Happiness, as is often the case with manga aimed primarily at teens, causes me one or two age and dad-related problems that I've touched on before, but it is, in the main, despite not being a terribly original idea and owing a debt to Let the Right One In, a pretty enjoyable experience.  It's hardly surprising, I suppose, because Tetsuya Chiba Award-winning author/illustrator Oshimi Shuzo, is a terrific writer and a brilliant artist, and as many of you will know, the man behind Drifting Classroom tribute Drifting Net Cafe.  

Debuting in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, the monthly publication that also published the author's The Flowers of Evil and Sweet Poolside, at the beginning of 2015, the series has already been released in 3 volumes, in that almost organic way that popular serialised manga does when it picks up an enthusiastic fan-base.  It's surely only a matter of time before Happiness follows the tried and trusted route of most of Oshimi Shuzo's work into anime, television drama, and/or live action film. As I've said before it is a route and a system I admire enormously.

Makoto Okazaki is your run of the mill high-schooler, a perfect bullying target and a closet pervert. One night he decides to return a DVD to a friend of his and ventures out into the darkness. He notices a person on a nearby rooftop. The person lunges at him before he is able to make sense of this, and bites into his neck, drinking his blood.
The attacker stops. At this point Makoto notices that the attacker is a beautiful girl. She asks him: "Do you want to die or become like me?" He decides to live...