At Millennium Academy, elite vampires are trained to maintain balance in a world where humans and vampires, who possess far greater physical strength than their human neighbors, coexist. When Aldred, the most distinctly un-vampire-like vampire to be found in the entire institution, meets Kei, a human transfer student to the school, their destinies become surprisingly intertwined, and the fate of the world as they know it comes to lie in their hands. Will the unlikely duo be able to break the vicious cycle of blood and chaos that comes every millennium on the ominous night of the Twin Moons?
Yana Toboso (枢 やな Toboso Yana) is a female Japanese manga artist born in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, Japan and currently resides in Yokohama. She is best known for Black Butler (黒執事 Kuroshitsuji), a popular shonen manga series.
She has also written yaoi under the pen name Yanao Rock (簗緒ろく).
Appearance Yana Toboso draws herself as a devil with a black body and horns, a white head, and a pointed tail. She has never uploaded a picture of herself, so her actual appearance is unknown.
While I agree with the opinion that this was confusing at times, and could have worked better if it was given at least two volumes, I still ended up enjoying it. I was emotionally invested in this friend group pretty quickly once Kei, a precious character with a tragic destiny, showed up. His presence added depth to what otherwise could have been a pretty straightforward action story. And while I don't typically like open endings, the way this ended was done well, with a perfect mix of bittersweet and hopeful.
The characters were great. The world was interesting.
I just wish there was more here! It's so short, it feels rushed. I love the characters, but we don't learn much about them besides the obvious personality traits (no backstory here). I loved the world this takes place in, but anything we learn is pretty superficial.
There's just so much more that Toboso-sensei could have done.
Also, is it just me, or was there something going on between Al and Kei? Their relationship seemed to be pushing the boundary of friendship just a bit... Not that I mind one way or another with that. I think given the time, Toboso-sensei could do a lot with that and make their relationship a bit more clear (Friends? Bros? Into each other? etc)
Yana Toboso's debut, a stand alone, one volume. The art work is wonderful, with the details Yana's Black Butler manga series is known for.
The story was good. Black Butler, now up to 22 volumes, is so deeply entrenched in my brain as far as characters, plots and details that it took me a couple reads to switch gears. I'll read this again a couple of times later on so I don't miss anything.
Yana Toboso's Black Butler is such an outstanding gem, that I want to read every word she's ever published.
I figured the debut manga by the creator of Black Butler would be interesting, but I have to say I don't understand a single thing that happened.
Would be 3 stars for the art, characters, and gentle vibe if I had any idea what was going on with the plot.
We start off in an established society where vampires and humans live alongside each other, and vampires do not drink human blood - just diluted juice pack versions that keep them from going power-hungry. Vampires are a tiny percentage of the population, but since they're so much stronger than humans, they still require an "anti-vampire" force to keep them in check, so there's an academy set up to train the strongest vampires to be a sort of self-contained police force.
Aldred, the son of the academy's headmaster, is charismatic, outgoing, a natural leader, and a pretty great fighter, except for one big issue: he doesn't have the bloodline weapon that all other vampires are born with. This makes the leader of one of the other teams jealous, since he has more fighting power but no friends.
This setup all works, and I enjoyed the school scenes, with Al fighting for the best lunchroom meals for his team/friends, and bringing the new human transfer student, Yosugara, under his wing. But there's of course a much bigger, world-destroying, plot underway.
Every thousand years, the two moons split, and something terrible happens.
Okay except...that's...not the plot at all? They keep talking about these moons as the source of the chaos, but let's unpack that.
2 weeks before the moons even split, there are vampires causing problems - breaking into the academy, slaughtering and eating students, etc. When they're beaten back from the academy - not by the headmaster or any students, mind - they turn to the other four points of the seal and take down the cathedral, train station, etc.
Because what they're trying to do is unseal the area where all the bloodthirsty vampires were trapped 1,000 years ago, through the creation, by the church, of a special holy lance that could disintegrate vampires and render their powers useless. It turns out this "lance" is made up of holy magic that has to be contained in a human form, and wielded by a vampire who does not have a bloodline weapon. That means Al and Yosugara are the pair that will save the world. By drinking Yosugara's blood - a forbidden activity - Al activates his true powers, and Yosugara turns into the lance.
It's Al who defeats the vampires at the academy, and kills the jealous team leader who'd for some reason randomly joined with them. (Plot gap here too: he sure didn't look remotely dead when Al and Yosugara passed out. And somehow all of Al's stabbed-through-the-gut teammates survived.)
I mean, I get his actual reasons - he's frustrated by being told to limit his power and to work for the good of the humans whom he considers a lesser species, etc. But his existence was a little pointless in the grand scheme of things, because there's no big division in the vampire world in the final battle. It's not actually about the vampires splitting into pro- and anti-human categories; some of the vampires just slipped through the seal and are trying to take down the five points to release the rest of their race.
Starting to get a little confused yet? Yeah.
