Bloody Cross Review: A Partnership Where Both Sides Are Already Planning the Betrayal

I have a soft spot for stories that refuse to lie about their characters. As a kid I read a lot of manga where two enemies "learn to trust each other," and even back then a small part of me didn't buy it — people don't switch off self-interest just because the plot wants them to be friends. So when I picked up Bloody Cross and found a heroine who tells you, flat out, that she'll use her partner until he stops being useful and then drop him — and a partner who's thinking the exact same thing about her — I leaned in. Finally, a partnership honest enough to admit what it is.

What kept me reading wasn't the angel-and-vampire trappings, which I'll be honest about: they're fun but not new. It was watching two people who genuinely cannot trust each other still have to depend on each other to survive. That tension is the whole engine of the book, and Komeyama runs it for twelve volumes without ever letting it cool into a comfortable friendship.

Quick Take

• A supernatural action series whose core isn't romance or trust but mutual exploitation — both leads are openly planning to betray the other, and the story never pretends otherwise
• The "Crusade" framework (collect God's Inheritances, become the next god) gives the curse-clock plot a clear escalating structure
• 12 volumes, complete in English via Yen Press; rated T (Teen) — supernatural violence and bloodshed, but nothing graphic

Who Is This Manga For?

• Readers who like partnership dynamics built on mutual need instead of trust
• Fans of angel/demon supernatural action with a death-curse ticking clock
• Anyone who wants a complete, contained series rather than an ongoing commitment
• Readers who enjoy a heroine who is genuinely calculating, not secretly sweet

Story Overview

Tsukimiya is a half-blood — half angel, half vampire — and that mixed heritage comes with a brand on her chest, a curse that will kill her by the time she turns eighteen unless she undoes it. The one thing that can stave it off is pure demon blood. So she hunts a powerful demon, and she succeeds in bringing it down. But she doesn't do it alone: a mixed-blood angel named Hinata is there too, and the moment the demon falls, Hinata takes the pure demon blood for himself, leaving Tsukimiya still cursed and out of options.

Cornered, she does something reckless. She drinks Hinata's blood mixed with the slain demon's — and in doing so transmits her own curse onto him. Now they're both branded. Neither can fully cure themselves without the other, and neither can simply walk away. That's the partnership: not friendship, not even a truce, but two people locked together by a wound they inflicted on each other.

The real solution lies in the Crusade — a contest, held roughly every fifty years, to decide who becomes the next god. Candidates and their allies hunt the thirteen God's Inheritances, divine artifacts (a book of prophecy, a spear, a chalice and more) that appear under the full moon and grant fragments of god's power; gather them and offer the right blood, and you can rewrite the order of things. Tsukimiya and Hinata throw themselves into this hunt, clashing with other god-candidates and two opposing forces — Arcana, a militarized organization deliberately stoking the Crusade to claim the Inheritances, and Shinsō, a secret order trying to stop the artifacts from being misused.

The deeper the story goes, the less it's about curing a curse and the more it's about the system itself. By the end, Tsukimiya and Hinata don't just win the Crusade — they aim to destroy it.

Characters

Tsukimiya — The half-angel, half-vampire heroine, and the reason the book works. Her pragmatism isn't a mask hiding a soft heart; she really is as calculating as she presents. She's also revealed to be the reincarnated daughter of the previous Crusade's loser, which ties her personal survival to the system she's fighting. Her arc isn't "learns to love" — it's the slow, grudging admission that she can't cleanly separate herself from Hinata anymore, even when she insists she could drop him at any moment.

Hinata — A mixed-blood angel who plays dumb and lecherous (he gets hit by Tsukimiya constantly), but is the most dangerous schemer in the cast. The reveal is that he's the reincarnation of the god-candidate Subaru, and he came back for one reason: to break the Crusade system entirely. His apparent unreliability is camouflage for a goal much larger and more self-sacrificing than the early volumes let on.

Tsuzuki — A full-blooded angel, ranked tenth among the god-candidates. Proud, self-centered, and out to use Tsukimiya and Hinata to claim god's power for himself — though for all his arrogance he's surprisingly weak at the negotiating table.

