Kurohime is a witch-gunslinger, which essentially means that she can shoot magic out of a gun to heal injuries, beef up her own physical defenses, or conjure “witch-beasts” to fight opponents. As the volume begins, she is fighting the Kurohime Punishment Squad, a band of scantily-clad women with a grudge against her. A common enemy forces the women to work together and the previously-stoic Kurohime exhibits compassion for her reluctant allies and even helps to rescue the lover of one of them.
Kurohime definitely has some ridiculous attributes—nearly all of the warrior women are wearing next to nothing, Kurohime’s more grown-up guise looks like she has some pretty severe anatomical deformities, and one of her foes is (I am not making this up) a vampire werewolf death angel—but it somehow manages to be pretty entertaining. The story is surprisingly easy to follow for someone just popping in at volume twelve and the frequency with which some of the characters seem to undergo transformations into other sorts of creatures is kind of cool.
While I found myself distracted by all of the improbable bosoms in this manga, there are times when the art is nice to look at. Facial closeups are usually lovely and the character design for Zero, the former male lead who has now become a sort of… quasi-invisible death angel, is nothing short of awesome.
Story-wise, Kurohime is a bit crazy, and art-wise it’s bursting with fanservice, but it’s still pretty intriguing for all that.
Kurohime is published in English by VIZ, who has released eleven volumes so far (twelve will be officially available on July 7). The series is ongoing in Japan, where the sixteenth volume has just been released.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
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