Manga Underground v3.1

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Kurozuka ch. 1-8

It is the Kamakura period, the darkest time in Japan’s long history. As the victorious Yoritomo sets up his shogunate in Kamakura, his brother Yoshitsune, erstwhile war hero and now fugitive, wanders the mountains with his vassal Benkei, searching for a way out. They suddenly encounter a hut nestled deep inside the mountains. As they enter the hut, a beautiful young woman emerges from within. The two fugitives ask for refuge in her hut, and she accepts. But she puts a condition upon them: they must not look into her room. They agree, and she thanks them. Then Yoshitsune asks the woman her name, and she answers: “Kuromitsu.”

The clock then marches forward, to the Meiji era. A rogue bandit samurai kills people to take from them their valuables. In the middle of one such adventure, this rogue finds himself spotted by a veiled man. Frightened, the samurai kills him. A woman calls out to the dead man, and he kills her too.

Running for his life, he reaches a secluded hut in the mountains. Thinking of sheltering there, he runs in, only to find Kuromitsu standing before him. He asks her to feed him and to give him shelter. As he eats, he thinks of how he can take advantage of her. But there is a poison in his food, and as he falls asleep, he is drawn into a strange dream. He sees himself going down to the room deep inside Kuromitsu’s home. He hears noises in there. When he looks through, he is shocked.

Yoshitsune’s head is placed on a table, severed but still alive. On the floor Kuromitsu sits, sharpening a sword and telling him how she will resuscitate him by cutting off the samurai’s head and joining Yoshitsune’s head to it. Then, to his horror, he realizes that they are actually speaking to him. Realizing his peril, he tries to escape but loses his consciousness before that.

The story now shifts back to the Kamakura period, with Yoshitsune recalling their story in a dream. Having lived there for a long time, Yoshitsune and Kuromitsu fall deeply in love. They decide to be together forever. But things change one night, when he hears strange sounds coming from Kuromitsu’s room. He peers in, only to see her sucking the blood out of a man’s corpse. Enraged, he barges in, breaking his promise.

Shocked at his sudden appearance, Kuromitsu begins to cry and remonstrate with his breach of promise. She tells him that sooner or later he would’ve come to know, and that she is glad he has seen her. He tells her that he will not care for her nature as long as she is truthful with him. Their conversation is interrupted, however, by the arrival of flaming arrows, which burn down the hut. Simultaneously, a samurai wearing a fox’s mask appears, and asks to fight Yoshitsune, who demolishes him. He defends Kuromitsu valiantly, saying that even a blood-sucking monster can be a woman, and that he will not abandon her. Impressed by his gallantry, she rushes toward him, when her arm is suddenly cut off by another samurai.

Simultaneously, a warrior jumps on to Yoshitsune’s back but is killed by an arrow beforehand. Now surrounded, Yoshitsune tries to fight back, but is stabbed by the samurai that dismembered Kuromitsu. His body failing, Yoshitsune is on the verge of giving up when, to his surprise, he sees Kuromitsu behind the giant warrior. The vampire lady promptly kills the samurai, and picks Yoshitsune up, taking him to the forest behind her hut./p pInjured, Yoshitsune tells her that she must run away for her own good. But she refuses, and asks him to come with her, “to the end of time”. The bewildered Yoshitsune asks her how, and she says that she must suck her blood, then have him suck hers, so that both share a part of each other. Kuromitsu then explains how she got this power, from a dying vampire who had been washed up ashore and had saved her from some men who had tried to rape her.

As Kuromitsu sucks his blood, Yoshitsune feels elated at the current of power flowing through him. He then sucks some of her blood. Weakened, he rests in her arms until suddenly the band of samurai they had encountered before appear. They stab Yoshitsune, and drive a knife into Kuromitsu’s stomach. They debate on who will get to take what. But Kuromitsu’s anguished cries awaken the young warrior, and he rises, armed now with incredible speed and strength. With his body tingling, he dives into battle, killing all the samurai in horrible ways. As he deals with the last of them, the priest who was leading this pack lunges on Kuromitsu, wanting also to drink her blood.

Suddenly, Benkei appears from nowhere, and slices the man’s head off. As the lovers rejoice at his return, Benkei walks up to his erstwhile master and asks him if he is hurt. When Yoshitsune replies that he is not, the older man draws his sword and beheads him.

The next thing he remembers is waking up, complete and whole, in a shadowy room with Kuromitsu watching over him. He asks her what has happened, but she tells him to rest while she “fulfills her desire”. But they are interrupted by a fat man who attacks Kuromitsu. When she shoots him, he turns out to be made of iron. As she fights him, Yoshitsune rises and slashes the fat man with his sword. As they begin running, Yoshitsune realizes that he does not remember much about what has happened for the past hundred years. Around them, the city of Tokyo burns under the endless air raids of the USAF following the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

The next time he awakens, Yoshitsune finds himself lying in a huge room with rubble all around him. Realizing Kuromitsu is not with him, he sets out to find her, and stumbles upon a post-apocalyptic vista. Kuromitsu comes to him from behind and tells him that Earth has been destroyed by a meteorite. Then she gives him human blood to drink, telling him that he is not complete yet. As before, they are suddenly interrupted by their pursuers, this time an armored troop of soldiers who take Kuromitsu down. As Kuromitsu off the edge of a high-rise, they attempt to secure Yoshitsune. Enraged, he turns on them, and savagely terminates them all. Seeing this, a helicopter emerges from the depths of the city and fires on him. But he climbs on to it, and sends it crashing down into the street.

Jumping down to a lower level, he calls out to Kuromitsu but is suddenly surrounded by a gas that knocks him out. Far beneath him, on street level, Kuromitsu’s broken body begins to move.

Kurozuka vol 1
Kurozuka vol 2
Kurozuka vol 3
Kurozuka vol 4
Kurozuka vol 5
Kurozuka vol 6
Kurozuka vol 7
Kurozuka vol 8
Kurozuka vol 9
Kurozuka vol 10 (end)