Holiday Review #16: LOVE BULLET

It's seasonally fitting that after we got a Green Yuri last year, we get a Red Yuri this year to match it.

LOVE BULLET (Rabu Baretto), by inee.  First published in 2023 and first published in North America in 2025.

PLOT:

Any young person who dies young without knowing love will be given a second chance by the goddess of love.  They become cupids, with white hair and red eyes, invisible to the human world.  Their task is to pair up the lonely hearts of the world to earn enough karma to gain a second life, although now they use modern munitions instead of the traditional bow and arrow and things can get a bit competitive when multiple cupids are involved.

Kohaku is one of the latest additions, a teen girl who died in a freak accident just as her best friend Aki was confessing her feelings.  Even in life, Kohaku had a knack for picking couples among her classmates, but those skills will be put to the test on her first assignment: find the perfect match for (the now college-aged) Aki.

STORY:

Love Bullet is a heartwarming series with its own heartwarming success story attached.  A year ago, inee posted on social media about how this series was on the verge of cancellation due to poor sales.  Readers and yuri fans across the world rallied around it, to the point that no only did its sales turn around but the series got licensed overseas, which is what brings us here today.  Personally I'm just incredulous that Love Bullet ever struggled to survive because this manga is adorable.

If there's any awkwardness about this series, it's that the first chapter was very clearly conceived as a stand-alone story.  It's more of a proof of a concept than anything else, as Kohaku quietly works out the solution to an awkward love triangle between a group of teen friends while her colleagues have a fire fight among themselves.  Indeed, a big part of Love Bullet's appeal seems to be the contrast in tone between the quiet, sensitive love stories the cupids are meant to aid and the playful, action-packed gun fights they have amongst themselves to settle their differences or just to fill the time.  While it's possible that those who are extremely sensitive to gun usage in general might find this combination distasteful, it's clearly all meant as fun.  The cupids are left unharmed beyond a temporary bout of lovesick envy in the losers and at worst their stray bullets end up spurring crushes in random by-passers.

The rest of the books is focused squarely on Kohaku, filling in both her back story, how the duties of a cupid work, and resolving Aki's unrequited love in one tidy narrative package.  This is where Love Bullet feels the most like a more traditional yuri manga.  In particular, Kohaku's backstory is the sort of stuff this genre was built on: beautiful, fleeting, and ultimately bittersweet feelings between two schoolgirls, torn apart by tragedy.  It's a credit to inee that they never quite let you forget the tragedy of Kohaku's situation without it becoming overbearing and maudlin.  Furthermore, I really love the way they brought Kohaku and Aki's story full circle, allowing them both to finally come to terms with their grief and to both move on with their respective lives (or afterlife, in Kohaku's case).  It's hard to believe that this is inee's first serialized work because the writing here is so delicate, thoughtful, and poised and the premise so novel and eye-catching.

ART:

inee's art is also charming in its own way.  The character designs and backgrounds are decidedly unfussy, which makes the cupids and their gunplay stand out all the more.  The choice to make the cupids all white is a smart one, contrasting well with the red of the cover (and the red accents in their hair and eyes in the few bits of color art) and allowing the cupids to stand out in a scene even in black and white.  I wouldn't say the use of red here is quite as crucial to this manga's identity as green was to The Guy She Was Interested In..., but you cannot deny that this striking color combination played a big part in catching the eyes of international audiences and it continues to play a big role in the advertising for this manga.

inee handles the visual shifts in tone quite adeptly.  Their paneling and storyboarding is clearly meant to evoke that of action blockbusters and it's delivered with a snappy, high-energy pace that works in tandem with their comic intent.  In comparison, the scenes of romance and drama have a more sedate, straightforward look, but there are some beautifully understated sequences that truly manage to nail how much time has passed between Kohaku's death and her return as a cupid, the distance she and the other cupids feel from the human world, and the resolution of her relationship with Aki.  

RATING:

Again, I'm baffled that Love Bullet ever struggled as a manga when it is both so novel in its premise and so accomplished in its looks and presentation.  If this first volume is any indication, inee has a bright future as a mangaka ahead of them and I look forward to seeing what they do with this series and beyond.

This manga is published by Yen Press.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 2 volumes available.  1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

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