2023’s The Ayakashi Hunter’s Tainted Bride Volume One is the first tankōbon for Midori Yūma and Mamenosuke Fujimaru’s The Ayakashi Hunter’s Tainted Bride fantasy manga series. The Sarah Kellis English translation came out in 2025.

Fourteen-year-old Nanao is beautiful, hails from a powerful clan, and is engaged to the handsome and charming Reito. When she misplaces the hairpin Reito gave her, Nanao is distraught. Happily, with the help of her conniving, jealous cousin Akemi, Nanao finds it again… out in the open, just beyond the household’s mystical protections.

Still, how risky could it possibly be to step beyond the barrier, pick up the hairpin and return?

Nanao survives the yokai spirit’s attack. However, the ape-like demon leaves a mystical scar on Nanao’s forehead. This not only confers an unpleasant body odour; it advertises that she has been defiled by a yokai. Clearly, she is no longer fit to marry Reito. Providentially, Akemi is willing to accept that role.

Her clan is merciful. They do not kill or exile Nanao. Instead, they permit her to slave for them in exchange for enough food to fend off starvation. To spare innocent people the horrors of seeing her tiny disfigurement, easily hidden by bangs, Nanao is forced to wear a monkey mask1.

Yako, the visiting head of the Benitsubaki clan, a clan charged with maintaining certain mystical defenses, comes across Nanao bathing in a cold spring. He is intrigued by the beautiful, naked Nanao’s immense spiritual power. Later, when Nanao is injured protecting Reito and Akemi’s baby from invisible yokai, Yako steps in to defend Nanao from accusations that she was trying to kill the baby.

Yako needs a bride with great mystical power. Nanao’s clan clearly does not value her. Yako asserts the prerogative of high rank and takes Nanao as his future bride, carrying her off to a life of pampered luxury.

There is only one tiny catch. Yako has a curse of his own. It can be managed…

*If *he has a ready supply of blood from a woman with immense spiritual power…

_oOo

The unpleasant odour turns out to be something easily handled given the correct personal care products, which of course Nanao’s clan went out of their way to deny her.

The manga never says outright that Akemi stole the hairpin and tossed it just outside the magical barrier in the hope something terrible would happen to Nanao, but it’s pretty clear that is what happened. In general, all of Nanao’s relatives are terrible people2, which is very convenient when the plot requires her to leave them for ever.

In fact, even if it weren’t obvious that Yako is a kindly man who is far more concerned about his bride-to-be’s wellbeing and mental health than his pressing need to DRINK HER BLOOD, even if he were just a flat-out vampire who saw her as a Happy Meal, he’d still be a step up from Namao’s relatives. Again, this is handy, given that this manga appears to be heading into romance.

If anything, Yako is too virtuous. I suspect characters entirely lacking in virtue will be along shortly, to replace Namao’s dreadful kin.

This volume has the usual weaknesses of first volumes: it has to introduce the setting, establish the characters, and make at least some of the conflicts clear, all of which can make having an actual plot challenging. Nevertheless, the story moves along nicely. I am not sure this is my sort of thing, but I will give Volume Two a try.

The Ayakashi Hunter’s Tainted Bride Volume One is available here (Kodansha Comics), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: This also serves to keep Reito from realizing how beautiful Nanao is and taking her for his concubine.

2: USA delenda est.