vampire-knight-by-hino.jpegVam­pire Knight, vol.3 by Mat­suri Hino is Shōjo manga pub­lished by Viz Media, released Octo­ber 2007  with a list price $8.99 and rated T for Teens (older teens). A brief recap of the story thus far: The Cross Acad­emy, headed by Head­mas­ter Cross, has two sets of classes: The Day Class and the Night Class. The Night class are made up of noc­tur­nal crea­tures of the night and man’s nat­ural enemy: vam­pires. The Day Class is com­pletely unaware of the vam­pires that inhabit the acad­emy with them. Paci­fist Cross finds the co-existence between vam­pires and humans to be a edu­ca­tional bridge lead­ing to peace. How­ever, that peace is pre­car­i­ous at best at the Academy.

Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee mem­ber, Yuki Cross was adopted by Head­mas­ter Cross after being attacked by a pure­blood vam­pire 10 years ago. Her part­ner, Zero Kiryu, arrived at the Cross Acad­emy after his fam­ily of vam­pire hunters were attacked and killed by a pure­blood vam­pire. Zero was the only sur­vivor and has sworn vengeance against all vam­pires. Zero since the attack, carries hatred of him­self after learn­ing that he was bit­ten by a pure­blood vam­pire, a woman named Shizuka Hio, who we learn is still alive.

Night Class Pres­i­dent, Kuname Kuran is the pure­blood vam­pire who saved Yuki’s life on that fate­ful day ten years ago. Since then Yuki has been  infat­u­ated with him. That is until she sees a dif­fer­ent side to him. While Kuname is dif­fer­ent and has a close rela­tion­ship to Yuki, he still fright­ens her. Plus, Zero seems to be jeal­ous of their rela­tion­ship and often tries to make things dif­fi­cult between them.

Zero’s self-loathing and hatred of all vam­pires causes Yuki much dis­tress that is until she learns his secret(vol.1). Yuki made a promise to Zero, that if he ever were to turn against her that she would kill him. Later on in the sec­ond vol­ume, Zero and Yuki com­mit a for­bid­den act: Zero drinks her blood since his body rejects the blood tablets. Blood tablets are sup­posed to help relieve him of his thirst for blood. It is in that act that Zero looses all power to fight his vam­piric urges. In the lat­est vol­ume (3), Zero is handed an assign­ment to track down a level E vam­pire: a ser­ial killer whose been on a ram­page. This direc­tive is a test of Zero’s abil­ity to see how suc­cess­ful he is as a vam­pire hunter.

In vol­ume 3 we are intro­duced to a cou­ple of new story arcs. First there’s the trans­fer stu­dent new to the acad­emy that promises to make things inter­est­ing. A young girl named Maria Kure­nai seems frail and demure but per­son­al­ity wise she comes off very robust. We also get to meet one of the old­est vam­pires on the Sen­ate, Ichijo’s grand­fa­ther, who seems to have some ulte­rior pur­pose for his grand­son. The whole Night Class is there to greet him at the Moon Dor­mi­tory and it is in that scene that we learn that Kuname has enemies.

I enjoyed this vol­ume very much. The author decides to give read­ers a flash­back of how Kuname and Yuki first met and to reveal to us the “change” in their rela­tion­ship. Their rela­tion­ship is per­ceived by every­body else as being “close” but Yuki sees things dif­fer­ently. She has vowed to be with Zero in his time of need yet she still yearns for Kuname. Plus there’s the lit­tle prob­lem of Kuname being a pure­blood vam­pire and that she’s ter­ri­fied of him.

There seems to be a hier­ar­chy in the vam­pire cul­ture that plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in this series that I find com­pelling. Pure­blood vam­pires are stronger and more pow­er­ful and I assume they are rare. Humans that are trans­formed into vam­pires are a bit lower on the totem pole and those vam­pires who can­not sup­press their blood lust are elim­i­nated by vam­pire hunters. There are secret orga­ni­za­tions and soci­eties that gov­ern vam­pire law and only reveal them­selves when some­thing goes amiss. I love it when the author goes into the dynam­ics of this culture.

So far this series has been a lot of fun. I admit to not quite fol­low­ing the action sequences in cer­tain scenes but the men drawn in here are quite beau­ti­ful. I love the com­pli­ca­tions that make up Zero and his life and maybe his attrac­tion to Yuki? I love the quiet strength and dan­ger­ous temp­ta­tion that is Kuname, a pure­blood vam­pire who is left with oblig­a­tions because of his lineage. Then there is Yuki in the mid­dle of these two strong men. Kuname tells Zero that the only rea­son he is allow­ing him to live is so that he can  pro­tect Yuki. Kuname knows of his secret and of his “pre­tend­ing” to be human.

Vam­pire Knight is avail­able right now, in paper­back and is still an ongo­ing series. I really enjoyed the sto­ry­line in here and look for­ward to the next vol­ume. My grade, B+.

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