The Betrayal Knows My Name, Vol. 1
written by Hotaru Odagiri
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0316119412
Yuki is a teenage orphan with an unusual power. Sometimes when he touches people, he can get flashes of feelings and memory.
Things continue to get more unusual. When a car almost hits him, a mysterious man with black hair and silver eyes saves Yuki’s life. The man, who is called both Zess and Luka, wants to protect Yuki no matter what. And Yuki, meanwhile, feels as if he knows this man from before.
Then, after years of living at an orphanage, Yuki’s older brother shows up to take him home to Tokyo. His parents have died, so it’s up to the older brother to fill in all the missing details. It turns out that Yuki is from a family that has had special (read: otherworldly) powers. There’s quite a bit of talk about reincarnation, which explains why Yuki thought he already knew Zess.
And that’s not all. Zess is also a demon. But he’s a demon who’s turned his back on the other demons.
The Betrayal Knows My Name is full of stuff going on, sometimes to the point that it’s a little too much. Reincarnation, demons, and magical families are all cool things in a story, but it kind of feels as if the story is trying too hard to impress readers. It has many aspects that are similar to other manga series, albeit it mixes up the aspects and makes the story its own.
Hotaru Odagiri, who both writes and illustrates this manga, was the illustrator for the popular BL Only the Ring Finger Knows books published by Digital Manga. She definitely knows how to draw beautiful men. The art is a real draw for the series: ornate, angsty, and often gorgeous. Sometimes it seems as if the story takes a secondary spot to the beauty of the art, as if it were made up so Odagiri could show off her excellent drawing skills. The beautiful boys and homoerotic undertones are guaranteed to make The Betrayal Knows My Name popular. Fans of bishonen certainly have plenty of eye candy in these pages. The story is still early yet, and it has a lot of promising aspects going on, so it may very well smooth out over time. This manga is published in the omnibus format, so volume one from Yen Press is actually the first two books in the series.