Satsuki — A fallen angel and Tsuzuki's older brother, with the chilling ability to "kill" another person's mind. He fell from grace for his brother's sake when they were young, which gives one of the antagonist camps a genuinely tragic core rather than just menace.

What I Love About It

The mutual distrust, and how cleanly the first volume establishes it. Most partnership stories build trust and then test it for drama. Bloody Cross inverts that: it opens with a betrayal. Hinata takes the demon blood that should have saved Tsukimiya, and instead of forgiving him or being rescued, she retaliates by drinking his blood and dragging him down into the curse with her. The relationship is founded on an injury they trade back and forth — and the series never asks you to forget that.

What I love is that Komeyama doesn't soften it later. Through twelve volumes, every character — not just the leads — operates on personal agenda. They'll ally with you now and betray you in the next chapter, and the book treats that as the natural state of things rather than a shocking exception. Because the baseline is so low, the small moments where one of them chooses not to betray the other land much harder than a hundred declarations of friendship would in another series. The development feels earned precisely because it's built on a foundation of "I will use you," not "I trust you."

Memorable Scene ⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The opening curse-trade is the scene that defines the whole book for me. Tsukimiya and Hinata bring down the demon together, and for a beat it looks like a clean victory — and then Hinata simply takes the pure demon blood she needed to survive. It's not a dramatic villain turn; it's casual, transactional, devastating. Her one lifeline, gone. And her answer isn't to beg or collapse. She drinks his blood mixed with the demon's and transfers her death-brand onto him, so that if she goes down, he goes down too. In a single sequence the series tells you exactly what kind of story it is: no saviors, no clean trust, just two people chaining their fates together out of pure necessity.

The other scene that stays with me is the finale. Hinata, working to destroy the Crusade itself, repairs the magic circle at the cost of his own life force, and the closing pages are drawn with this bittersweet, almost gentle beauty after so much bloodshed. The curse on Tsukimiya's chest finally vanishes, and the two are reborn into a new world — meeting again without their memories. It's quiet where the rest of the book is sharp, and that contrast is why it lingers.

What English-Speaking Fans Say

Western readers tend to describe Bloody Cross as better than its premise suggests. The recurring praise is for the unpredictability — reviewers note that "you never know what's going to happen next" because every character has a personal agenda and no alliance is safe. The Tsukimiya/Hinata dynamic gets singled out as more antagonistic and more interesting than the usual supernatural-partnership pairing. Criticism mostly lands on the dense plotting and the artwork during busy action panels, but the consensus is that it earns a genuine, complete ending — a real plus for readers tired of series that never resolve.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• A partnership built on mutual distrust that the story never cheaply resolves
• The Crusade / God's Inheritances framework gives clear, escalating stakes
• Complete in 12 volumes with a real conclusion
• Tsukimiya is a refreshingly calculating heroine

Cons

• The collection-quest structure gets formulaic in places
• Action panels can be visually busy and hard to follow
• Plot machinery (factions, candidates, reincarnations) piles up fast

The constant betrayal-and-scheming is the whole appeal for me, but if you want characters you can root for cleanly, this cynicism is either the draw or the dealbreaker depending on you.

Is Bloody Cross Worth Reading?

Yes, if a partnership where both sides are openly waiting to betray each other sounds appealing rather than exhausting. It's a complete 12-volume supernatural action series with a genuinely calculating heroine and a finale that earns its quiet. If you need likable, trustworthy leads, look elsewhere — but if you want tension that never goes slack, this delivers.

Similar Manga

Title	Its Approach	How Bloody Cross Differs
Chrono Crusade	Religious supernatural action with a partnership at its heart	Bloody Cross strips out the warmth — its partnership is mutual exploitation, not affection
07-Ghost	Angel mythology and divine politics in a fantasy-action setting	Bloody Cross keeps the god-power stakes more cynical and survival-driven
Pandora Hearts	Supernatural fantasy built on a contract between two wary parties	Bloody Cross makes the distrust explicit from page one rather than slow-burning toward it

Official English Translation Status

Yen Press has published the complete English series — all 12 volumes, in print and digital. Nothing is missing; you can read it start to finish.

Where to Buy

Read the first volume. If it doesn't hook you, put it down. It'll hook you.

Start with Volume 1 →

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