Creative Staff
Story: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Art: Saiko Takaki
Adaptation: Saiko Takaki
Translation: Duane Johnson
What They Say
In a secluded village devoid of the dangers that come during the night, there lies an ageless sleeping beauty bitten by a vampire 30 years ago. She is the key that holds the delicate balance in the village in which mortals and the Nobility can coexist. But when the wandering vampire known as “D” is drawn to the town by recurring dreams of the mysterious girl, the town will stop at nothing to protect that tranquil balance and halt the vampire hunter’s in his tracks.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Passing through a dark forest, D is attacked by an unknown assailant. One arrow from the attacker’s bow hits D, and he experiences a short hallucination where he meets a beautiful, young woman dancing with a dark stranger in an abandoned mansion. When he comes to, he travels to a nearby town where he is welcomed with open arms—an odd occurrence for a dhampir such as he. He soon finds out that each person in the town had had a dream of him, and he is asked to look into the matter of Sybille, a young woman who had been attacked by a noble thirty years earlier and has lain asleep since with her attacker yet to return. But when D goes to the hospital to visit her, he sees that she is the same woman from his own dream, and understands that nothing in this most recent mystery will be what it seems.
This volume of Vampire Hunter D takes a different approach than the previous volumes. We’re still dealing with the standard trope of D wandering into situations where he has to help a beautiful, young woman out of a tough situation, but this time we spend quite a bit of the volume dealing with dreams and hallucinations. What it ends up meaning is that it is often hard to tell what is real and what is not. As D is often confused, so are we. It’s something that can be hard to pull off well, but I think they do a pretty good job with it in this volume.
Because of this, though, this is actually the first volume that’s a little weak on characterization. I haven’t really talked about it, but this series has really excelled at creating compelling characters, especially considering that the only constant from one volume to the next is D and his symbiotic left hand, Left Hand. But where this volume is basically all about D trying to sort through the illusions and find reality, characterization gets left by the wayside a little bit. We learn some about Sybille, but that’s about it. This would usually be an issue for me, as character is what I tend to latch onto most readily, but in the context of this story, it works out just fine.
In Summary
So far to this point, I have really enjoyed the Vampire Hunter D manga series, and this novel is no different. They do a really nice job in this one of building this atmosphere where dream and reality mix to the point that it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not, and it kept me on my toes throughout. I can’t wait to see what they throw at me next. Highly recommended.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Digital Manga Publishing
Release Date: December 29th, 2010
MSRP: $13.95
