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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).

flat is about a laid back teenager who takes care of his reliable, younger cousin. Admittedly, I started reading this today because of a recommendation that someone made about My Girl (Mizu Sahara).

The artwork is pleasant to look at, and it reminds me of Mizu Sahara's art (and her couple other pen names). Although it's categorized as "shoujo," flat doesn't have a typical shoujo storyline and characters and art, which is precisely why I liked this. No huge eyes, no girl falling in love (though [spoiler?] there is one girl who falls in love with the main character, but her personality is such that she ... doesn't blush or stutter -- rather, she's blunt and straightforward [/spoiler?]).

I liked the slice-of-life story, which made the episodes not so episodic, and throughout this series, we learn more about the characters, not just the main characters, but also their relationships with others as well as implications of their pasts. Which were more noticeable in the protagonist's friends. flat is a rather well-paced story that allows your mind to absorb information and the panel work is not too detailed nor jarring to the eye.

As for the characters, they seem normal and act realistically given their situations. However, the cousin can easily become emotional which can annoy some people, but it's understandable due to his family life and lack of friends. The mangaka uses that to her advantage to worry the other characters and advance the story.

One small improvement would be coloring the manga pages. It seems to be watercolor, but I would like to see these pages more integrated with that medium, perhaps similar to Mizu Sahara's colored manga pages.

For a debuting mangaka, this is already a great manga and I hope to see more works from her. Apparently, this manga was serialized due to popular demand!

First of all, a warning to readers -- gore. It's graphic, but if you can look past that, then you might enjoy this one-shot more. The story is well-done especially for a one-shot because it takes the "broken record" idea (the idea of reliving the same event over and over) in a new way. The art is pretty good for this type of manga; it did portray the mood of the scenes effectively in a restricted setting though not as powerful as I would have liked. The characters themselves seem realistic given their social standings. I feel that there was a lot of change, however ... subtle, in their reactions to the burglars but it showed that they had made up their minds to perform their actions. The relationship between Jean (the main character) and one of his servants could have been touched on some more to give it more of an impact but for now, it is satisfying. It was also predictable, at least for me, to know the person behind the murders once that character was introduced. Overall, I did enjoy the one-shot.