Some years ago, I watched the Loveless anime series. While I adored the art style, the inconclusive nature of the story bothered me – so much so, that I went on to read the manga in the hopes of both expanding on the lore and finding out what happened next. At the time, eight volumes of the manga had been released, and the story was building up nicely. I was enjoying reading it, and looking forward to seeing what happened next.
Flash forward to 2025. I hadn’t actually kept up with the manga in the intervening years, but it had been on my mind, and I finally decided to go back, restart the series from the beginning, and catch up to the latest chapters. The series now ran to 13 volumes, still technically unfinished, but with no new material released since 2017. That meant that, going in, I would have to accept that whatever state the story was in, it was unlikely to wrap everything up nicely.
Even by manga standards, reading a volume of Loveless is a swift affair – perhaps 30 minutes per volume. I swiftly caught up to where I had been before, and worked my way into uncharted territory. And with each new volume I devoured, I couldn’t help feeling more and more disappointed. I was acutely aware that I was running out of new material, and yet the story didn’t seem to be going anywhere much. Key mysteries remained unaddressed, while new characters and plot elements kept being introduced long after mangaka Yun Kouga had originally promised that all the key players had appeared and the stage was set for major developments. In short, the story had stalled, and based on the long gap between releases, Kouga seemed to be bored of her own series and keen to forget all about it.
The hero of this tale is Aoyagi Ritsuka, a twelve-year-old amnesiac who lives with his mentally unstable mother and emotionally unengaged father. The one person who loved and protected Ritsuka was his big brother Seimei. The series begins in the aftermath of Seimei’s murder, as Ritsuka both starts at a new school and meets a mysterious college student, Agatsuma Soubi. Soubi has his own connections to Seimei, and through him, Ritsuka is drawn into a world of magical spell battles, where Fighters such as Soubi fight with the power of words, and Sacrifices such as Soubi and Ritsuka take the damage. And as if that all wasn’t enough in itself, I haven’t even gotten to the fact that this all takes place in a world where people are born with animal ears that they shed at the point where they lose their virginity.
As you can already see, it’s quite a convoluted setup just to get to the point where the story even begins. We start the series with a number of key mysteries, namely:
- What happened to Seimei, and is he even really dead?
- In the magic spell battle system, Fighters and Sacrifices are meant to fight as a single unit sharing a true name. Ritsuka’s true name is the titular Loveless, whereas Soubi’s is Beloved – while they can fight as a team, their power is greatly reduced. It’s heavily implied that there is a Loveless fighter out there, but we still don’t know who it is.
- Why and how did Ritsuka lose his memories, and why did it cause such a drastic shift in his personality?
- What are the motivations of the secret organization who have turned their attention to Soubi and Ritsuka?
That seems like plenty to be getting on with, but thirteen volumes in to what was meant to be fifteen volume series, and far from resolving any of this, the main plot has become even more meandering. As you could have probably surmised, Seimei is far from dead – in fact, he’s alive and seems to be some sort of evil mastermind. His exact goals remain a mystery, as do those of the ever expanding cast of minor and major antagonists. Meanwhile, other plot developments come and go. At one point, Ritsuka is able to see the “thread” connecting him to the true Loveless fighter, but this concept disappears as quickly as it is introduced, and is never used to try to find out who they are. Randomly, a minor supporting character is revealed to have a child who is implausibly close to him in age, lacks the animal ears of virginity, and was born without his knowledge. I have no idea if this extremely creepy and weird turn of events will have a point should future chapters ever appear, or if it’s just a flight of fancy on the part of the mangaka.
To make matters worse, large chunks of each manga volume are dedicated not to advancing the plot or resolving any of these mysteries, but instead are just slice-of-life “what if” chapters depicting Soubi, Ritsuka and their friends doing normal, everyday things. It’s as if Kouga realized that that was the manga she really wanted to write, and now just continues with the main plot alongside it out of a reluctant sense of obligation.
My main motivation for writing this blog was to address the sorry state of the main plot after thirteen volumes and almost a decade of abandonment, but before we wrap up, I must of course touch on the elephant in the room – Soubi and Ritsuka’s relationship. In the main plot, we have quite a tangled web, where Soubi promises to be subordinate to Ritsuka and obey his every wish, but with the caveat that he ultimately cannot defy or disobey Seimei. Ritsuka is a classic tsundere, outwardly pushing Soubi away, while also being so starved of love at home that he can’t help but appreciate the attention. The slice-of-life alternate universe chapters give them a much more classic relationship without the dark undertones. And it would be charming and sweet, if not for the fact that Soubi is in his twenties, and Ritsuka is twelve years old. Even by anime and manga standards, it feels a bit too much. I know many rationalize it away with “it’s just fiction, it’s not hurting anyone”, but even so, it’s just a bit too much for me to be able to wholeheartedly enjoy it. Had Ritsuka been just a few years older, it still wouldn’t have been great, but it would have been a vast improvement.
Final Thoughts
When I reached the end of Loveless volume 13, I felt annoyed that the series had gone so far off the rails, with no sign that we’d ever get a proper conclusion to the story. Now, I find that I simply don’t care. Even if the mangaka does reluctantly drag herself back to this series, the chances of future volumes being any good are slim to none. Better to end things here than ever return to this car crash of a series.
