It’s time for a romance series that I had definitely never heard of before. It’s got vampires in it so you already know that the series is setting off some alarm bells for me. Well, in the end it wasn’t that bad but I don’t think there is really much to it. The characters never end up being all that great and it gets really rushed by the end. There was definitely a lot more they could have done with the concept.

The series starts by introducing us to Chiyuki who is very sickly. In fact she is close to death and just barely survives thanks to being bit by a vampire named Toya. He didn’t want to do this since he doesn’t believe in biting people or draining blood but it was an emergency. So now he watches over her to make sure that she doesn’t die too quick and then he will head off to another location. Chiyuki now wants him to fully convert her into a vampire so she can live for 1000 years and finally have good health. Can she convince him to drain her though?

You can probably already guess that I’m not a big fan of that part of the plot. I actually think it’s impressive that Toya refuses to drain anybody and he just allows himself to always be in a weakened state. He’s kept a strong will about this and so it’s too bad that Chiyuki is trying to crack him here. In a way you could say the series is sort of using this as a metaphor and either way it doesn’t make for a great romance plot here. Yeah Chiyuki likes Toya but how much of that is because her life is depending on this? She will only be able to live a long and healthy life if she is turned into a vampire. It’s not a great dynamic there but at least the series does avoid any rebounds this way.

Still, the romance didn’t really work out for me. Then we have the art which is a little on the rougher side. I won’t say that it’s bad or anything like that but it could stand to be smoother or more streamlined. It’s not as good as the average manga is what I would say there. Mix that in with the main character cast already being underwhelming and you can see how this is not a title that would end up competing with the heavy hitters. I can see why it isn’t very well known.

The best character here is probably Kaede even though she showed up fairly late in the adventure. She has always been a very lonely girl who had no friends and this leads to her raising up an animal spirit. Unfortunately she didn’t realize that the words she was feeding it weren’t really doing any good but the fact that she cared about the creature is the important thing. She didn’t get to contribute much to the story but it was always good to see her in the last chapters after she made her debut.

As the main heroine, I would say that Chiyuki stands out a bit for being more unique compared to how you would expect her to be. After all the whole trying to have the main guy make a move is already a bit different and she’s the aggressive one trying to pressure Toya instead of the other way around. I tend to like confident characters so in most cases this would have been an instant win but since in this case it was like her pressuring him into something that he just didn’t want to do, she ended up losing points instead.

As for Toya, he’s not that great either because of his generally low levels of confidence and how he just doesn’t use his abilities well. He has a tough time in multiple situations and you have to remember that he can stop time and do all sorts of cool stuff. So it feels like he is playing the matchup wrong and holding himself back which are massive mistakes to be made here. His rival Ariyoshi’s not much better. This guy is a wolf so he also has some superhuman abilities but at the same time his big weakness is really that he is a big flirt. So he is more outgoing and tough but but the flirty nature holds him back quite a lot. He has a fairly intense backstory and you feel bad for him but he definitely didn’t handle things well.

He’s still better than Kei though. Kei is Chiyuki’s overprotective cousin who gets really extreme like when he locks her in a room. The guy is meant to be sympathetic but he goes way too far so that just is not an option by the end. You’re just rooting for his downfall the whole time. Fortunately he doesn’t appear much but the guy is super petty. Another villain without much screentime is Luis. He shows up near the very end of the series and I feel like there wasn’t much point to his whole character. There’s just no time left in the story for him and when he shows up he is sickly as well so he is quickly written out anyway. It was to add a little danger but the whole thing felt rather force and everyone treated him too well. I don’t care that he’s on his deathbed, he was attacking the main heroine so he’s got to go. It’s not that complicated.

I did like Toya’s attendant Yami though. He was a loyal friend who was always ready to help even if Toya isn’t the easiest guy to work for. Yami may act like a kid most of the time but if anything it feels like he is probably more mature most of the time. So I definitely give him a lot of credit. That about wraps it up for the characters. That’s probably a good thing since we’ve only got 4 volumes to deal with and more characters would mean that things are even more scattered.

Ultimately the series’ weakness is really that it did not get to excel at anything. If any aspect could have been really solid then that would have helped the whole series out but it didn’t really have anything like that. For example there aren’t really any funny gags or comedic characters to help carry the slice of life stuff. Generally I would consider this to be more of a drama. There are a lot of big facial expressions and the series is generally light hearted but I wouldn’t say that it’s very funny. Some good humor would have gone a long way here too so that’s really a shame.

Overall, Millennium Snow is a little below average I’d say. It’s not really a manga that I would spend much time thinking about later on, nor do I think it’ll get a re read at any point in the future. The characters are weak and the art doesn’t help to save it. If you’re looking for a title where there are vampires but not a lot of blood sucking then at least it beats the average there but nah in the end I would have to give this one a thumbs down. It should have either focused a bit more on the romance without throwing in a bunch of side characters and a random villain or it should have just doubled down on action. In the end there just wasn’t much time to do anything and it felt like the series was really lacking direction.

Overall 4/10