The Cain Saga Vol 1 - Forgotten Juliet - Corpses, everywhere, corpses!
Ah, the countdown for ACen begins! In between packing up all of the junk I'm dragging to Rosemont, I paused to give The Cain Saga Vol. 1 the once over. This book has been collecting dust on my shelf for quite some time; October, 2006, to be exact, so there's no time like the present to wipe off the little dust bunnies and crack it open. Though I am sometimes mystified by Kaori Yuki's rabid fan following (ouch! please don't throw those bottles at me!), I do have to admit that her color illustrations are arresting and extremely beautiful. Her line art can sometimes be another story...
忘れられたジュリエット （伯爵カインシリーズ 1） by 由貴香織里
Cain Saga #1 - Forgotten Juliet by Kaori Yuki
Rated: Mature
Price: 9.99
Viz - Shoujo - Suspense/Horror/Drama
May Contain Spoilers
The Cain Saga is a collection of stories sharing eerie, chilling themes. In "Forgotten Juliet," Ariel is the central character. His uncle, who is to be wed to the wealthy daughter of the Claremont family, owns a flower shop, and the beautiful Miss Suzette stops in for primroses. As they aren't in season yet, the boy promises to deliver some as soon as they arrive. Miss Suzette dies in the meantime, and Ariel is haunted by her death. Though he only spoke to her on a few occasions, he's having a hard time accepting her death. At her funeral, her family is scandalized that her cousin, Cain, the young earl, hasn't bothered to cut his vacation short to attend the services.
Shortly after, the primroses arrive, and Ariel, still unable to shake the image of the lovely young girl from his mind, takes the flowers to her grave. In the middle of the night. Man, this guy's got guts! Especially when he interrupts the activities of a pair of grave robbers, and trips over the corpse of the caretaker as he chases them off. The caretaker, bearing a green hand print on his neck, appears to have succumbed to poison. Soon, rumors of Miss Suzette's wandering ghost are the talk of the town.
Ariel, determined to discover the truth behind the girl's death, learns that the servants believe she committed suicide. Unlucky in love, the man of her dreams turned out to be of humble means. When her step-mother learned that she gave her family ring to her poor lover, she locked the girl in her room and refused to allow her to leave. Distraught, she was thought to have killed herself.
As Ariel becomes more entangled in the circumstances behind Suzette's death, he finds himself in danger. Caught creeping around Cain's mansion, who he believes holds the key to the entire mystery, he's poisoned by the same green substance that killed the caretaker, and is astonished that he regains consciousness instead of ending up dead. The fact that the Earl is pointing a gun at his head seems a small concern, especially when he sees the Earl's impressive poison collection. Everybody's gotta have a hobby, I guess, and accumulating as many exotic poisons as possible makes sense. If you like cute little bottles.
Ariel immediately suspects the Earl of being a murderer and committing the poisonings, and of robbing Suzette's body from her grave. But wait, she's not dead! Borrowing from Romeo and Juliet, she only pretended to be dead. As Ariel fits together the remaining pieces of this puzzle, he learns that Suzette's scheme originates a little too close to home.
I really liked Ariel, and the fact that he empathized so much with Suzette. Maybe because they are near in age, her death was shocking to him, even though he only really knew her in passing. Despite himself, he becomes so consumed by learning the real truth behind Suzette's death that it's all he can think about. Even preparations for his uncle's wedding to a beautiful heiress can't shake thoughts of Suzette from his mind.
I enjoyed the irony behind each of the tales in this collection. While Cain was only an ancillary character in the first story, he was featured more prominently in "Branded Bibi," which begins with a distressed letter from his uncle. Begging his assistance, the man reveals that a woman claiming to be his daughter, who died from a savage dog attack years ago, wants to meet with him. Cain is soon caught up in the underbelly of 19th century London. The girl works in a brothel, and he learns that she's a shadow from his past. His uncle, a womanizer, had taken in his mistress and their daughter after his wife died. Never recognizing the girl, however, he lavished all of his love on Madeline, the only child borne by his wife.
While this tale stepped over the bounds of yuck as Uncle Leland cuddled the shoe left behind when the woman claiming to be his daughter fled the scene of the meeting, it was engrossing and held me at the edge of my seat. All of these tales were creepy and well-paced, and each stood well on it's own. The plot twists were clever, and while I wasn't always surprised by the conclusion to each story, I found their resolutions interesting and satisfying.
Kaori Yuki's art, in keeping with the gritty themes of her stories, is dark and, at times, menacing. She's quite skilled at drawing her characters in the throes of death, and better yet, at illustrating corpses, especially gory, torn into many pieces, corpses (see Angel Sanctuary). Makes me wonder what she does in her time off. But I digress. Her panels tend to be too busy, and thus appear cluttered. She packs a maximum of panels and illustrations onto almost every page, and the effect can be extremely wearying on the eyes. The pages are so intensive, crammed with text and pictures, that I occasionally needed to take a break from reading.
The Cain Saga Volume 1 was a nice change of pace from my usual reading fare. I liked that everything was contained in one volume, which makes me wonder if all of the Cain books follow this formula. Though there was little in the way of character development, I enjoyed the book and it's quirky stories enough that I wouldn't hesitate to read the second volume.
Grade: B-
This review was written by Julie for the MangaCast. Please drop by the Manga Maniac Cafe and check out the menu. There's always tasty reviews on display!