Gunbured x Sisters (Series Review)

Dorothy has been searching for a dhampir to aid her fight against the monsters plaguing society, so when one falls through the roof of her church, she doesn’t plan on letting this gift from the heavens get away from her!

Gunbured x Sisters (Series Review)

What did you read?

I tend to keep an eye on several manga series at once waiting for them to go on sale. It’s hard to resist a good bargain. Anyhow, there’s one thing that I find even more frustratingly difficult to resist and that is when there is a volume that appears to be hard to get. There’s usually loads of volume one, but then there will be one that is out of stock and out of print. Suddenly, I feel the need to track that down so that I can read this potentially unreadable story. Now, that’s even crazier when you consider that I could just buy the ebook version and be happy with that… Anyhow, Gunbured x Sisters was one of those series where it was hard to find so when I did find the missing volume, I ordered the first four expecting to commit to a series about nuns fighting vampires. What could possibly go wrong?

What happened?

Dorothy is the heir to the church and also a Crimson Sister. She fights on the frontlines against the monster who threatens society, despite her father’s objections. The key to her continued success lies in her ability to find a dhampir. Only a dhampir can use a weapon that has been handed down through her family for generations, but they are hard, almost impossible to find. Then, as Dorothy prayed for an answer, something came crashing through the roof of her church, impaling itself on her cross. The girl growled and struggled to break free as vampires followed her inside. Dorothy was beside herself. She had finally found what she was looking.

After forcing the girl to drink her blood, the cross transformed into a powerful weapon, allowing Maria to easily kill the vampires while Dorothy enjoyed the spectacle. Maria was searching for her sister, also a dhampir and reluctantly agreed to help Dorothy if it meant finding her. She wasn’t too sure about becoming Dorothy’s pet or object of desire. So, Dorothy made Maria a Crimson Sister, hiding her true identity from the church and her father in order to fight back against the vampires who had become increasingly bold as of late. Something big was coming and only Dorothy and Maria stood in its way!

What did you think?

This series should have been an absolute smash hit for me. It had busty nuns, Yuri relationships, vampires, explosions, mutated monsters, fighting, and much more. However, after the first volume, I felt like I’d missed something. Several transitions between scenes felt too harsh. More than once, I found myself flicking back a couple of pages to make sure I had skipped anything. I hadn’t. That continued but became less of an issue as the series went on, but the story never really seemed to recover. There were undoubtedly lots of cool elements but for whatever reason they just didn’t blend together to deliver a thrilling experience. I enjoyed the series, but feel like I should have loved it given everything involved.

What was your favourite moment?

This pretty much highlights why I didn’t love this series. While there were a lot of fun moments and several memorable panels with some great art, there wasn’t one scene that I can think back to that left me either stunned or grinning from ear to ear. It was pretty much all right all the way through, but never really hit the highs or lows that you would expect from an engaging story. The best moment was probably when Maria and Shannon were fighting together, especially as they were originally fighting each other and basically ignoring some high-ranking vampire who was getting annoyed at their indifference towards him.

What was your least favourite moment?

In volume three, they introduced another pair of Crimson Sisters who looked remarkably like Dorothy and Maria at a glance and at the end, they had Noelle, Maria’s sister confronting Helen and Miranda, although it looked like Dorothy and Maria. So, when the fourth volume made it clear that Dorothy and Maria were someone else fighting someone else, I had to jump back a book and check what happened. On top of the number of times I had to skip back a couple of pages to see if I missed something, it felt like there wasn’t enough care taken to ensure that everything was clear. I have a very good memory for anything I’ve read or seen, so if this is happening to me, I bet it has happened to others too.

Who was your favourite character?

I’m torn between Maria and Shannon to the point that I actually thought they made a better partnership than Maria and Dorothy. Maria also felt much more like a heroic main character than Dorothy, who was quite clearly a little unhinged. I liked Shannon’s resolve and being a strong tomboy with a sword is always a good start in my books. So, I’m just going to throw them both in here and leave it at that.

Who was your least favourite character?

I feel like I want to say Dorothy because of her lack of empathy and the sinister way she used everyone to get what she wanted, but she also wasn’t exactly a bad person. She wasn’t good either, but morally grey characters are all the rage… aren’t they? I was also surprised to see them introduce another new character in the third volume in the form of Kiki, the werewolf. The plans for this series were clearly much larger than the author was able to keep up with or the series was cut short by the publishers. I think I have to go with Dorothy just because of how she made me feel, whether that was intentional by the author or not.

Would you like some more?

Ironically, I would have carried on buying volumes had the series continued, however, since it ended with four and the overall feeling it left me with, I’m actually relieved that it stopped there. I’m not convinced that it would have gotten any better so it would have ended up an average series at best regardless of length. I loved the ideas, but the execution wasn’t the best.

What have you learned?

This feels like one of those Sci-Fi channel movies where they have just crammed in as many cool ideas as possible and ended up with a story that doesn’t quite pull everything together as well as it could. In fact, taking just a couple of those ideas and crafting a better story would have been easier and most likely resulted in a much better experience. Sometimes, less is more!

Series Information

English Title	Gunbured x Sisters
Japanese Title	Gunbured x Sisters
Genres	Action, Drama, Ecchi, Mystery, Supernatural, Vampires, Yuri
Demographic	Seinen

Manga

Series Review	Gunbured x Sisters
Author	Wataru Mitogawa
Artist	Wataru Mitogawa
Volumes	4	Chapters
1	Bound by Blood, Lust, and Secrets!	1-5
2	Nuns Out, Guns Out!	6-10
3	When Nuns Cry!	11-15
4	The Final Bloody Chapter!	16-21

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