The Vampire Knight: Gothy and Blood-Sucking...Yes, please
I’ve been sort of working on this post on and off again for a bit, but finally, here it is. My love can no longer be suppressed. I have fallen in love with a manga!
Giddy, gleeful, ‘oh, this is going to be so angsty and romantic and doomed’ kinda love.
The manga of choice? The Vampire Knight by the same woman who did MeruPuri which I gleed about some months back.
(l-r: Zero, Yuki, and Kaname)
But where MP is cute and cracky and fluffy, TVK is gothy and dark and angsty. But still with that gorgeous, quasi-Victorian style artwork.
The story? TVK is rather like Buffy on crack. Yes, there is fighting the vampires and schools and angsty love and awesome hair. In the TVK world, vampires exist. Some manage to live comfortably with humans. Most fight a war instead, even if the populace is unaware of their existence.
Yuki, our heroine, has no memories of her life before she was five years old. At five, she was saved from a hungry vampire by good-looking and mysterious Kaname (himself a vampire) and found herself an adopted daughter of an eccentric schoolmaster. Now 15, she is a Day Student in her father’s Cross Academy, a school that also has a Night Class, a class composed entirely of young vampires who are willing to go along with her father’s quixotic plan to bring harmony between the species. The leader of said Night Class? Kaname, the hunky vampire who saved her life and is now the object of her crush.
No students or faculty know the Night Class’ secret except for Yuki, her father, and Zero (yeah, it’s his name. I suppose it sounds cooler in Japanese), an angry but gorgeous guy Yuki’s age who was taken in by Yuki’s father four years ago, after a Master Vampire killed his family. Now he is Yuki’s best friend. Yuki and Zero do the night monitor duty: they patrol and keep both the Night Class’ secret and the Day Class’ safety. If Yuki is the starry-eyed optimist, believing in peaceful coexistence (and even finding Kaname himself hot), Zero is an intense, focused loner, someone who hates vampires and everything they represent.
But. But. But.
And here is where my insane love of this manga comes in and makes Zero my favorite character and gives me another ship in Zero/Yuki (though honestly, I have no idea if the mangaka is going for that or for Kaname/Yuki, and Kaname/Yuki seems more likely). What Yuki herself doesn’t know as the manga opens, but as she is shortly to find out, Zero himself is slowly turning into a vampire, as a result of that attack four years ago, during which he was bitten. Zero, child of a vampire hunting clan, someone who wants to avenge his family, is turning into the thing he hates most, and he knows it.
Stick a fork in me, I am done. (If you want a rather spoilery and a bit ‘eeeee, vampires are hot’ take on Zero/Yuki, with some awesome pics, go here.
Zero and Yuki:
Zero getting his freak on? Methinks the mangaka has watched too much Sayuki :D
Cover of the first volume (l-r Zero, Yuki, Kaname):
Panel showing Night Class students:
Most of them gotten here:
http://www.ochitsuki.net/clandestine/yuuki.php
Giddy, gleeful, ‘oh, this is going to be so angsty and romantic and doomed’ kinda love.
The manga of choice? The Vampire Knight by the same woman who did MeruPuri which I gleed about some months back.
(l-r: Zero, Yuki, and Kaname)
But where MP is cute and cracky and fluffy, TVK is gothy and dark and angsty. But still with that gorgeous, quasi-Victorian style artwork.
The story? TVK is rather like Buffy on crack. Yes, there is fighting the vampires and schools and angsty love and awesome hair. In the TVK world, vampires exist. Some manage to live comfortably with humans. Most fight a war instead, even if the populace is unaware of their existence.
Yuki, our heroine, has no memories of her life before she was five years old. At five, she was saved from a hungry vampire by good-looking and mysterious Kaname (himself a vampire) and found herself an adopted daughter of an eccentric schoolmaster. Now 15, she is a Day Student in her father’s Cross Academy, a school that also has a Night Class, a class composed entirely of young vampires who are willing to go along with her father’s quixotic plan to bring harmony between the species. The leader of said Night Class? Kaname, the hunky vampire who saved her life and is now the object of her crush.
No students or faculty know the Night Class’ secret except for Yuki, her father, and Zero (yeah, it’s his name. I suppose it sounds cooler in Japanese), an angry but gorgeous guy Yuki’s age who was taken in by Yuki’s father four years ago, after a Master Vampire killed his family. Now he is Yuki’s best friend. Yuki and Zero do the night monitor duty: they patrol and keep both the Night Class’ secret and the Day Class’ safety. If Yuki is the starry-eyed optimist, believing in peaceful coexistence (and even finding Kaname himself hot), Zero is an intense, focused loner, someone who hates vampires and everything they represent.
But. But. But.
And here is where my insane love of this manga comes in and makes Zero my favorite character and gives me another ship in Zero/Yuki (though honestly, I have no idea if the mangaka is going for that or for Kaname/Yuki, and Kaname/Yuki seems more likely). What Yuki herself doesn’t know as the manga opens, but as she is shortly to find out, Zero himself is slowly turning into a vampire, as a result of that attack four years ago, during which he was bitten. Zero, child of a vampire hunting clan, someone who wants to avenge his family, is turning into the thing he hates most, and he knows it.
Stick a fork in me, I am done. (If you want a rather spoilery and a bit ‘eeeee, vampires are hot’ take on Zero/Yuki, with some awesome pics, go here.
Zero and Yuki:
Zero getting his freak on? Methinks the mangaka has watched too much Sayuki :D
Cover of the first volume (l-r Zero, Yuki, Kaname):
Panel showing Night Class students:
Most of them gotten here:
http://www.ochitsuki.net/clandestine/yuuki.php