The Black Cat & the Vampire, Volume 1

Black Cat & the Vampire #1

by Nikke Taino

Blanc College is a prestigious all-boys boarding school where the sons of well-respected families from all over the world study and learn to be independent.

​Yuki, a first-year attending Blanc College on a scholarship, is the perfect at the top of his class, quiet and polite. He's a bit of a loner, keeping others at arm's length — except Jean, the devastatingly charming Head Boy, who seems entirely immune to Yuki's aloof attitude.

Their school days are peaceful until, one day, a student gets attacked, and ends up with a wound on his neck that looks suspiciously like a vampire bite! Yuki doesn't have time for this nonsense. And besides, vampires aren't even real... right? 

Genres: Manga, Romance, Fantasy, Vampires, LGBT, Yaoi, Queer

Kindle Edition

First published July 26, 2021

About the author

TAINO Nikke
Name (in native language): 鯛野ニッケ
Associated Names:
あいかわ
ころけら
煮.com
Aikawa
Corokera
Ni.com

Circle : Ni.com, Corokera

Pixiv: あいかわ
Twitter #2: tai_nikke

Reviews

[zy忍 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the author wanted to tug the heartstrings of the readers but I don't think they were able to do that successfully. The story is predictable but kudos for the lore.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much more of a slow burn than I'd anticipated, but I loved how atmospheric it was. Plus the twists genuinely surprised me.

[OtterM · Rating 3 out of 5]

空虚的华丽。画风很美，却像是没有落到实处，进入正题进入得太慢了，前面太多不知所云的内容了...但一屋子吸血鬼那里还是惊到我了，您这是整了个黑主学院啊（不是）

[Curious Madra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically this Yaoi is about a lone wolf uke x dashing vampire, ngl Jean is 👌 but it's pretty predictable romance vampire stuff out there x)

[Aurora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This vampire lore setup is super interesting! Gotta love mutual noncon. 😂

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The art is pretty and I liked the plot. Two teenage boys find their person, as the title would suggest, one of them is blood drinker. How will they navigate this relationship and keep their true love by their side? We don’t know we will find out in volume two!

[Helén · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring MC (Yuki) with teasing love interest but it gets better as Yuki starts to become more of a person and less of a robot.
When we finally got a biting scene I was surprised at how it turned out and I quite liked it (and loved seeing Yuki like that).

Actually would have preferred if the story had centered Aura and Pavel instead since those two seemed cuter (but you'll get more of them in part two).

[Kelsey Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first venture in BL manga and I really enjoyed it! The artwork was really beautiful and I enjoyed the slow burn romance that’s developing. I’m a bit of a sucker(no pun intended) for anything vampire related which was what drew me to the title in the first place. I’ll definitely read the next volume!

[Azbaqiyah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot - 3 ⭐️
Character - 3 ⭐️
Writing Style - 3 ⭐️
World Building - 3 ⭐️
Art - 3 ⭐️
Cover - 3 ⭐️

Overall - 3 ⭐️

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline is okay, but i do miss something. Sometimes it was hard to keep reading. But stories with vamps keep me reading.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful art. Great character designs, and the settings and backgrounds are gorgeous; it's the best on that front that I've read in a while, so it was a real pleasure to read.

And the story was pretty solid, too. Typical vampire stuff, but with a strong character focus and a mystery that works well.

At an all-male boarding school in the remote mountains, a student wakes up with two puncture wounds on his neck and no memory of the night before. This starts a cycle of rumors: there's a monster on the grounds. A vampire who sucked his blood and might be endangering others.

Most of the other students don't seem to take this seriously, other than Marius, a vibrant and earnest first year who throws himself into researching vampires - and Yuki, who starts to suspect there's something strange about their charismatically beautiful student council president, Jean.

Unlike Marius, Yuki doesn't necessarily believe in vampires, but something is very strange about Jean...beyond the fact that he persists in confessing his deep love for and devotion to Yuki.

As Yuki conducts research of his own, testing whether there's any possibility that Yuki might be the vampire who attacked his classmate, he gets to understand Jean better as a person, and starts developing some different, kinder opinions about him.

