• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

December 30, 2009 by Megan M. 2 Comments

Vampire Knight, Volume 8

Guest Review: Vampire Knight, Vol. 8
By Matsuri Hino
Published by Viz Media

Review by Megan M.

vampireknight8
Buy This Book

Cross Academy is divided into two groups of students: the Day Class, made up of seemingly normal high school students, and the Night Class, whose members are actually vampires. Protecting the human students from the vampires are Yuki Cross (the headmaster’s foster daughter) and her childhood friend, Zero Kiryu. Yuki has always had a strange relationship with the head of the Night Class, Kaname, on whom she must rely to explain the mysteries of her past. Fortunately for Yuki, circumstances have reached a point where Kaname has no other choice but to do so.

I read the first three volumes of this series when they first came out in the U.S., but eventually dropped it. While I found the main plotline interesting and liked Yuki and Zero, I found Kaname to be extremely creepy and his relationship with Yuki even more so. The real deal breaker for me, however, was that the entire cast (excepting Zero) behaved as if Yuki was one of Kaname’s personal possessions. Having now read this volume, there is virtually nothing I can say on this topic that would not be considered a major spoiler, but suffice it to say that the story itself now appears to support this view of Yuki. Not only has Kaname been firmly established as a love interest, but we also learn that Yuki was literally created purely for the purpose of being Kaname’s bride. There are other plot elements that briefly appear–the mythology of the vampire hunters and the dangers of twin hunters, for instance–but these items are clearly secondary.

In addition to giving life to the creepiest implications of the story’s core premise, the overall quality of the series seems to have declined. In early volumes, I recall that Yuki had quite a bit to do. In this volume, she literally does nothing but run around in a nightgown. In addition, Zero does nothing but point his gun and angst. Only Kaname has anything of real substance on his plate, which unfortunately consists of obsessing over Yuki and seeking revenge. Had I not read previous volumes, I would wonder if Hino’s characters were capable of anything but angst (alternately tragic and angry), aside from some supporting characters, whose range extends to ominous, mysterious, and tragic.

The series’ art has also suffered a serious decline. In the past, I’ve found Matsuri Hino’s art to be too cluttered for my taste–more focused on looking pretty than storytelling–but her designs and backgrounds were interesting and appealing, and her art very detailed. Unfortunately, she has degenerated to substituting backgrounds with white space or hazy textures and her characters have become so generic that they are difficult to tell apart except by hairstyle.

I decided to give Vampire Knight another try thanks to a growing fondness for other gothic shojo titles over the last two years. Unfortunately, whatever it is that CLAMP, Higuri You and Kaori Yuki have, Matsuri Hino doesn’t.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: manga, vampire knight

About Megan M.

Megan is a customer service representative for an evil credit card company who lives in Texas. She would be a single English major living alone with a cat if her apartment complex allowed pets, and has compensated for the lack of a cat with far too many books. She has read so much that it has turned her brain, and her shelves are overflowing with romance novels, fantasy novels, mystery novels, american comics, and, of course manga. If one looks closely, one may spot the rare volume of Serious Literature, valiantly gasping for air, struggling to survive in the sea of popular fiction. Her fictional preferences for women with weapons and attractive, often roguish, male accessories were firmly established at a very young age due to early exposure to Star Wars and Willow.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jenny says

    December 31, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    I think you should wait for later volumes – 9 and 10 specifically – before making your final judgment on Vampire Knight. This volume was purely set-up for the events in those two volumes.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Maid Service « MangaBlog says:
    December 31, 2009 at 9:02 am

    […] (Okazu) Jennifer Dunbar on vols. 5-8 of Vampire Knight (A word is a unit of language) Megan M. on vol. 8 of Vampire Knight (Manga Bookshelf) Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 7 of V.B. Rose (Comics Worth […]

    Reply


Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.