By Bisco Hatori
Viz, 208 pp.
Rating: Teen
Millennium Snow epitomizes what I call “kitchen-sink” shojo, freely mixing supernatural elements with melodramatic plotlines and slapstick humor. Done poorly, the results would yield something akin to NBC’s campy Passions. A human-vampire romance set in a high school? A heroine suffering from a life-threatening but unnamed disease? A supporting cast that includes a talking bat and a werewolf? Yet in Bisco Hatori’s capable hands, these disparate elements gel into an appealing story with surprising emotional resonance.
Millennium Snow focuses on Chiyuki, a terminally ill seventeen-year-old girl, and Toya, a brash, eighteen-year-old vampire who finds the very smell of human blood revolting. Toya has the power to grant a human being unnaturally long life by sucking her blood. Once bitten, that person becomes his partner (and, presumably, on-call snack) for the next 800 – 1,000 years. Yet Toya cannot bear the thought of biting anyone. It’s not a great leap of imagination to guess what happens next. Chiyuki becomes smitten with Toya, and offers to become his partner. The two engage in a classic shojo courtship, trading public insults while secretly harboring feelings for one another. What prevents their relationship from blossoming is fear: Toya worries that his human partner might grow tired of his company, while Chiyuki worries that she may not live to see the first snowfall of the year.
The real pleasure of Millennium Snow is the skillful way in which Hatori balances Lifetime movie moments with goofy sight gags. Toya’s sidekick Yamimaru, the aforementioned talking bat, injects the right amount of comic relief into many potentially mawkish scenes. Some readers may find this kawaii critter an irritant, as Yamimaru has a tendency to misconjugate verbs and mangle words in the not-so-proud tradition of Jar-Jar Binks. Yet I found him an essential, endearing member of the cast, as he offers insights into Toya’s personality, acts as a go-between for Chiyuki and Toya, and serves as Toya’s punching bag, sounding board, and butler.
Much as I enjoyed Millennium Snow, I found the book visually chaotic. Many pages feature panels-within-panels, overlapping images, and jokey asides addressed to the reader. Used sparingly, all of these devices can enhance a story; used too frequently, they clutter the page with unnecessary information and hamper the narrative flow. The overly fussy layout of the first chapter is especially choppy and disjointed; I had to re-read the first ten pages several times before I could piece together the sequence of events. When Hatori exercises restraint, however, the results are pure shojo gold; through a few simple gestures or the placement of a figure on the page, we learn more about Toya’s true nature than from a chapter’s worth of dialogue.
Volume one extras include the usual manga-ka commentary on the characters, presented in the form of a five-page mini-comic. (You know the drill: “This character is my personal favorite, but alas, I don’t draw him very well. This character is very cute and a fan favorite. Doesn’t he look good in leather pants? This character is dressed as a nun because I like drawing Catholic vestments.” And so on.) The book also includes “A Romance of One Moment,” Hatori’s first published work. “Romance” is a short story that shades ever-so-slightly into yuri. While it lacks the polish of Ouran High School Host Club, “Romance” demonstrates something that Hatori’s legions of fans already know: she spins a good yarn.
The second and final volume of Millennium Snow will be released in July. This review is based on a complimentary copy provided by the publisher.
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