Age Rating: 13+
Genre: Action, Drama, Supernatural
Price: $12.95

A boy with sparkling gorgeous golden eyes, Kyonosuke sniffs Koyuki like a dog... and suddenly asks her the strangest question - "Have you seen my brother?" Who is this boy and what is he talking about?! Turns out that he's not a human - he's a wolf - a member of Inugami, the Wolf God tribe. Kyonosuke's brother has been missing and he has been instructed to find him and bring him back to the leader. But why is he around Koyuki all the time? Can she be holding a key to a missing brother?

Initially, the story is somewhat off-putting, a mix of a fantasy setting (the initial introduction to the Inugami family) and a modern school setting (where we meet Koyuki immediately after).  Usually, the two don't go together when we see both appear simultaneously at the beginning of the story, and lots of terrible manga start this way, but the intro manages to use both relatively well.  It backs off of the fantasy elements and simply presents Kyounosuke as a semi-magical being lost in the big city.  He has heightened senses of smell and hearing, but that's all, and after initially meeting Koyuki after picking up the scent of his long-lost brother, he takes a backseat to Koyuki trying to figure things out while he battles with illness.  Later, his powers develop a little more, but they still aren't overly fantastic.

It's an interesting tactic, and having Koyuki puzzle her way through things is a much easier way to introduce the setting than simply being told outright.  At the moment, the narrative is what sets it apart from any number of other bland fantasy series.  The plot is still relatively generic, with Kyounosuke looking for his older brother so that he can be convinced to take over the leadership of their clan.  Koyuki, still a rather generic high school girl at the end of the volume, helps him get used to the city and gets caught up in various crazy Inugami situations like fights, power struggles, and even manages to get herself kidnapped for good measure.  Covering all the bases, the volume ends on a cliffhanger when Kyounosuke comes back from a long disappearance as a student at Koyuki's high school.

It's nothing more and nothing less than the plot descriptions tell you, which means the first volume is quite vanilla.  But in addition to decent storytelling techniques, the mystery behind Kyounosuke's brother winds up being engaging, with plenty of semi-hints and a very real question about whether he's dead or alive.  The magic use is minimal, with most of the fighting done the old-fashioned way.  The Inugami characters are accompanied by dog-like spirit guides, but these do little more than look cute.

The characters are also thus far unexciting.  Kyounosuke is likable, and has his share of quirks, but he has yet to stand out in any way aside from a couple noteworthy battles and a strange meekness for such a strong character.  Koyuki is completely unremarkable, only her compassion really stands out, and the side characters, ranging from a mouthy elder to groveling servants to the standard tough guy and rich girl, are faceless at this point.  They aren't badly written, and are serving their functions in the story admirably, but that doesn't stop them from being a little boring.

While it's mostly unremarkable, there are shades of a good story to it, and it's possible that future volumes will develop the mystery surrounding Kyounosuke's brother and the budding relationship between Koyuki and Kyounosuke in an interesting way.  It's a good series to keep one's eye on, but thus far is nothing more than an interesting light read.

I didn't notice until I was writing up the review, but it's interesting that this book is in DMP's DokiDoki line, usually reserved for boys' love titles.  There is no chance of Wolf God ever turning into one, and it reinforces the fact that DokiDoki is a Shinshokan imprint more than a BL one.  But it's still strange after all the DokiDoki books I've already read.

5