But then something happens at a school dance, Jean's secret is revealed, and all the carefully-build trust between them explodes in Yuki's face, destroys Jean's happiness, and sets off a series of events they may not be able to recover from.

I thought the twist in the final chapter was incredibly clever, and even the little panel with the cats - there was never only one of them - was handled so well. It completely changes how the rest of the narrative would play out, so I'm very curious to see the wider implications of everything that's been going on.

Loved Marius. Loved the professor. Hope to see more of both of them. And Yuki and Jean were both great. Pavel's interesting and definitely needs further exploration in the next volume(s).

The only part I'm not entirely sold on is the whole "star scales" thing, which basically boils down to a sex pollen/heat kind of element (aka not my favorite for an ongoing narrative). Plus why is it something that seems to have only affected Jean - and affected him regularly out of all the other blood drinkers? Is it actually not all that common, and something about Jean just makes him particularly vulnerable?

Does that mean there's truth to the rumors, then, about his bed being shared by others every night? 100% not one of my favorite tropes, although that one feels like it's more of the rumor mill (like Yuki's wild imaginations about Aula), since Jean's bite doesn't wipe memories, so too much of the school would then know that he's a vampire. Plus, he hates the sensation of being forced to turn because of the star scales, so he would've put more barriers in place to stop it, if so.

But I still have too many questions about how that works, and how Jean is going to be able to start controlling it...even if he does successfully start up a relationship with Yuki, what's going to happen when others still have one-sided "love" for him that brings his fangs out? Neither Jean nor Yuki would be okay with that...and the blood drinkers' society isn't, either, so it seems like this has to be something that's dealt with in the storyline. We'll see if that's handled successfully or not.

Regardless, the art is beautiful enough to keep going, and I'm interested to see how it all plays out.

[Frank Chillura (OhYouRead) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will say that there were a few moments where I wished I could fast forward, because it was a bit monotonous, but I got through those and really enjoyed the BL Vampire living among us trope.

I did NOT see the twist tho! Now I am excited for the next book. If it ended with finding out who the vampire was, I would have been too bored to continue.

3.5⭐️

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

where to read: hoopla

I always forget that hoopla has access to most of tokyopop's catalog, which is so exciting because they have a few titles I'm looking forward to, but don't necessarily want to buy. Anyway I liked this so much more than I was anticipating and I need the sequel!! Truly the worst that we have to wait months when volumes like this are usually released together in Japan.

The story is set in a prestigious private boarding school for boys. It follows Yuki who is very studious and stand off ish and then there's Jean, the popular student council president. Suspicious things have been happening in the school and one of the students suspects there's a vampire among them and once Yuki gets that in his head he can't help, but think Jean could be the vampire.

I really enjoyed the way this was written. The slow build up and the way we get to know the characters engrossed me. I liked how involved the other characters were in the story. It made it just seem so full and developed. I liked the relationship between Yuki and Jean although because there were other characters involved there weren't quite as many moments between the main couple as I would've liked so I'm hoping they get more in the sequel. Also I wasn't really expecting that twist at the end. I mean I had a feeling Jean wasn't the only vampire, but I hadn't anticipated the school being a vampire integration into society type school lol. The whole thing felt kind of atmospheric to me and it was just a joy to read. I'm pretty excited for the sequel and all the content it will bring.

[Janina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vielleicht objektiv eher 4 Sterne, aber subjektiv eindeutig 5 Sterne für mich. Das Setting (verlassenes Internat, Schloss bzw. Burg-ähnlich) und die Schuluniformen haben mich an Harry Potter erinnert und das fand ich sehr charmant und süß. Ich hab mich sofort in das Hauptpaar Yuki und Gene verliebt, als sie das erste Mal im Manga interagiert haben. Auch das Nebenpaar, Aura und Pavel, hat mir sehr gefallen und die besonderen Kräfte von Vampiren fand ich super interessant. Hat sich ein bisschen wie Fanfiktion für mich angefühlt - einfach wohlig warm. Würde am liebsten sofort Band 2 lesen AHH und wünsche mir gefühlt mindestens 5 Bände in der Reihe.

tw/cw: 'Gewalt', Zwang/Nötigung, Aussagen/Mumifiziert (erwähnt), Mord (erwähnt)

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm more intrigued about the second pairing. It has interesting concepts, but I don't think they're explored enough. I'll see about getting the other volume since it's just two.

