The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

Death's Daughter and the Ebony Blade

What's It About? 

Once upon a time, in a forgotten temple in the middle of a deep, dark forest, a god of death stumbles across a baby girl called Olivia and takes her in to raise as its own.

Under the death god's tutelage, little Olivia spends her days studying to become a brilliant tactician and master of the blade. But her destiny changes irreversibly upon her fifteenth birthday. When the death god suddenly vanishes, Olivia must leave the forest and make for the battlefield!

But none of her books or drills have prepared her for other people—nor for the fearsome war between a mighty empire hellbent on uniting the continent and a kingdom struggling to maintain its autonomy as the last remaining holdout against the imperial conquest. What Olivia lacks in social skills she makes up for with martial prowess, and when she arrives on the scene, no one on either side will know what hit them.

As she searches for her missing teacher and fends off the empire, the epic tale of Olivia and her ebony blade begins!

Death's Daughter and the Ebony Blade manga has story and art by Matsukaze Suiren and was adapted from the light novel series of the same name by Maito Ayamine with characters designed by Cierra. The English translation is by Sylvia Gallagher. This volume was lettered by Madeleine Jose and published by J-Novel Club; PublishDrive edition. (April 10, 2024)

Is It Worth Reading?

Death's Daughter and the Ebony Blade is violent, and I'm struggling to determine if that's one of the story's strengths or weaknesses. On the one hand, the story stands out with its use of contrast. We have an airheaded and socially inexperienced silver-haired woman going on multiple killing sprees without a shred of remorse. It's edgy and gorgeously drawn, so some people might be able to respect it on that level. On the other hand, I can't tell how seriously the story wants me to take it because the violence borders on being cartoony and self-indulgent.

The story's opening pages are just our lead cleaving through soldiers like it's nothing and firmly establishing that she is untouchable. So, immediately, there's no tension in the story at all. However, while there is comedy and some moments of levity in between all of the action, this is also a very politically driven story. Half the time, our main lead doesn't even feel like the main character as much as she is a powerful soldier in the middle of a war between two nations. She stands out as an outlier to all of the serious discussions going on around her that she can honestly not give a damn about, but then I'm left wondering why I should care about things myself. Plus, our lead gets her moments of somber reflection, but we don't get inside her head enough to understand what she's thinking.

Is she lonely? Is she sad? Is she restless? I don't know because it feels like the story doesn't know. It feels like set pieces to show off the cool artwork and action, which can be entertaining, but it's not enough to carry the entire book. Unless something else gets introduced later in the story, there isn't enough in this first volume that hooks me or inspires me to continue. Reading this felt like eating a bag of potato chips, it was a fine snack but I'm hungry for something more interesting.

I remember the original light novel for this series being very dark, with flashes of humor that didn't quite land. The manga adaptation is still dark, but it does a much better job with the lighter elements, probably because seeing Olivia's sweet, innocent face as she gleefully slaughters her way through the enemy army works better than merely reading a description of it. There's something about the visual juxtaposition of big, glossy eyes, her naïve comments about “what humans like,” and her evil-looking sword ripping through people. It works if you don't mind the level of gore, which extends to plenty of people being cut in half, having limbs or heads lopped off, and people being stabbed in the head via their jaw.

That violence is very much the point of the story. The mysterious Z raised Olivia. They, as the title nicely gives away, are a (if not the) god of death. Z vanished shortly before the story began, leaving Olivia only a letter, a pendant, and a sword with an ominous black aura. Olivia takes them and what she's learned into the human world to choose sides in the current war. She nominally knows that she's a human, but her actions speak otherwise, and she makes statements about how humans like looking at the severed heads of their enemies, so there's a disconnect. It largely creeps out her fellow soldiers when it's not annoying her superior officers, and she gives the impression of being a large, deadly puppy. Whether this was what Z intended remains up in the air.

The story suffers from a surfeit of named characters, only two or three of whom seem important. The plot is also negligible right now, mainly focusing on Olivia's antics against the background of war. The art largely saves things, and I prefer this over the original for that reason. Olivia's a charmer in a deadly way, and the book is worth checking out for her alone.