The Otaku Bookshelf: Vampires and Vatican Edition

Yes, there will be blood… in the latest installment of The Otaku Bookshelf, that is. This month, Ken and I take a look at two of the most popular anime-manga-novel franchises on the market right now: Blood+ and Trinity Blood. And in keeping with our vampire theme, books are rated on the following scale of one to five garlic bulbs:

= Drive a stake through it–it’s terrible!

= Find the silver bullets–you may need them to slay this stinker!

= Good fun.

= Great–put away that wolfsbane!

= Awesome, even if you’re not one of the living dead.

Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts

By Mamoru Oshii; Translated by Camellia Nieh
Dark Horse, 300 pp.

Despite its title, the real hero of Blood: The Last Vampire isn’t Saya, the katana-wielding schoolgirl who dispatches Chiropterans with ferocious abandon; it’s Rei Miwa, a high school student and sometime anti-war activist living near the Yokota Air Base in 1969. The first time Rei spots Saya, he can’t believe his eyes: there, at the end of a dark Tokyo alley, is a teenager attacking what looks like a gorilla-bat-wookie hybrid while two black-suited foreigners watch from a car with diplomatic plates. Before he can so much as yell “WTF?!,” Riku takes a knock to the head, eventually waking up in police custody, unable to explain what he was doing in the blood-soaked alley where they found him. Once sprung from the pokey, a seedy investigator approaches Riku with information about Saya and her possible connection to a string of student-activist murders: will Riku help him gather intelligence on these radical groups in the interest of protecting his fellow protesters from Saya? Riku agrees, but quickly learns that the mystery is more complex than the detective initially let on.

Sounds like a great set-up for a supernatural thriller—if the execution were more skillful. Alas, Blood: The Last Vampire is so pretentious that any sense of fear evoked by Saya’s first appearance is quickly buried under mountains of long-winded prose. Mamoru Oshii, the creative mind behind Ghost in the Shell, relates most of the story through artless dialogue that’s studded with Cliff Note glosses on famous Western philosophers, Darwinism, vampire lore, and the Rothschilds. That last topic is handled with an astonishing lack of sensitivity, frequently crossing the line into anti-Semitic territory with its unflattering depiction of this powerful family as the engineers of Europe’s greatest crises. Oshii also tosses a Vatican conspiracy into the mix—an equal opportunity gesture, I guess—that’s as poorly integrated into the story as it is laughable.

The biggest problem with Oshii’s novel, however, is that almost nothing happens. For a chapter in one of Japan’s most enduring, popular vampire franchises, there’s precious little information about the titular character. To some extent, that might be expected—spin-off novels and manga often explore secondary characters and side stories. But when they’re this dull, it’s hard to imagine how even the most devoted fan would want to commit the time and energy to reading it, especially when the title character appears in just a handful of scenes.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey

Blood+, Vol. 1: First Kiss

By Ryo Ikehata, Illustrations by Chizu Hashii, Translated by John Thomas
Dark Horse, 354 pp.

This faithful, fast-paced adaptation of the Blood+ anime covers the first fourteen episodes of the series. Most of volume one focuses on Saya’s re-awakening, as she struggles to remember her past: where and why she fought, how she ended up in the custody of the mysterious Red Shield agency, and why a ridiculously handsome young man (who just so happens to play a mean Bach Cello Suite) risks life and limb to protect her from Chiropterans. The prose gets the job done, but abounds in ungainly metaphors, odd shifts in tense, and statements of the obvious. When Saya visits the Yanbaru laboratory where her father is being held, for example, author Ryo Ikehata offers this awkward description of the facilities:

All places called nature conservation centers were basically small-scale museums. There are carefully tended tropical plants and stuffed versions of endangered birds and wildcats. These displays are arranged in an attractive and efficient way throughout the building.
Naturally, they had entered after hours. The lights were out and the staff had all gone home.

If the text reads like something from a high school literary magazine, the packaging is first rate, featuring illustrations by Chizu Hashii, the artist responsible for the anime’s distinctive character designs. The book also includes several full-color glossy plates as well as a helpful character guide. For fans who may have missed a few episodes of the television series, Blood+: First Kiss is a painless way to catch up. For anyone curious about the Blood+ franchise, the novel makes a good introduction to Saya and her world, as everything is spelled out clearly and concisely. For folks who care about good writing… well, that’s what V.S. Naipaul is for.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey

Trinity Blood: Rage Against the Moons, Vol. 1: From the Empire; Trinity Blood: Reborn on the Mars, Vol 1: Star of Sorrow

Written by Sunao Yoshida, Art By Thores Shibamoto, Translated by Anastasia Moreo
Published by Tokyopop

Set in a distant future after a massive war, the story follows the adventures of Abel Nightroad and his exploits as a special AX Agent of the Vatican. In this future world, the Vatican has once again risen to power and now exists in a Cold War-style standoff with an empire to the East, an empire ruled by Vampires. A shadowy organization emerges with a sinister purpose: escalating this new Cold War into a rather hot one.

Rage Against the Moons is a collection of short, loosely connected tales, including the story for the first episode of the anime series, while Reborn on the Mars is a single volume story focusing on an undercover mission to the free state of Istavan. I’m pretty sure that every single story has been adapted into an anime episode or episodes. The biggest difference is the order, along with the fact that we get a little more background. Sadly it’s not a whole lot more information on the Trinity Blood universe, and most of it pops up in Reborn on the Mars. I have to admit, I was hoping for Vampire Hunter D levels of new material. I figured we’d get reams of back story, inner monologues and the like that never made into the anime. Frankly, I’m surprised at just how much of this material I remember from anime. Still, the stories move along at a nice clip and manage to be fairly enjoyable, plus what little new information was given was quite welcome.

One of the common threads throughout both books are the machinations of the mysterious Orden Rosenkreuz, as they attempt to orchestrate a war between the humans the vampires. They’re far more prominent in Reborn on the Mars, but they turn up on several occasions in Rage Against the Moons as well. Both times they stick to the shadows and are portrayed as the movers and shakers behind the scenes. This is actually one element I’d love to see expanded as the novels continue. I’d love to find out more about the group and their ultimate end.

The art is scattered throughout the two volumes and usually depicts a scene from the one of the stories. It’s black and white and quite pretty. It does a good job at rendering the characters in various cool and important moments and the most of the character designs look wonderfully detailed. I think I preferred the art choices in Reborn on the Mars more than Rage Against the Moons, as Shibamoto just seemed to pick better scenes to illustrate. There are a few odd moments where the art clashes with the writing, the most notable being the description of Sister Kate, the Iron Maiden. In the novel she’s described as older nun, but Shibamoto draws her like a teenager. It’s a minor nit pick but it really leapt out at me.

Ultimately, Trinity Blood is fluff, but it’s pretty fun fluff. It’s not especially deep or though provoking, but Suano’s certainly created an interesting post-apocalyptic world that should engage sci-fi and vampire buffs alike.

–Reviewed by Ken Haley