Finé is an agent of LEA, an organization dedicated to eradicating the use of an evil elixir which turns humans into sex crazed demons. Iris Redhood is Finé’s partner, lover, and…a werewolf. Finé is herself a human-wolf demon and uses her powers to defeat other supernatural beings. The two are bound by a promise made to one another.

In Volume 1 we met Misery, a young women who hoped to save her horribly scarred younger sister, instead turning her into a monster with the elixir.

In Volume 2 of Scarlet (スカーレット), the aptly-named Misery joins LEA, but does not find the redemption she hoped for. Finé learns a terrible secret about the terrible secret about the drug and the book climaxes with all the terrible secrets coming to a terrible end.

Writing a story, as many of us know, is a complicated process. Anyone who has ever attempted a story of any kind knows the feeling when the thread has slipped away…and the frustration of trying to pull it all together. Scarlet feels like a series that slipped out of the creator’s grasp. By the time it ended, the author had publicly struggled to get enough sales to continue the story, but even so, it felt messy – as if there were several strands that were being added in a desperate attempt to drum up interest. It’s a shame for Seven Seas, too, because it had the perfect Venn diagram of all their readerships in one series. For me, however, it was a dartboard full of ideas that never quite formed into a coherent whole.

I did like the epilogue however, for the sheer horror of it.

Ratings:

Art – 6 It wore poorly as the story went on. Breast squeezing. Yuck
Story – 7
Characters – 7 Never has a character been so aptly named as Misery.
Service – 7 Ugly lesbian sex. Yay. Breast squeezing. Yuck
Yuri – 6 Hunger is a kind of passion, I guess.

Overall – 7 Slightly less good than the parts of its sum.

You will be able to learn of all these terrible secrets and the ugly sex they necessitate when you read, Scarlet, Volume 2, out from Seven Seas in October! ^_^