Black Rose Alice 4

Setona Mizushiro – Viz – 2015 – 6+ volumes

Hm.  There’s still a lot going on here, and I’m not sure what to make of it all.  Which is a good thing!  It keeps me guessing.  It’s pretty far from the shoujo vampire story it presents itself as.

One thing is that we’re four volumes in, and Dimitri and Alice are still not even close to liking each other.  In fact, this volume drives them further apart when Alice finds diaries kept by the daughter of the man who took the vampires into his home.  The daughter has a huge crush on Dimitri, but believes he has eyes for no one but the comatose body of his lover.  This leads Alice to believe that she only receives attention from him because she is animating said body, and she begins to act coldly.

Admittedly, this volume also doesn’t paint a flattering portrait of Dimitri.  Because he wants Maximilian to live on, we find out that he uses the feelings of the daughter of the house to ask her to propagate with Maximilian.  A death sentence for her, but, you know, Dimitri asked.  Later, we find out Leo propagated just before death, and the vampires need to look after the woman for the month it will take her to… seed.  Dimitri makes sure to do this in front of Alice, because it involves passing “sap” mouth to mouth, an obviously intimate activity.

Alice finally gives him his at the end of the book, when she accuses him of using an emotional moment to come on to her.  Never has a shoujo heroine figuratively slapped a dude in the face so hard.  I loved that she called him out on it.  The thing is, it’s impossible to tell what Dimitri is thinking.  Was he being sincere?  Was he really just preying on her emotional vulnerability?

I cannot recall if we know how close Dimitri is to death.  I need to re-read this series, actually, because we learn a lot more about the vampire biology here, and I feel like I need to brush up on what they’ve been doing.  I love how original their makeup is, but if I had one complaint, it’s that this is too weird to leave off explaining for so long, and we get a bit of an info dump here.

The twins are also around, and it’s implied there may be a new member joining at the beginning of next volume.  Hooray!  Again, though he is a major jerk, I’m still fairly curious where Dimitri and Alice’s relationship is going.  They’re making out on all the covers, so it has to be going somewhere, right?

I should be caught up by the time volume 6 comes out in… a few weeks?  December?  I’m not sure.  But let me say again how good it feels to be reading Setona Mizushiro in English again.  I love her dearly.