Vampire Knight - Hino Matsuri
15 Nov 2005 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiCaught up on a bit of manga. Still plenty to go~ *twirls*
It seems like anything with vampires is destined to be oozing with angst.
Unless you're Terry Pratchett, of course, possibly the only guy who can make vampires enjoy hot chocolate and aspire to use cameras with very bright flashlights.
Vampire Knight is probably Hino Matsuri's angstiest work to date - from an author whose works consist largely of sexy, humorous romantic comedies such as Toraware no Minoue, Marchen Prince and Wanted. Vampire Knight still focuses on romance but is indeniably - and probably inevitably - angstier.
In a world where there has always been fragile coexistence between vampires and humans, there are some who wants to overcome that enmity. The first step, they appear to decide, is to send both humans and vampires to the same school. Due to some...physiological differences, the humans attend the Day Class and the vampires the Night Class. Yet, worried that humans would fear the vampires, the school employs two human students who know the truth to guard the secret (bridging the gap between humans and vampires indeed...)
A quirk of genetics and the second law of vampirical fiction dictates that all vampires are exceedingly beautiful (the first law was that it has to be angsty) and these two students, our main characters, have a lot of trouble on their hands especially every once a year on that fateful day when the prices of chocolates and flowers suddenly inflate.
That wasn't the angsty bit.
Kiriyuu Zero and Kurosu Yuuki both had their lives shaped by previous meetings with vampires. Yuuki's earliest memory was of a snowy field and a vampire attempting to drink her blood. She was saved by Kaname - current president of the Night Class. Kaname handed her over to the principal of the Cross Academy and she has felt indebted to the two of them since. Zero entered their lives much later. He was the son of a family of vampire hunters, and his family members were killed by vampires. But the vampire who killed them left him alive and with a curse: as a pure-blooded vampire, she had the power to turn who she bit into a vampire, and she bestowed that immortality on him. Fuelled on by his hatred for the vampires, he had resisted the curse, and guarded the Day Class from the Night Class with ruthless ferocity. But now the curse had overcome him, and by his side is Kurosu Yuuki...whose blood appears to be unusually sweet for vampires.
It's not an original story - Hino Matsuri's works never are, but they always carry an element of wistful sweetness.
It's interesting to see her tackle a different sort of main character. Unlike certain shoujo manga artists, her main hero aren't always the same (it's a bit more difficult to tell between her heroines though...~~;) Toraware no Minoue had a selfish, immature boy enslaved by a strange curse; Marchen Prince was about a magical prince who grew up in the dark; and Wanted had a bad-tempered, well-intentioned pirate.
Kiriyuu is far from a rare character in manga - brooding guys with angsty pasts are a dime a dozen in manga and I fall for them every time, except in the case of Sasuke in Naruto, but that's an entirely different problem - but he is a new character for Hino-sensei. He scowls darkly out of every single panel and never even cracks a smile. The humans fear him because of his boundless anger, the vampires dislike him because of his hatred...animals and magic tools smell the blood on him and reject him. The only ones who stand by him are those he knows he might accidentally hurt.
Things are also less straightforward in this manga compared to Hino-sensei's previous ones. Everyone appears to have some ulterior motive or secret past. And there are a lot more beautiful people to drool over...even more than Marchen Prince. And she's managed a range of different hairstyles once again. Eyecandy galore!
A thumbs-up for those who want light-hearted, beautiful shoujo.
It seems like anything with vampires is destined to be oozing with angst.
Unless you're Terry Pratchett, of course, possibly the only guy who can make vampires enjoy hot chocolate and aspire to use cameras with very bright flashlights.
Vampire Knight is probably Hino Matsuri's angstiest work to date - from an author whose works consist largely of sexy, humorous romantic comedies such as Toraware no Minoue, Marchen Prince and Wanted. Vampire Knight still focuses on romance but is indeniably - and probably inevitably - angstier.
In a world where there has always been fragile coexistence between vampires and humans, there are some who wants to overcome that enmity. The first step, they appear to decide, is to send both humans and vampires to the same school. Due to some...physiological differences, the humans attend the Day Class and the vampires the Night Class. Yet, worried that humans would fear the vampires, the school employs two human students who know the truth to guard the secret (bridging the gap between humans and vampires indeed...)
A quirk of genetics and the second law of vampirical fiction dictates that all vampires are exceedingly beautiful (the first law was that it has to be angsty) and these two students, our main characters, have a lot of trouble on their hands especially every once a year on that fateful day when the prices of chocolates and flowers suddenly inflate.
That wasn't the angsty bit.
Kiriyuu Zero and Kurosu Yuuki both had their lives shaped by previous meetings with vampires. Yuuki's earliest memory was of a snowy field and a vampire attempting to drink her blood. She was saved by Kaname - current president of the Night Class. Kaname handed her over to the principal of the Cross Academy and she has felt indebted to the two of them since. Zero entered their lives much later. He was the son of a family of vampire hunters, and his family members were killed by vampires. But the vampire who killed them left him alive and with a curse: as a pure-blooded vampire, she had the power to turn who she bit into a vampire, and she bestowed that immortality on him. Fuelled on by his hatred for the vampires, he had resisted the curse, and guarded the Day Class from the Night Class with ruthless ferocity. But now the curse had overcome him, and by his side is Kurosu Yuuki...whose blood appears to be unusually sweet for vampires.
It's not an original story - Hino Matsuri's works never are, but they always carry an element of wistful sweetness.
It's interesting to see her tackle a different sort of main character. Unlike certain shoujo manga artists, her main hero aren't always the same (it's a bit more difficult to tell between her heroines though...~~;) Toraware no Minoue had a selfish, immature boy enslaved by a strange curse; Marchen Prince was about a magical prince who grew up in the dark; and Wanted had a bad-tempered, well-intentioned pirate.
Kiriyuu is far from a rare character in manga - brooding guys with angsty pasts are a dime a dozen in manga and I fall for them every time, except in the case of Sasuke in Naruto, but that's an entirely different problem - but he is a new character for Hino-sensei. He scowls darkly out of every single panel and never even cracks a smile. The humans fear him because of his boundless anger, the vampires dislike him because of his hatred...animals and magic tools smell the blood on him and reject him. The only ones who stand by him are those he knows he might accidentally hurt.
Things are also less straightforward in this manga compared to Hino-sensei's previous ones. Everyone appears to have some ulterior motive or secret past. And there are a lot more beautiful people to drool over...even more than Marchen Prince. And she's managed a range of different hairstyles once again. Eyecandy galore!
A thumbs-up for those who want light-hearted, beautiful shoujo.
