Sakura Hime 11

Arina Tanemura – Viz – 2013 – 12 volumes

Ooh, evil evil evil!  My two favorite characters are Asagiri and Rurijo, and in that way, this is the volume for me.  I love their relationships with Sakura, and Rurijo’s only gets better here.

The Rurijo storyline at the beginning of the volume basically wraps up her part in things, and it was just about everything I could have hoped for.  There’s a rather ugly scene between her and Enju, and she eventually confronts Princess Sakura.  Even they get a wonderful scene together.  Then, everything changes, and it’s great, and I couldn’t be happier.  Honestly, I had not imagined anything like that for Rurijo.

Then I thought to myself, “Of course that happened!  This is Tanemura!  She wrote a manga about a little girl with terminal throat cancer where not even the dead people were really dead!  Nothing bad is going to happen here.”

But then the volume kept going.

I’m not at all upset about what happened, just sad.  And yes, it was surprisingly evil.  But I’m happy to see it.  Perhaps her stories are now growing out of Ribon (she’s said before she wanted to draw for Ribon indefinitely).  None of her three newest stories have run in Ribon.  I’d love to try out the *gasp* slightly more mature Tanemura story.  And when I say that, I know full well Margaret stories aren’t actually that much more mature.  But Melody stories sometimes are, and I’d love to read that one.  But I’ll talk more about that next time.