And there's no every 1,000 years event. Because the vampire rebellion happened ONCE, a thousand years earlier, and was squashed and sealed then. I guess every thousand years after that the seals will weaken? But how do they even know that will happen, if this is the first time?
And why are the adults sitting around doing nothing?
The headmaster and the teachers didn't show up to fight during that first academy battle, or the second; it was left entirely to the students. What's happened to all the graduates who'd formed this elite anti-vampire force? What was the point of 1,000 years of training and education?
At one point, I even thought the headmaster was a secret villain, because he seemed pretty suspicious standing in the unsealed cathedral. But I guess he was just lazy and leaving the work to his son? I honestly don't get it.
Then it turns out that there never actually was a rebellion at all (?). The splitting moon is actually the world vampires come from; they're not a part of the human race at all. They'd been sliding in and out of the human world to drink on their blood, but some of them had bred with humans in the process and created dhampirs, who banded together with the humans and assisted in the creation of the holy lance to banish the vampires to their world and seal off the gate.
Okay. I get that. Kinda. Not sure what the point is of setting up an entire mythology that was just a complete lie, in single volume that has no space to unpack all those complications, but I guess I kinda understand the reality behind the curtain.
So then we meet two of the fully-powered vampires who'd already slipped through the gate from that world, and were trying to break down the barrier so the rest could come through. They attack the academy again...this is the point where the headmaster tells all the students to go die for the cause, which they mostly do I guess. Or don't? Unclear.
The vampires explain that what the traitor dhampirs and church actually did was create a living tomb. Since they had no food source, they all went insane over the last 1,000 years and started killing and eating each other. Not sure how many of them are left after 1,000 years of that, but enough to threaten the human world still.
Al hears all this, says cool story still murder, and proceeds to defeat the two of them by using his Yosugara lance.
Two problems here: Al is starting to go a little bit mad himself from ingesting Yosugara's blood. And every time Yosugara transforms into the lance, it destroys some of his human body, so he's lost sight, hearing, and the use of his legs by this point. With a fourth and final use, he'll cease to exist in human form entirely.
There's another human student at the vampire academy: a rich and brilliant 12 year old who's invented a machine that also has those special anti-vampire powers, which you would think would be a major plot point, but it is not.
Anyway, I guess that's why Al doesn't use Yosugara a fourth time when he decides to go up into the vampire world to defeat all the vampires completely by himself, with a nail-studded bat, so they can't break through and destroy the human world.
Which.
Cannot work. Literally cannot work. It's been established that he doesn't have any great power on his own and it's the whole holy lance thing that kills the vampires.
And then nothing happens after that!!!!!!!!!
We have a time jump where the human inventor is taller and older and talking about his research yielding some results, so we know it's been at least a few years. And the rest of Al's friends all seem cheerful and fully alive, which means the vampires didn't break through during the moon split. What happened? No explanation in the slightest.
And then we cut to Al and Yosugara sitting together on a hospital type bed, so apparently Al made it back alive? And since Yosugara is drawing, it seems the research must be healing some of the lance damage. But then I don't understand the last few pages in the slightest.
Why was everyone looking so shocked, like Al was finally coming back from the vampire world? Was that not Al in the bed? Then who was that random man who looked like him with longer hair?
Genuinely could be not be more confused. And anyway there's no way Al would have survived that.
Weird, weird story with an interesting setup and way more questions than it had space to answer. It was very messy and I would like someone to explain the ending to me.
E ancora una volta Yana Toboso riesce a far breccia nel mio cuore, stavolta niente demoni sexy o serie che constano di infiniti volumi. Rust Blaster si presenta come uno shounen stand-alone a tema vampiri, sui disegni niente da dire, sono ricchi di minuziosi dettagli; per quanto riguarda la trama alcuni punti sono un po' confusionari, ma disseminati tra le tavole ci sono un sacco di frasi profonde e dolcemente malinconiche! Amo lo stile di questa mangaka e credetemi Aldred e Kei vi conquisteranno!
The premise is pretty interesting, but it's too bad it's only a one shot. This had a lot of promise and was enjoyable but sort of fell short in a lot of areas for me.
Overall, I liked this manga very much. It's important to remember it's a debut work, and a single volume. Read it like a summary of a story to enjoy ita concepts: the pacing is unbelievably poor, but that's because it is a lot of ideas crushed into six chapters.
The characters are all great, and despite the cramped timeframe the emotional attachment I developed for them was very real. As well, some of the concepts and conflicts were genuinely intriguing, and I would have loved to see more of them.
With more space (and more volumes) this manga would absolutely shine, if it was given the breathing room to develop, explain itself, and not have every revelation require a whip-crack reaction.