[James Garman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Manga form of comic has us reading and seeing a bunch of boys at a school. It is apparently in a fairly islolated area on a mountain. Some of the boys are displaying homoerotic tendencies but since the entire student body is trying to fit in after leaving school, they have a party and invite a girls school to join them.

We see the boys meeting the girls and fun has had by all. But the night of the party, one boy gets attacked and we see him in agony. It turns out that if a person is truly feeling attracted to one of the vampires, the vampire has a chemical that allows them to know about it. When that happens the vampire is told via that chemical that it is ok to bite the person that has signed the chemical to label that person as "ok to bite".

Apparently the society had thought that all sexual interest would be heterosexual and that they didn't have worry about the chemical coming to bear when only the guys were at the school.

I recommend this to those that enjoy science fiction and gay relationships.

[Kastie Pavlik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I didn't go in with any expectations, but I also didn't read the summary, so I didn't have a clue what it was about aside from something BL with a black cat and a vampire. So while I found Marius completely adorable when he practically enters his magical girl transformation in chapter 3, ଘ( ˊᵕˋ )ଓ ha ha, the book soon takes a darker and deeper turn. It's a BL with an actual story! Egad! I've learned better than to expect much in the way of plots with yaoi, but I still hope every time. I love the emotional torture we get with Jean and then the twist. There's a lot here that makes me think of Vampire Dormitory (an enjoyable train wreck that I discontinued after the first "season"), and Vampire Knight. To some extent Yuki's demeanor reminds me of Akira in The Vampyre and His Pleasant Companions, although Akira never reacted like *that*. ☜ (↼_↼) It's a surprisingly enjoyable title.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought. The story is more than a romance - I mean, our main would be couple doesn't interact all that much in this volume. There really isn't even hanky-panky between them and this is classified as yaoi. I like the backstory about the vampire and the revelations about them

I did think that Jean was a vampire, but him having 4 fangs was not on my bingo cards. His backstory is kinda sad though. I mean, almost everyone else would have immensely enjoyed what the poison in his fangs afforded him but since he didn't really enjoy being a bloodsucker, the affection that came from his victims afterwards must have made his skin crawl.

Also Pavel and Aula!!!!! Lemme go cry for them again. It's such a heartbreaking mix of sad yet beautiful. I wonder if there are any long term repercussions of having your mind get constantly wiped. The movies I've seen have it but Idk if the mangaka will add it here

[dragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't paying attention and didn't realize this wasn't a oneshot, which explained why *nothing happened* even after I finished it and that was somehow refreshing. I really liked all the buildup, the pacing, and even the vampire lore! I feel like usually vampires only cause sexual desire and it's often wanted, but this took it somewhere I wasn't expecting. It was actually heartbreaking! I wonder what everyone is going to do in regards to the culprit. You'd think that maybe they'd have a system in place to keep track of who can do what (though I'd also understand that being "too much"). Still, I do wonder about the "star scales". I guess using the logic of them would mean vampires can't be celebrities, Lol! Or I mean, they *could* be, it'd just be hard, Hmmmm. Very curious about what comes next

Tw: rape of someone (age unknown) who was not really conscious

3.5/5

[L. Luck · Rating 4 out of 5]

The folks in these reviews not getting that every non-imagined, onscreen sexual/biting situation was SA or a metaphor for SA and was treated as such is honestly scary. It’s literally showing that being forced to bite someone just because they show a bit of affection can be figurative and often LITERAL SA and traumatizing. Despite that nuanced recognition, it doesn’t justify attacking and/or immobilizing/“drugging”/etc. someone, thus complicating things. How do you punish someone for being forced to bite someone because the person who was bitten loves them so much that their brain is actually shut down? It’s definitely walking a thin line between justifying some SA and treating it as awful for all types of victims. I’m curious how they’ll handle it in the end…

Warnings for SA, noncon, etc.

