Review: Betrothed to a Fox Demon Vol. 1

I've been reading so many realistic manga of late, particularly ones about highschoolers with crushes on one another, that it was a little weird and a little refreshing to pick up a manga full of some of the things I used to associate with Japanese comics. You know, stuff like swords, demons, battles and Japanese mythology. This particular manga is Anju Hino's Betrothed to a Fox Demon, the first volume of which was released by Square Enix Manga in April. In fact, it reminded me a bit of a particular manga—Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha—but only really in a few of the broad strokes, some of which I guess are even apparent from the cover alone. On that cover are Kuro Kyogane and Fuyu. Kuro, known as "The Black Wolf", is a social outcast, but he comes from a long lineage of exorcists; in fact, he comes from a clan of exorcists that have defended Japan from demons for a thousand years. As Kuo is the clan's last male heir, his grandfather is constantly bugging him to marry, but Kuro has no…