Is Tougen Anki: Legend of the Cursed Blood Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Overview

Shiki Ichinose is a rebellious teenager living with his adoptive father Tsuyoshi when an assassin's attack upends everything he thought he knew: he's actually an Oni, one of the demon-blooded beings hunted by the Momotarou, a hereditary order of demon slayers descended from the legend of Momotaro. Worse, Tsuyoshi used to be one of them, before he abandoned that duty to raise Shiki instead. Tougen Anki: Legend of the Cursed Blood builds its entire identity around that inversion — making the traditional monster the story's hero, and the traditional hero's legacy the thing standing in his way.

What it does well

That central flip is what elevates this above a generic action manga. Momotaro is such a familiar, specific piece of Japanese folklore that recasting the demon side as sympathetic gives every confrontation an extra layer of meaning — these aren't just fights against monsters, they're fights against a system built on a story that got the roles backwards. It's a clean, well-executed hook that the manga keeps finding new angles on rather than spending once and moving on.

The emotional core is the relationship between Shiki and Tsuyoshi, and it earns the weight the story asks it to carry. Tsuyoshi's choice to abandon his duty and raise the very thing he was trained to kill reframes everything about their dynamic once it comes out, and the manga lets that complexity breathe instead of rushing past it. On top of that, Yura Urushibara draws action that's genuinely easy to follow — clear staging, real sense of motion and stakes — which matters a lot for a series that leans hard on its fight sequences to carry momentum.

Where it falls short

The supporting cast around the Momotarou Agency doesn't always get the same care as the central father-son dynamic; several agents exist mostly to escalate the next confrontation rather than to develop as their own characters. The pacing sometimes reflects that priority too, rushing past quieter moments to get back to action, which can shortchange character beats that deserved a little more room.

And since this is still an ongoing series, a lot of the bigger questions — how deep the Momotarou/Oni conflict actually goes, what Tsuyoshi's full history really was — remain unresolved. That's not a flaw exactly, but it does mean you're getting an unfinished story rather than a complete arc right now.

Verdict

Tougen Anki: Legend of the Cursed Blood takes a familiar folktale and finds a genuinely sharp angle on it, backed by strong action art and a father-son relationship with real stakes. If folklore-inspired action with an emotional hook behind the fighting appeals to you, it's well worth following, even with its central mysteries still unresolved.