[Mere Rain]

Nikke Taino wants to be Moto Hagio. That's understandable; I also want to be Moto Hagio.

Respect for finding a new and different approach to sexy vampires, that's not easy with such a popular trope.

Given the concept of the star scales, I was retroactively confused by why Jean was such a flirt? On the other hand, his attraction to Yuki made sense given that plot point. And I suppose teens aren't really known for behaving sensibly...

As for the black cats, why are they even included? I assume we'll find out eventually...

This was pretty good, recommended for fans of seductive vampires or gay boarding school drama.

[river · Rating 3 out of 5]

idk like the lore of the vampires was interesting and how they all have different abilities when they bite humans.

but why is there so many highschool mangas with sexual themes like (i forget their names already) but the vampire bit the guy he apparently is in love with and it made him really horny???? idk dude.

but why did the vampire be like "i love you" so fast when they barely knew each other?


and why was the school called "blanc college high school"
when they are high school age/teenagers???

i dont plan on reading the rest of this series cause ut wasnt personally my vibe

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, But a Bit Confusing

This is the beginning of a longer story and mainly deals with introducing the characters. However, it is a bit confusing to keep track of them and how they fit together. It becomes clearer as the story progresses. The artwork is typical and somewhat minimalist, as is the story. I didn't check, but I suspect that the story is spread out over many volumes. I just felt like there was too much missing from their stories.

[Kasumi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read on Hoopla

So it's no surprise that the blonde is a vampire. No spoiler alert needed - as is smack on the cover art. On that note, the art is lovely. The setting of a castlelike college in the mountains, robe-like uniforms, and a bespectacled dark-haired student gave me HP vibes.
I especially liked the dynamic between the main characters. And the side characters.

Looking forward to reading the sequel as volume 1 ends with everything up in the air.

[Nightshade · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole story is set in an all boys boarding school, so not too much world building was needed, but you got a good idea of life at the school. The characters were okay, although they often blurred together as most didn't have stand out personalities. I didn't feel like I really got to know any of them throughout the book.

The plot was fine; the protagonist spends the majority of the book trying to figure out if there is a vampire at the school and if so who it is. It's pretty obvious from the start who is the vampire, so the reveal is not surprising. What did take me by surprise though was the sudden masturbation scene, which I didn't appreciate, although at least it was not too explicitly depicted.

Overall this book was fine. I enjoyed the story, but I found myself putting it down with no real interest in picking it back up again. I don't think I will be picking up the next volume.

[Elyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really great! I loved the slightly different characteristics of vampires in this. It really built up the suspense, and that like Yuki, left me thinking Jean is responsible for what’s going on at the boarding school. Little did we know. It left me in the end wanting more and more.
Unlike how I’ll usually split up volumes to work on other books in my library in between, I’ll probably go right on to volume 2 for this. I’m very intrigued.

[Jessica Huynh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the setting very much gives harry potter vibes but with a vampiric spin to it. I really liked this one and I can't believe it only had two volumes, it could've easily continued on for much longer. The story is kinda predictable but it's still enjoyable nonetheless and I really wish it were longer so the pacing could've been better. But 4 stars cause I had fun reading it and I grew attached to the characters.

[Alan D.D. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more from this manga. The story is not developed at all, there's insta-love from the beginning, and then another insta-love. It's a typical vampire story but it felt like the creator didn't have any interest beside drawing physically attractive guys and give hints of a romance that doesn't fully materialize.

[Amanda Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The characters were drawn really well, all with different (though common) personality types. I really liked the main character Yuki and how he really did try to put in the effort to understand Jean even though he didn't like him at first. I also did enjoy the twist on the vampire boarding school story that was revealed in the end of this volume. I look forward to finding out what happens next!

[Erikka · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5
This was something. Underdeveloped and I think maybe 1 thing happened? Flatish characters for maybe the first half and then they get a bit more interesting. A lot of time the MC’s blurred together so I’m asking myself who said what. And then they bring out the “he’s not like other guys” like.
The art was nice.