Shonen Bride Volume 2 by Okano Maria and illustrated by Honami Yukine

[insaneneko]

Decent feedback wanting more and a night of insomnia inspired me to scan the next book in the Shonen Bride series...and then illness kept me from doing anything about the scans for a couple of days. :P In any case, the second book is "Hoshi no sakura no matsuri" (Festival of stars and cherry blossoms). Once again I'm going to go mostly off memory in terms of the story, so I might be fuzzy (or off) on some of the details...Also, head congestion does not help in writing clearly and understandably. Please forgive any oddnesses...well, more than my usual oddness.






During winter break, Shinobu is hanging out with his buddies. He's being subjected to even more "wife training" under his mother-in-law-to-be's watchful eye during the break and is observing a strict and austere diet because he's undergoing the cleansing ritual. Thus he indulges in good food and company while he can (stuffing his face with scary amounts of food). His buddies notice that his skin's looking mighty nice lately. It's all thanks to the spa treatments the maids do to him to make him look proper in his role as fiancee.




Shinobu is doing the new year's incense ceremony. Unfortunately, though he's been doing lots of training and practice he isn't all that skilled at it and makes a big mistake. He gets totally busted and decides to run away, screw everything. He goes home only to find out that his parents had gone to his maternal grandparents' house for the new year.




He runs into Kohji on the train to his grandparents' house. He thought Kohji had come after him at first, but it turns out that Kohji is going to the same town as him to investigate the disappearances of some school girls at a popular shrine. Shinobu's mother welcomes Kohji enthusiastically, as she is a fan of his....Oh, I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but Kohji, in addition to being the heir of the Mitsurugi and rich and handsome and blah blah blah, is also a popular model. Yes, a model. He's actually the son of his father's mistress, and it was for some reason having to do with a friend of his birth mother that he debuted as a model. His subsequent success is of course due to his incredible looks and charisma (cheesy much, yet?). Possibly the primary reason Shinobu ended up becoming Kohji's fiancee was because his mother was enamored of Kohji and convinced his father that it'd be a great idea.




Shinobu accompanies Kohji to the shrine. Kohji notices a small wrinkle in the fabric of space-time. Kohji figures the girls must have gotten sucked somewhere through the wrinkle. Shinobu hears the voices of his buddies and gets sucked in. Shinobu and Kohji find themselves in the world of the tengu, along with Shinobu's buddies. They had come to buy cell phone straps (the reason the shrine was so popular) but tried to save a girl they saw getting sucked into nothingness and was pulled in along with her. The tengu come to see what's what. They think Shinobu is a very pretty girl, and one of them declares that he'll make Shinobu his wife (Ho ho! So spirited! So beautiful! I like it!). The tengu had actually been using the cell phone straps as a way to collect girls as priestess candidates for a ceremony with one of the sea gods--Shinobu had bought a cell phone strap of a color that hadn't actually been on sale, which was how he and Kohji had gotten sucked into the tengu's world. When the guys protest his treatment of Shinobu, he tries to get rid of them. Of course, Kohji isn't so easily gotten rid of, so the tengu end up blowing everyone (including Shinobu) away back to the human world...




Cheesy villain dude has been watching everything unfolding. He decides he needs to get in on the action, and sends one of his henchmen (woman in mini skirt) down to intercept the messenger of the sea god (old woman) who is on her way to meet the tengu and take her place.




Shinobu ends up staying with Kohji at the hotel because of the danger, and...well...it started with a kiss that Shinobu had promised Kohji earlier and it ended with a bit more....




Traveling separately from Kohji the next day, Shinobu is snatched by crow tengu. He finds himself and his buddies locked up in a cell. The crow tengu was ordered to grab the priestess candidate that had gotten away, but couldn't tell the difference between humans so they just grabbed all the ones that didn't have facial hair. It gets scolded (and choked) by it's superior. They are reassured that they won't be killed and will be released after the festival with the sea god...




Fake sea god messenger sees Shinobu and points out that he's not a girl (the tengu are shocked and do a bit of sekuhara touching to "confirm"--Shinobu is pretty damn indignant since he had been protesting the entire time they were getting him ready as a candidate). She declares him to be an impurity and must be destroyed. When the tengu protest that he's an innocent, she tells them that the should just let him flow out to sea which they agree to. They lock him up to set him upon the sea the next day...

In the meantime, Kohji finds out that Shinobu's been snatched. He finds the real messenger of the sea god and frees her. He asks her to take him to the world of the tengu as a reward as a human can't gain access on their own, stating that someone very precious to him was there and he had to get that person back. She does take him and we have a tender moment of trust and reaffirmation when Kohji is discovered and must flee for the moment...vowing to really rescue him next time!




The next day, Shinobu gets put on a little boat and put out to sea. Three different parties planned on picking him up: the tengu (who didn't want to see an innocent die, plus one of them wants him for a wife), Kohji, and cheesy villain. See, Shinobu produced the ikutama that saved their butts at the end of the last book, and it means that he's a descendant of the Tamagawa family--who had been thought to have died out. Turns out that there's some legend that if one collects the ikutama of the Tamagawa, the dagger of the Mitsurugi, and the mirror of the Kagamino one can become master of the universe or something. Cheesy villain had always meant to somehow usurp the power of the Kagamino (the mirror is held by the head of the family), but once told by his chief minion about the legend he realized his true destiny was even greater (snerks). While he could just wrest away the dagger and the mirror, the ikutama was connected to Shinobu's life force so he'd have to keep him alive.

Er, in any case, of course the boat capsizes and of course Kohji jumps in after him to rescue him (doing the whole mouth to mouth sharing of air thing and getting to spout off cool phrases like a broken "I said...I'd rescue...you..."), almost dying...luckily Shinobu has that handy ikutama that he can't really control but ends up showing up when most needed to do the whole healing business. The real sea god messenger rescues the two of them by having a sea turtle give them a ride. The fake is revealed to be a fake, and she haughtily announces all of her master's plans (oh, the brilliant arrogance of evil!). They are having a big problem because henchwoman is of the water and is very strong as they are near the sea. Guy with glasses that Shinobu had met in the beginning of book one (warning him about the ayakashi that Kohji eventually rescues him from), named Saburo, does the parting of the red sea except not with the red sea to take away the henchwoman's advantage. She is vanquished, and the sea god shows up for the festival.

They find out from the sea god (actually, goddess) that Shinobu's curse (of which they had only known that whoever put the curse on him was of the water) was placed by a river dragon god. She refers them to Saburo for more information.

They get to stay for the festival as guests (while Shinobu's buddies have to work in order to get to go back to the human world), and Shinobu gets a super special supernatural kitten to boot.



Calm and happy ending scene of peace, during which Shinobu tells Kohji that he hadn't disliked what they had done at the hotel (geez, can you be a little more direct and a little less coy about it?).


Frankly, the pics in this one weren't as good as in some of the other volumes, but I flipped through book 3 and there are some excellent pics in that one. XDXD

Comments

[insaneneko.livejournal.com]

It's only logical for a kitten from a supernatural world to be supernatural, right? XD