’d actually recommend this because there’s so much good BL out there right now that you could spend your money on something better, but I don’t regret reading it. I just wish the interesting ideas had been delved into more.