Vampire Knight

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When I was 12 I read Vampire Knight up to Volume 14, after that I lost interest and moved on to other series. Now, at age 22, my 15 year niece inspired me to pick it up again, so I bought the missing volumes (second hand) and started from the top.

I must say I really enjoyed it up to volume 9, up until that point the story has a nice pace and characters and romance are both interesting enough. But after Volume 10 the story feels dragged along and the characters actions start to make less sense.

The art is really beautiful and every panel feels ... carefully crafted. Even though the art style is a little dated nowadays I still think it aged really well.

I have to say that I find Kaname, one of the main characters, straight up unlikeable for most of the series (save for a nice moment here and there) and therefor him being part of the center love triangle makes it infuriating each time the narrative leans towards him and Yuki, which it does for a very long stretch of time. Characters like Zero and Aido do make up for him though.

My dislike for Kaname might be the reason why I don't like the plot in the later volumes that much either, so take my crticism with a grain of salt.

Overall, I think Vampire Knight is series that may have profited from a more compressed ending arc but is never the less enjoyable if you like vampires and love triangles.

In my own half-hearted defense, i was very young, and the art was very pretty and all the characters are cute
also you have to consider: vampires uwu

but wow what a steaming pile this ended up being
something between a 4 and a 5. I'd give it that. It's largely very typical as far as this genre is concerned, and the aforementioned art bumps it up a bit.

it's, like, fine, baby's first spicy shojo manga. Later on it's baby's first guilty pleasure, then baby's first irredeemable trash. I would not read beyond the first handful of chapters if i came across it today, but I'm older and ... wiser and also not a teenage pile of hormones anymore. I think everyone ought to experience this rollercoaster at least once, at least until they feel like hopping off to throw up.

I gave it a 3/10 because I was feeling EXCEEDINGLY generous today. The art is very nice. However, what started out as massive potential ended as a pile of steaming, hot trash. I stuck around every month until the very end (Ch. 93) hoping it would get better but it literally gets worse every single chapter. (The only manga that had a worse ending was Attack on Titan, which is saying something.) I literally want to sue Matsuri Hino for emotional damages.

The first 30 chapters had SO much potential. The problem was that all that set up was for nothing. The delivery was so ... poorly executed that a 13-year-old fanfic writer could have done better. If it was trash to begin with, I wouldn't have bothered but I also would know what I was getting into. But this was a bait and switch. Hino baited us with such an intriguing premise and then she completely tanked her story. Where was her editor? Did she and everyone on her team genuinely think this was ACTUALLY a good idea?? I am gobsmacked by the high rating. Everyone keeps joking about this being like Twilight but heck, I've only read the first Twilight book and from what I remember, it was honestly, legitimately better than what this became. I loved VK prior to chapter 31, but leading right up to the big plot twist, there was a massive shift in tone and all prior characterization went out the window. The rest was a convoluted mess that didn't even know how to put itself out of its own misery.

I cannot in good faith recommend this manga to people unless they want to torture themselves with anger and disappointment. If you must read it, just drop it at the end of chapter 30 and save yourself from the rest. I wish I could either go back in time or wipe my memory clean of it.