Ranked #684

Vampire Knight (Manga)

Vampire Knights is the typical Vampire story with all blood stained love and unexpected crazy turns. well this is all my personal opinions as i am i pure shojo fan; here goes~

STORY:
Personally i feel Vampire Knights is a really good vampire story to start with. It has a sweet atmosphere and a good concept of creating a school where Vampires and Humans study in different time periods.. Coexistence of Vampires and Humans is a good thought, really nice one but as you go deep and deep into the story it getts totally messed up!!!! Its quite complicated. once you get an analogy (or you can say history or past of a character) right you are lost in cracking another one!! The recent chapters (which follow after the anime) are complicated to understand! At least for me it is!

ART:
SUGOIII!!! thats WONDEFULL!
The art is very sweet and royal ,drawn by Matsuri Hino. Zero is really sexy and i mean it, super sexy! All the vampire hunks look kinda similar but never fail to look impressive. Hanabusa, Akatsuki ,Cross-san, Rima, Ichiru and the great boss- kaname are few characters i really like in art. a Some scenes are really sweet, but her narration on the story needs to improve for all dumb readers (like me!^0^) The blood thirsty scenes are drawn quite nice and the fights are impressive. No complains in drawings^^

CHARACTERS:
As far as the question of justice done to the roles is concerned, VK is in a good par. Many of the characters have significant roles unlike 'hero' oriented works. Yuuki is really irritating sometimes (personal thought ;O ) and recently Kaname is starting to get TOO complicated. Already a messed up story, some parts still don't strike me. Others are very nice parts, though! the sizzling Zero is getting much more SIZZLING!

ENJOYMENT!
hum...... Personally i am reading VK to see the outcome of this super-complicated-vampire-love-triangle. But if u are a try beast with fangs (VAMPIRE) lover, its a good entertainment. But if you are finding the typical SHOUJO content in this story, sorry but thats just a part of the large scale vampire twist.

OVERALL!!!!
VK gets an overall 6/10 from me. Its a good start but if Hino-san works on the style of narration, and tries to make the story anti-complicated then, the scores can go up! VK is not for hard-core shoujo lovers, as some points can disappoint you.Even though the twist-n-turns are great, the heart of a manga is the story. so my verdit is:~
ALL the BEAST-WITH-FANGS, GRAB THE KNIGHTS, OR ELSE JUST ADMIRE HINO'S ART AND STYLE!

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The drawings are gorgeous, that's a given. It's a lot better than those silly flowery scenes in typical shoujo manga. I first started reading Vampire Knight yesterday, and it was really interesting enough for me to pull through all of the fifty-nine chapters (as of this writing), so I can not deny its appeal. However, there are some points that I feel need significant improvements.

For me, Vampire Knight is a guilty read. Why? Certainly not because of Twilight (okay, maybe so). But it's because of the tension in this manga. For me, the character interactions between all characters were appealing, even though their actual development was lacking in a way. For instance, the love triangle between Yuuki, Zero, and Kaname. I can see how that would appeal to the fans, but there are other undertones such as boy love and incest. There's enough subtext that could appeal to any type of love.

The worst part about Vampire Knight, even though I enjoyed the beginning, was Yuuki herself. Initially, she can be described as a cheery person, a bit idealistic and pacifistic like her "father" but she really means her best. In the beginning, the story starts out simple and nice: Yuuki and Zero are assigned extremely important jobs as the "guardians" to prevent the truth of vampires at Night Class from being revealed to the Day Class. However, as the story progresses, Yuuki descends into darkness and loses her personality. This bothered me a lot, and I'm sure it also bothered other fans as well. It seemed like Yuuki lost her personality that had made her in the beginning.

Come to think of it, there is not a wide variety of personalities in this manga. I hope the mangaka can remedy this. Her manga's tone is getting darker, which is appropriate for a vampire manga even though it can make some characters annoying to the readers. All have a dark past, but then again, they're involved with or are vampires. I like Hanabusa, and I really appreciated the fact that the mangaka gave further consideration to other vampires besides Kaname later on in the manga.

The plot is decent, though I definitely was a bit confused about Rido and Shizuka at first (I had to read Wikipedia to make sure). It's more about power struggles and romance conflict. Arcs are not as obvious, which can be pleasing, because sometimes arcs give you expectations for the next and follow the simple formula: sudden conflict arises! characters realize! characters fight! conflict ends! all is well! But they're there.

I felt that the time skip was needed but alas, it did not show any character development, except for maybe Yori. Yori seems to be a device needed to advance the plot, but I would rather think of her as a friend who genuinely cares for Yuuki. Even if this means putting herself at risk of danger.

I'm probably ranting a bit, so might as well wrap this up. Read Vampire Knight if you're looking for a romance to fantasize about and if you're interested in vampires in general. Also read it if you want to know what is the heck that makes it so popular. It's definitely a good manga to appeal to the romance fans, even guilty pleasure ones, but for those who are highly critical of characters and dark atmospheres, this would not be it. Especially Yuuki at the point in time when her past is revealed. So don't expect the manga to be light-hearted and fluffy; it's actually angst (for Yuuki). read more