Creative Staff
Story: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Art: Saiko Takaki
Adaptation: Saiko Takaki
Translation: Duane Johnson
What They Say
The City, a tiny metropolis of a few hundred sheltered citizens floating serenely on a seemingly random course a few feet above the ground, has long been thought safe from the predation of marauding monsters. It seems like a paradise. A paradise shattered when an invasion of apparent vampire threatens the small haven.
While the Vampire Hunter known only as “D” struggles to exterminate the scourge, a former denizen of the city, the attractive Lori Knight, and the brash John M. Brasselli Pluto VIII seize control of the city, lurching it onto a new and deadly course. D’s travails are just the beginning.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In this volume, D comes across a campsite that has been massacred by monsters. D slaughters the monsters, but there are only two survivors from the attack: a man named John Brasselli Pluto VIII (don’t ever not call him by his full name) and girl named Lori who is suffering from radiation sickness. The three are picked up by a mobile town, a city built on a constantly travelling ship. The mayor of the city hires D to look into what appear to be a rash of attacks from the nobility, including an attack on his own daughter. But the more D investigates the town and their problems, the more he begins to learn that their issues might be self-inflicted.
I find it really interesting that D’s main job is to hunt vampires (hence ‘vampire-hunter’), but the farther we go along, the more the microscope seems to be turning back around on humanity. While apparent vampire attacks are the catalyst for this volume, so much of what D does in this story is learning the history of the town and figuring out why they do what they do. From the moment he steps foot on the ship, there’s something about the town that doesn’t seem right. The fact that the mayor readily admits they might be cursed due to an encounter 200 years previous only reinforces this.
The past couple of volume’s, I have been intrigued by the probing examination into the motivations of the nobility. But a more subtle subtext that has been growing, and has taken center stage in this volume, is this idea that perhaps humanity’s greatest threat is not the “evil” nobility but rather their own fears and ambitions. I probably shouldn’t be as it’s a trope of frontier tales, but I remain fascinated by just how many people are openly antagonistic to D, despite the fact that he is ostensibly there to help them and save them from whatever threat they face. Considering that along with the source of the threats to the town in this novel, a picture is starting to be painted that human’s might only have themselves to blame for their problems.
In Summary
I am four graphic novels in at this point, and I’ve yet to really have a complaint about this series. Each time I feel like we’ve got all of the threads, they add some more. And the ones present they continue to build upon. Vampire Hunter D is a series that I continue to enjoy, and I look forward to continuing to read it. 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: November 18th, 2009
MSRP: $13.95