For any fans of vampire lore or Yana Toboso, I would certainly recommend this
First off, the main characters are just adorable xD .. And the style of drawing is just top-notch! :D Furthermore the story itself is really good, however I think, if the author had had the energy, and maybe some help to go on, that it could've been a lot longer, and more exciting :) - because the plot is very predictable ^^'
It was a great mang I enjoyed it, but I didn't really understood what happened in the last chapter I mean did he go off to battle and died or he went over to the other side and stayed what the heck happened to him? Other Than that I thought if the artist wanted the story could've been stretched it was that good the plot the drawing everything was just appealing.
I loved it! Vůbec jsem netušila, že Yana (autorka Black Butlera aka Kuroshitsuji) stvořila i něco dalšího. K RB jsem se dostala úplnou náhodou (roleplayuju za postavu, která randí s Aldredem, protagonistou RB, a tak jsem chtěla vědět, co je zač). Super kraťoučká upířina na jedno volume, která by rozhodně snesla i pokračování. Aldred je boží goof postava, kterou miluju.
At present I don't have a ton to say about this oneshot manga, but it was definitely a fun story and felt like a speedrun of something that could have been longer than a single volume. Admittedly I don't know much about this, but anyone who does: did Yana intend this to be just a oneshot, or was it intended to be a miniseries she ended up having to make into a single volume due to publishing constraints? If anyone knows the answer to this, I'd appreciate hearing about it!
I do feel like this series also leans in the direction that a lot of the characters' relationships could be read in various queer ways, but I do like that Team 6 has a similar kind of dynamic to the 2003 animated Teen Titans or to the Big Hero 6 team of superheroes. Not that every character fits the same set of archetypes across all the properties, but there's a certain energy, a certain type of group dynamic present here with these characters that I really enjoy seeing, and that's easily what I appreciate most in this manga when I compare it to Yana's work in Black Butler or Twisted Wonderland.
RustBlaster is a really interesting manga! I mainly picked it up because it's by Yana Toboso and I'm a huge fan of Black Butler so I wanted to find out what her previous work is like. I'm still not super sure of what the plot was, hahah, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I'll reread it in the future to get a better understanding of everything and because it's a fun, short read. Here are some notes of my thoughts!
RustBlaster was the debut work by Toboso Yana, who went on to write my beloved Black Butler. Therefore, I was interested to check it out. I thought the story concept was really good, and you can see the way her art developed from this story through to Black Butler. What let this work down, though, was its length. Because it was so short, there wasn't much time for character development and the story felt rushed, especially the ending, which was a little vague. It was still enjoyable, but spread over a longer page count it could have been even better, as we could have gotten to know the characters and their relationships better and had more backstory on what was taking place. This one is a 3.5 stars-read that I would round up to a four rather than down to a three.
My partner recommended me this book at some point through our Black Butler marathon, as Yana Toboso is a mangaka they greatly admire. Admittedly I really liked this a lot, and I think it would be neat to see more single volume or even duo-volume works from Toboso-san.
If you want a one shot with unique characters, fleshed out lore (albeit limited due to length), and some vampire shenanigans, then look no further. This little venture delightful.
3.5/5 Puede que me haya perdido cosas de la historia por haberme lanzado a comprar la ed. en alemán. Aún así, quería leerlo por ser de la autora de otro manga que me encanta, y este no ha estado mal.
Oh my gosh!!! I wanted more, what a short but amazing story! I say short, because I flew through it, and I would kill for a sequel. But anyways, how interesting it was, and the characters, I was in love so fast.
I thought this manga had a cool idea but a weak execution. It would have been better if it had been longer, that way there could have been more character building.
Una historia interesante con un desarrollo bastante pobre. Que sea un tomo único no es excusa para el poco desarrollo que tiene. Lo mismo con los personajes 🤷
Quer isso ?? Comecei super pensando na comédia (que inclusive é muito divertido), e levei um balde de água fria na cara !!! Ainda não consegui supera essa história, passo de leve pra algo mais pesado (emocionalmente falando) esse final me destruiu.
Si bien es cierto, como suele pasar en cualquier tomo único, que el final siempre nos sabe a poco. Más cuando hay tanta historia detrás que la autora podría haber desarrollado mucho más de no ser este un solo volumen, la verdad es que para lo mucho que trata en estas 226 páginas, es un final muy bien hilado.
Y es que Rust Blaster te deja tus momentitos de todo, desde el colegueo entre los miembros del Grupo 6, enfrentamientos con antagonistas desde el primer capítulo y un conflicto que descubrimos relativamente pronto y el cual, quizá no de la manera que a muchos nos gustaría, se soluciona, de una manera la mar de adecuada.
A mi parecer, que una historia así, con tal nivel de acción, pueda condensarse en tan poquitos capítulos ya me parece, de lejos, una burrada. Evidentemente que quedan frentes abiertos, pero es que la historia principal está básicamente cerrada. Y con una resolución más que convincente.
Además, no hay que desmerecer, en absoluto, el pedazo de dibujo de Yana Toboso, es que es tan de los dosmiles que es innegable que si ya eres fan de esa estética y te gusta el mundo vampírico, vas a encontrar en este tomo ese placer culpable que te vas a beber página tras página.