This review contains mild spoilers but if it being spoiled keeps you from reading the manga thank your good luck. Our Blood Oath reads as though the author has read Tokyo Ghoul watched a copypaste vampire movie from the early 2000s you know the type and never consumed any other story but has seen random pages of successful manga. Its one of those manga that does next to nothing original but still manages to take wellestablished tropes and a copypaste story and completely mess them up. Lets start with the premise. Our Blood Oath is a series about two brothers a vampire and a dude whos bound to the vampire through a blood contract. The latter is adopted. They go around beating the living daylights out of various supernatural creatures to protect humans. Its a pretty basic shonen premise in line with the thousand other battle shonen out there. I have no problem with a basic shonen premise executed well it can lead to a very fun manga such as My Hero Academia. The issue is that this series doesnt do pretty much anything original or interesting. The first big issue lies with the characters. The main duo are stereotypical bighearted lug and cynical child. Neither of them really has a personality besides recycled shonen trope. The side cast is also boring and extremely bland you have a dude whos swept up in supernatural issues who gets surprised really easily sometimes and other times doesnt bat an eyelash at supernatural stuff who Im pretty sure exists mostly so that the author can explain the plot by having him be clueless. Other than that you have theyexistIguess kinds of characters you know the background kind that pop in for a few panels. Even the characters that I think were supposed to appear some more didnt because this manga was rightfully axed at 2 volumes. But wait lets talk the villains Honestly theres next to nothing to talk about. The villains are entirely forgettable dont really have interesting powers and announce themselves with a stereotypical killingdudesinanalleyway scene followed by forcing a kid to kill another kid. In all honesty the latter was probably the most adventurous thing that this manga ever did. After spending a couple chapters building up the villains look they kill people must be bad guys Our Blood Oath gets into the final battle and the villains lose all of the shreds of personality they had before. The second big issue is the utter lack of any sort of real direction in the story. I wont entirely blame the author here as thats partly the editors job the editor for Our Blood Oath also has an illustrious list of six other axed manga under his belt including Protect Me Shugomaru Red Sprite and Bozebeats. Still the story has absolutely nothing aside from being awful distinguishing it from a bunch of pieces of other manga mixed together. The basic plot is of course the brothers trying to keep people safe from supernatural creatures but in the same vein as Tokyo Ghoul or Jujutsu Kaisen theres other supernaturals who just see humans as disposable yadda yadda. They fight. Its a very boring fight that equates to just kind of tossing blood around until one character powers up a stupid amount with the POWER of EMOTION and easily wins. The villains then cry and reveal their tragic backstories which makes them sink even lower from boring villain to boring villain who also has a boring backstory the typical my family... so I became evil. Other than the villains the story is just kind of rambling. I suppose it was trying to flesh out its characters or worldbuild but both the characters and the world are bland as all get out and the first few chapters kind of reenforce that. Oh but on the plus side the author does some extremely cleaver and unique stuff for worldbuilding such as a candy shop... with a kid that calls the owner in... run by a mentorstyle character... selling supernatural stuff... with a secret cave basement. Yeah if I havent said it enough this series is not original and yes I think this is a shameless rip off of that other Jump manga that was actually successful. Last big issue the ending. Personally when it comes to axed series I consider the ending few chapters to be the most crucial part how well an author can finish up a story fast is on display as is their ability to write in general. There are axed series that I like a lot mostly due to their endings such as Red Hoods absolutely wonderful trip and a half or Time Paradox Ghostwriter not feeling like it was axed. Our Blood Oath on the other hand decides to toss a shocking plot twist in that Im sure would have worked better if the author could write well enough to keep the manga running for more than a couple volumes. Then in copypaste badly written shonen fashion an emotional conversation that has absolutely zero place in the series saves the day and everyone is happy again The villains decide being villains is too much work not actually thatd be too humorous for Our Blood Oath and the brothers are all happy in the sunlight again nobody gives a damn about anything the villains did and the author does a really good job of making sure the readers dont give a damn about anything the series did. Art Ill keep this short. The art is neither good nor bad. Its a little better than most failed series but the layouts are uncreative as are the character designs. The most exciting part of a character design is a character having multiple colors in their hair in all honesty. The monster designs are possibly the best part of the art designwise but even then one is a pretty typical beast one is Kurama but with three heads and the vampires are weak body horror. I cant really fault it since Our Blood Oath ran in a magazine aimed at a relatively young readerbase but it would have been nice if the monsters were scarier looking. That would have given them some impact since all of them were heavily reliant on look kids murder to be at all threatening. Ultimately Our Blood Oath is an utter failure of a series in every sense. Fun fact in the Weekly Shonen Jump ToC which is roughly decided by votes of the readers of Jump Our Blood Oath consistently did worse than such series as Agravity Boys HardBoiled Cop Dolphin Phantom Seer which is a huge upgrade over Our Blood Oath in the basic supernatural shonen department and Moriking What do those series have in common? They were all axed pretty fast. Yeah Our Blood Oath was just that bad even to readers of a magazine known for basic battle shonen. Got a bit off course there but the point is that the series was genuinely awful. I didnt enjoy it in the slightest and yes I do normally enjoy basic battle shonen this one is just awful the characters were flat the conflicts pointless. I dont see the author ever successfully writing a manga though I could see them pairing up with a writer since the art is still passable. I gave the series the lowest score possible and I stand by that it truly doesnt have redeeming features and reads like basic plotlines were thrown in a blender. If you have an interest in reading axed supernatural Shonen Jump manga Red Hood Ayashimon or even a bad series like Red Sprite will be infinitely better. If youre interested in Our Blood Oath for some other unknowable reason I suggest watching paint dry instead.