Red Garden, Volume 4 is 272 pages of blood, weirdness, violence and undead girls who look very fetching in that frock.

As you can see clearly from the cover, Kate steps forward to openly take her place as the lead character in this volume. It’s been apparent that, although the story is *said* to revolve around Lise, it really revolves around Kate.

Kate and Herve’ come together, and are ripped apart, Kate fends off Evil, Psycho Lesbian ^TM Paula who, completely unlike the wonderful, kind, sincere Paula of the anime, is a loathsome, unstable creature in the fine tradition of carnivorous lesbians in most media. But don’t worry – she dies. Then she comes back and turns out to be real nice after all. But she dies again anyway.

Kate is set apart from Rose, Rachel and Claire at the end when, in order to save everyone, she is forced to sacrifice herself. Although they mourn their loss, they are able to move on and live the lives that had been taken from them. Kate, however, does not die, but lives in this series’ version of Tir-na-Og, the Red Garden of Roosevelt Island, with her beloved friend Lise. Which is why I am calling this a Yuri Manga. Surely even the undead can live in a Boston Marriage? ^_^

As with all the other volumes, there is violence, there is fashion, there is raw emotion and shoujo-style SHOCK! eyes. There is also an amazingly nice set of panels with all four of our heroines in the uniform of Grace, which is way more effective than I would have expected.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 8

It’s really hard to ignore the importance of clothes in this manga. What they are wearing is at least as important as what they are doing. ;-)