Manga Monday: Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino (vol.4)

I am some­what of a new manga reader hav­ing dis­cov­ered this genre a lit­tle more than a year ago. Just like my other genre books, I am ded­i­cated to read­ing what I’ve bought. Some titles will be new, some titles not. Every Mon­day I will be high­light­ing manga or graphic nov­els that I have read from my TBR pile. Hope­fully, you’ll find titles that inter­est you (or not) and as usual, I am always open for suggestions/criticisms/commentary from readers.

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Vam­pire Knight by Mat­suri Hino (vol.4), copy­right April 2008, pub­lished by Viz Media and rated for Older Teens (OT), retail price $8.99. This series can be best described as romance and hor­ror. The story cen­ters around the Cross Acad­emy, which is home to two types of stu­dents: humans and vam­pires. Paci­fist, Head­mas­ter Cross, decided that humans needed to learn more about vam­pires and vice versa in order to live together in peace. The two classes are des­ig­nated as the Day Class and the Night class accord­ingly. The classes are sep­a­rated and mon­i­tored by Dis­ci­pli­nary Com­mit­tee mem­bers and stu­dents, Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu.

Yuki was adopted by Head­mas­ter Cross after being attacked by a pure blood vam­pire ten years prior. She is sweet and com­pletely devoted to help­ing one guy and secretly crush­ing on another. Her best friend, Zero,was also attacked by vam­pires. He was the lone sur­vivor of a vam­piric attack four years ago. Zero’s fam­ily were vam­pire hunters. They were killed by a pure blood and ever since that attack, he’s sworn revenge on all vam­pires and the woman who took his life and led him into darkness.

Mean­while, Head­mas­ter Cross takes in Zero and man­ages to keep quiet about Zero’s attack; he even pro­vided Zero with blood tablets to off-set his chances of becom­ing what he hates most: a vam­pire. Need­less to say, Zero’s thirst for blood had become insur­mount­able as his body rejects the blood tablets; even­tu­ally he becomes the mon­ster that he despises. One of many story arcs fol­lows Zero as he teeters on edge of con­trol over his blood­lust. Zero comes close to becom­ing a level E vam­pire, and such vam­pires are usu­ally hunted and elim­i­nated by vam­pire hunters because of their uncon­trol­lable bloodlust.

Night Class pres­i­dent, Kuname Kuran, was the one who saved Yuki that fate­ful night four years ago. He has become her friend and a roman­tic inter­est. Kuname is a pow­er­ful vam­pire and a pure blood. He fol­lows vam­pire cus­toms and tra­di­tions. He is aware of Zero’s secret and decides not to act against him as per vam­pire law. Kuname makes a bar­gain with Zero: he tells Zero to watch over Yuki and shield her from dan­ger; it is this direc­tive that keeps Zero alive accord­ing to Kuname (vol.3). Need­less to say that Yuki is well aware of Zero’s secret and inner tur­moil and vows to save him. Help­ing Zero, she finds her­self in the mid­dle of vam­pire pol­i­tics and power play. There is a tri­an­gle of sorts between Zero, Yuki and Kuname; both men are in love with Yuki or at least find them­selves attracted to her. I actu­ally like both char­ac­ters and don’t have a par­tic­u­lar favorite.

In vol.3, there were sev­eral new plot devel­op­ments. The Cross Acad­emy had accepted a new trans­fer stu­dent named Maria Kure­nai (vol.3). Read­ers had learned that the vam­pire that killed Zero’s fam­ily was still alive. Since attend­ing the Acad­emy, she causes a quite stir with the Night Class and seems to share a past his­tory with Zero (vol.4). We learn that Maria is the vam­pire who led Zero into dark­ness and killed his fam­ily and that she has a blood bond with him that thwarts his attempts to kill her. Vol­ume 4 explores that his­tory fur­ther, going into details of that fate­ful night, with Zero’s par­ents and real­iz­ing that Zero has a twin brother.

This entry (4) has a sur­prise end­ing of sorts that ends with a cliffhanger as usual. This install­ment does move the plot along, fur­ther flesh­ing out Zero’s inter­nal con­flict and resolv­ing a bit of it. It also intro­duces more com­pli­ca­tions for Zero, Yuki and Kuname. A bar­gain has been struck to sac­ri­fice one life for the other and I will not elab­o­rate fur­ther. I do have some com­plaints about this entry. First, the begin­ning of this graphic novel was quite busy and some­what con­fus­ing. There was just so much going on in each of the frames that it was hard to fol­low the nar­ra­tive. /end of complaints/. There is the usual power strug­gle and pol­i­tics within the vam­pire cul­ture that plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in this series that I find quite enter­tain­ing. After four vol­umes, we learn that Kuname has ene­mies and that Zero has a twin; and then there is the ques­tion mark end­ing that I can’t make heads or tails of and will have to wait till vol­ume 5.

Over­all, good entry as far as learn­ing about Zero’s past and keep­ing read­ers on edge. There is the love tri­an­gle that is still some­what unre­solved and sub­tle within the frame­work of the plot and the art­work, as usual, is good. Yuki’s actions thus far are quite rep­e­ti­tious and pre­dictable and I hope the author mixes things up a bit in future vol­umes. B. Note: This is a great series in which to start for read­ers look­ing to dip their toes into the genre if you enjoy romance, vam­pires and loads of angst and beau­ti­ful men. ^-^

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