Sep 12, 2023
tl;dr: A horror manga about vampires that's just okay in every regard.
Noah of the Blood Sea is a manga about vampires that touches on some interesting concepts but it doesn’t really flesh them out well enough. There’re pretty much all the standard vampire tropes, such as the whole predator vs prey dynamic, making a show of treating humans as livestock, and angst when going through a human to vampire transition. However, it gives each a bit of a unique spin, which is enough to make them a bit interesting. Emphasis on the word ‘bit’, because while the unique spin does help a bit, the writing
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isn’t strong enough to really make use of them. Rather, it feels like it’s rushing through things while throwing in various elements without any plans on actually using them effectively. And the end doesn’t even try to wrap things up, being the type of ending that just keeps adding plot thread despite it obviously not having any chance to further pursue them.
Character wise, the manga doesn’t really have a protagonist or protagonists. Despite the manga being only 5 volumes long there’s a pretty large cast, and thus no one really gets focused on enough to get invested in. Especially as it’s jumping around so much. Despite that, the writing is constantly leaning in to trying to hit emotional beats that require investment in characters, which as expected simply don’t land. Still, even with that, the ending was still annoying. Having one final twist is pretty typical in horror fiction but how it was carried out here failed to be horrific, but rather was just malicious without any shred of terror, and thus just felt kind of irritating.
In terms of tone and atmosphere, it does a pretty decent job early on when it’s trying to be mysterious and mainly from the point of view of humans who don’t truly understand the situation, they’re in. However, as the story progresses and things come to light, it shifts to being just as much if not more so from the perspective of vampires. At that point it becomes clear that while the vampires are monsters, they’re also pretty lame, and thus they’re not anywhere near as horrific. It’s a more typical thriller at this point, but the plot and twists aren’t well written enough to make it a good one. The covers have pretty nice art in terms of style and execution, but everything on the inside was pretty mediocre. I don’t think it really hurt things, but it didn’t help at all either.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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