Our Blood Oath

Ebonyslayer Dec 13, 2020

3

My thoughts so far up to Chapter 13: Our Blood Oath happens to be another supernatural shounen series that Shounen Jump released in an attempt to replicate the success of Jujutsu Kaisen, which recently got hugely popular due to its anime adaption. The impression so far that I have with OBO is that its about two brothers and their goal to deal with monsters called vampiric beasts that prey on humans. Eventually they deal with actual vampires, but we'll get to that in a second. The question is whether OBO is worth getting into or not. And sadly, I think the answer is no unfortunately. Story- The story for the beginning part is rather episodic, as I said before, the brothers are pretty much fighting fodder enemies for a while before the plot begins to pick up. The human brother Shin's school friend is being blackmailed by a vampire, which eventually means the brothers becoming involved. Its touched on that Ko(the younger non-related brother) is from a royal vampire family, and there are vampires with a grudge against the royal family. You can tell that the series is going to be dealing with the co-existence between vampires and humans, since there are clearly vampires that want to change the status quo. And that in itself can be an interesting story. But a story's potential can be carried only so far before being dragged by its weak point, and by that I mean the characters. Art- The art of OBO feels a lot cleaner and sleeker compared to other shounen manga. If I had to say anything, it reminds me of Bleach. The author is probably a fan too, since there was a candy shop that deals in weapons for the main characters, plus it had an underground training area. If that doesn't scream Bleach, then I don't know what is. This is a minor gripe, but I feel like every vampire in manga/anime has been pretty. People in Japan must really like their vampires being pretty and stuff. But hey, at least they don't sparkle like disco balls, like a certain vampire romance series. Characters- And now we've hit the weak point of the series. I wanted to like Shin and Ko, but I just don't feel attached to the characters, there just isn't enough personal moments for them to make me feel attached to them. And its not like the older brother-younger brother relationship hasn't been done before in manga/anime. The most obvious one(one of them anyway) being Zatch and Kyo from the Zatch Bell series. The author focused on many other side characters, when he/she should have focused on Shin and Ko the most. Overall- Its not hard to develop a relationship between two brothers, that's what the creator of Supernatural did for 15 seasons, and it worked. I'd chalk this up as poor execution overall, which is a shame since I heard the oneshot did pretty well. Guess the author bit off more than they could chew, but that can happen to a lot of new authors in Shounen Jump. Manga Recommendations: Fullmetal Alchemist Blue Exorcist

Lukeh34 Jun 13, 2021

4

I only read this story for the art. The brother complex was a bit much for me and the abilities impressed me only for the first chapter. The emotional beats just didn't really land from a storytelling perspective. I hope to see more from the mangaka since their art is so gorgeous but perhaps a different person writing the story would be better.