Hmm what to say about Black Bird. Words fail me, but here I am. Black Bird is the type of story that normally I would enjoy (genre-wise), but somehow it just didn't work out with BB. It takes all the bad parts about shoujo stories and combines them into one. Somehow, I still wanted to finish it though, so I guess that says *something* about the manga, though I'm not sure what exactly that something is.

Story (4): the story itself was kind of 'meh'. It's not the worst I've ever read, but there really wasn't a point. It was very predictable. After reading about half the story, I already knew what was going to happen.

Art (6): I thought the art was actually pretty nice. It's not amazing or particularly noteworthy, but it's clean and easy to understand. I didn't like how big Misao's eyes were, though. They took up half her face sometimes. I also didn't really like most of her outfits. The art is fine, but it isn't good enough to cover up for the poor story.

Character (3): the characters were the weakest part of this story. Misao has NO agency. I don't think she ever decides to do anything on her own. I don't want to give away what happens, so pardon me for being vague, but the only time she ever really "decides" to do something for herself, it's not really even a decision, it's just accepting the inevitable. For most of the manga, all I could think about was how much easier everyone's lives would be if Misao just died. It's not that I wanted her to die...but I kind of did. It disturbed me how infantalized she was. She cried on every other page. who cries that often? It was excessive even by shoujo standards. I also could never understand why Misao and Kyou even loved each other. Misao didn't really have much of a personality, and Kyou spent most of his time maintaining a poker face. It was also annoying that all of the "Great 8" were male. In one of the omake about the mangaka's life, she mentioned that one of her editors suggested that one of the Great 8 be a female, but it was rejected. Why? I really don't understand. The only girls in this manga are Misao, Misao's mom, Misao's 2 friends, Kyou's cousin, Kyou's mom, and Shou's female sidekick (who just kind of disappears after she is no longer relevant to the plot), and the fox head's girlfriend (also disappears without explanation). There's also 1 girl in a side story (Zenki's sister), but she isn't a part of the main BB plot since she has her own story. There were many characters who were introduced, never developed, and then forgotten. They weren't even "put on a bus"; they just disappeared.

In my opinion, the characters are the most important part of a story. If you don't care about the characters, why should you care about what happens to them? I did not care about the characters of BB, so the story wasn't very compelling.

Enjoyment (5): I think that if you like Twilight, you will probably like this kind of story. It has a lot of similarities. Misao is JUST LIKE BELLA, in a very bad way. I read to the end because I wanted to see what would happen. It's like eating a box of chocolates, hoping that at least one of them will be good, and then feeling sick at the end because you ate allll that sugar, and none of them were good. I hoped that Misao would finally do something other than be rescued and hate herself, but it never happened.

Honestly, I do not recommend this manga. I wanted it to be good, and I wanted to like it, but it was lacking in many ways. The notes left by the mangaka throughout each volume are heartwarming and it really seems like she tried hard, but in the end it was very disappointing.