Vampire Knight, Vol. 1
By Matsuri Hino
Viz, 200 pp.
Rating: 13+
Who would like it: Girls. Vampire fanatics. Cosplayers who dig school uniforms.
Who would hate it: Just about everyone else.
Vampire Knight is an unabashedly adolescent take on the unending (if undeclared) war between humans and vampires. Set at the imaginatively titled Cross Academy, Vampire Knight focuses on three characters: Yuki Cross, the adopted daughter of the academy’s headmaster; Zero Kiryu, the headmaster’s other ward; and Kuran Kaname, an attractive, popular student. Yuki and Zero are tasked with guarding Cross Academy’s Day Class—comprised mostly of squealing human girls—from the Night Class—comprised, in Matsuri Hino’s words, of “an elite group of good looking students” who just so happen to be vampires. Yuki and Zero’s job is complicated by two factors. First, the students in the Day Class are blissfully unaware that their nocturnal compatriots are jonesing for their blood, and second, the vampires’ charm and beauty inspire the bolder members of the Day Class to break curfew. Aided by Kaname, President of the Night Class and Big Vampire on Campus, Yuki and Zero labor mightily to preserve the academy’s secret.
In the right hands, this material could be deliciously subversive—think Heathers or Mean Girls with vampires as the school’s A-list clique. Alas, Hino chooses a different tact, grafting the earnest romanticism of Interview with the Vampire onto the romantic slapstick of Happy Hustle High. No shojo cliché is left unturned. Stepsiblings Yuki and Zero banter with the gusto of Beatrice and Benedict; Yuki and Kaname trade soulful looks before Yuki dissolves into chibi-fied embarrassment; Zero fumes when Kaname crushes on Yuki; Yuki agonizes over whether to give Kaname and Zero chocolates on Valentine’s Day. (What kind of chocolate does one bestow on a vampire—AB negative ganaches?) And just in case the reader has lost sight of the horror element, Hino periodically interrupts the story to share received wisdom about vampires loathing sunlight and special bullets.
Such tired bits of vampire lore coupled with paint-by-numbers plotting give the impression that this series originated in a focus group of 13-year-olds rather than an artist’s imagination. Want androgynously beautiful male vampires? No problem. A spunky heroine? You got it. A forbidden love between a vampire and a human? Check. Stylin’ school uniforms? Check.
Yet a few scenes suggest that Vampire Knight has the potential to develop into a more interesting series. A mid-volume flashback to the night Yuki and Zero met is both haunting and touching, while a racy exchange between Yuki and Aido Hanabusa, Cross Academy’s resident bad boy vampire, hints at an erotic subtext that’s sorely missing from most of volume one. (In fact, subtext of any kind would make this series more palatable to the over-13 crowd.) That said, I’m not sure if I’ll pick up volume two. Enticing as the series’ sartorially splendid vamps may be, reading such hokey lines as “I can’t keep my composure when my dear girl has been pierced by someone else” made me cackle gleefully instead of swoon.
POSTSCRIPT, 5/22/07: I was impressed by your passionate defenses of this series, so I decided to give it a second look. My review of volume two can be accessed by clicking here; scroll to the end of entry.
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