A manga by Tohru Uchimizu

With the stakes going higher and higher, The Love and Creed of Sae Maki has grown from a story of an unfortunate high school “romance” gone wrong into something far more disturbing. As we left the previous chapter, Sae Maki has made it loud and clear that she would leave no stone unturned to preserve her fling with her newest “slave” Misao intact. And in saying that, the relationship can only go a single way – whatever Sae Maki wants, Sae Maki gets. Not even harming Misao in broad daylight with a stun-gun is off limits, and if Misao’s new acquaintance Kokai is telling the truth, murder may not be off the table either. We are coming towards the end of what would be volume one of this series had I been reading it as one large bound book, but since I am reviewing these as Amazon sells them, chapter by chapter, we have this and chapter 5 to go. With three more full books after this one on the horizon, I can’t imagine what myriad of twists and turns are coming, but I’m definitely along for the ride either way.

“Misao is a high school girl who is terrible at making friends. One day, she’s saved from her loneliness by Sae, whose academics, athleticism, and even appearance are “perfect.” But Sae’s idea of friendship is a little distorted…As the story moves on, Misao is trapped by Sae, who controls Misao as she pleases. Feeling that her life is in danger, Misao and Kokai, a young man who vows to save her, strategize ways to release Misao from Sae’s control.”

This chapter actually contains some well-needed backstory from the pages of a diary that Kokai has been carrying around. It appears that he was once good friends with one of Sae’s previous “slaves”, and the escalation of the relationship written in this book is basically a 1:1 copy of what Misao has been experiencing. This girl seemingly passed away after falling from an apartment complex in the middle of the book, a fact that Kokai assumes was a suicide at best, or a murder at worst. A second uneven relationship is revealed that followed in which an entire family completely “disappeared” after the victim asked her parents and school for help. It is not known if they died or fled town, but in either instance they vanished one day, and seemingly without a trace.

We also see one of Sae’s first real roadblocks coming in Kokai summoning a huge gang leader that takes great interest in protecting delinquents in his former middle school. When Sae is implicated in a beatdown that some of his “descendants” within the school were victims of, he seems eager to settle the score. This huge, manacling, and formerly incarcerated man seems like a done deal for Sae, but I can only assume she will somehow come out on top, potentially with Misao helping her gauging the reaction the plan got when it was revealed. The next chapter of this story ought to be insane, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

I mentioned before that this book was released in an odd way that many manga readers may not be used to. This manga is published by Akita Publishing Co.,Ltd. directly to the US market via digital sales on Amazon, which is the same format used for comics like Creature (another by them) and Lockdown Zone Level X, which I also have been reviewing on here. I have stated in past reviews that I actually like this delivery method because I don’t have a ton of room to be buying manga paperbacks all the time, and it’s easier to tell if I will like something or not with a few chapters at a lower price. It’s a great alternative to succumbing to pirate “scan-lation” companies that generally are not that good at what they do and steal money from the creators. I am always saying that if the content is available in this region for a reasonable price, I’d rather get it legitimately versus stealing it.

This book is kind of getting more ridiculous as each chapter goes, but I think that may be the reason why I like it so much. In all honestly a real situation like this would be somewhat brief and result in Sae being in some serious trouble in some way, but in the world of manga, we’re about to some giant mountain of a man straight out of Baki The Grappler likely get destroyed by a high school underclassmen, and that will be ridiculous. If this keeps up, Sae may start turning into a horror movie villain ala Jason Vorhees considering she already has a body count, potentially, and may be heading towards more.

This book is available in a chapter-by-chapter format on Amazon