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Summary by Rurichan
Ok, first off I’ll admit that I got Cross-Oneself by Amakawa Sumiko just for the pictures of Takara. But the story itself is very interesting.
Cross Oneself is like a magical girl story but with a guy as the main character. In fact it’s a holy bishonen story! Cross is about a very young catholic priest named Amakusa Takara who goes to a catholic high school, and uses his gift of holy powers to exorcise demons and the devil on the side. He exorcises them by using holy water, the sign of the cross with his hands, and if needed a cross that comes out of his forehead. To balance out Takara’s beautiful looks is probably the only unordained teacher at the catholic school, Matsuri Shizuha who seems to have minor powers (which include interesting signs appearing all over her body.)
The first volume starts off with a girl being used as a sacrifice in a cult-like ceremony. Then it cuts to a scene where Takara has just finished another job of exorcising, he returns his cross back into his forehead and leaves. He returns to the church to see a girl wrapped up in a sheet, surprisingly enough she isn’t wearing much, which Takara seems to have no qualms about. We later find out that this person is Shizuha.
It seems as though Cross follows the same pattern that a person with magical powers runs into bad magical powers. In this case Takara and Shizuha run into demons, cults, voodoo, and a wide array of what could be called as “The Devil’s Work” The nice part about Cross is that Amakawa kept the holy theme running by adding small details such as “amen” at the end of chapters and explaining all of the religious things that occur in the manga in an Atogaki at the end.
Part of me hopes that Takara doesn’t get together with Shizuha in the end due to the catholic theme and the fact that Catholic priests are “married” to the church and their work.
Currently there are four volumes of Cross Oneself with a fifth on the way. Although it runs in Asuka Mystery DX its published as an Asuka manga (where the Asuka Bird appears on the spine.) Amakawa seems to like religious hero themes, one of her other manga is a single volume on (surprise!) Jeanne D’Arc.