Red River, Vol. 1

Red River, Vol. 1 - Chie Shinohara *Originally reviewed on Pages Of Forbidden LoveFinally, after saying I am going to try to read some manga for months I have finally picked one up. I had no idea where to start or even what I would like but my cousin gave me a huge list of the manga she likes to read but I tried to put a couple on hold and there were hundreds of people ahead of me (who would have known). Instead of waiting forever I just decided to see what my library had (which wasn’t much) and found this one. Okay so I wasn’t totally loving the cover but it was the only one I could see that actually began with volume one so I decided to go ahead and read the back. It sounded interesting so I checked it out and read it the same day.Yuri is on top of the world. She is doing great in school and her longtime friend has final kissed her. It seems like everything is going wonderfully and that nothing could go wrong but then water starts to act funny around her. When it tries to grab her she does all she can to stay away from it. She even refuses to go out because of the rain. When her boyfriend begins to question her feelings and asks her out on a date she can’t refuse even though there is snow outside. Things are going well and then in the middle of a conversation hands come out of the water and grab Yuri taking her to the past where a queen wants her blood in order to make her son heir to the kingdom.I’m not always interested in books that take place in the past but the fact that she was from a more present date and sucked into the past made things more interesting. Plus, she was brought to the past through magic to be sacrificed which made for one messed up adventure. I do wish I could have seen what was also going on in the present but it wasn’t too big of a deal. I was just curious since Yuri disappeared with no warning.I don’t have too much of an opinion about the characters yet. I don’t love anyone yet but I do not dislike any of them either. Well except for the queen since she is evil but I like how she comes across so far. Nakia is a greedy queen who already has a lot of power but wants even more. Her plan is to use Yuri to get that power. There wasn’t much that Yuri could do but be captured and saved. She was in a place she didn’t know and only wanted to go home. The queen captured her and Prince Kail came to her rescue. She did try to do some things on her own so she wasn’t completely helpless but she did them at the worst times without much thought. I am hoping for more out of her in the future and I would like to know exactly why it was her that was chosen to be sacrificed. Now, I feel like Prince Kail has a lot of potential but I still don’t know if I can really like him yet. He was pretty cute saving her and all but he also thinks he can have whatever he wants and whoever he wants when he wants them. At one part I thought he was going to go way too far but thankfully he didn’t. I look forward to getting to know all the characters better.Overall, I quite enjoyed this and I am glad it was my first manga. It was interesting and I liked the drawing (even though i don’t have much to compare it to). I am glad I finally gave some manga a try. I can’t wait to read more.