About the Mangaka

The Trinity Blood series seems to be the only work done by Yoshida Sunao, who unfortunately died in July 2004 leaving the series incomplete. Another author took up the series to finish it.

About the Manga

01

This is a pretty good series from what I’ve seen in this first volume. Though it’s not without it’s flaws, caused by Tokyopop.

The illustrations are pretty sparse in this volume, and the ones we do get are, well, weird. When I picked up the series I was expecting some differences, after all the manga, anime and novels were all illustrated by different people. Though they were supposedly sourced from the novel. So while I was expecting some differences in designs I wasn’t expecting what we get. are some rather ugly designs.

That’s not all the way through though, I did find one I liked :D the first one where Abel is transforming, it looks stunning and a bit creepy.

Where this series really takes off though is in the story itself. Trinity Blood takes the age old vampire versus human battle and literally reinvents it. As well as taking other elements of the folklore and blending them in perfectly.

While the stories in this volume are all technically independent of each other, they do all follow the same main story. This works well, and means it loses the episodic “monster of the week” it would have otherwise have.

The novels were supposedly to give more information on the political aspects of the world, yet to be honest none of this is revealed in this first volume. Rather I was left wondering at certain points raised in the volume. It’s a shame certain relationships weren’t explained better, since it does  get in the way a bit.

I think the first volume does do an excellent job of introducing the characters and their personalities . A lot of other things were explained better in the novel, for example the airship incident.

If you’ve read the manga or seen the anime, be warned there are some huge continuity changes, and some of the characters were remade for those mediums. For example in the anime (and I believe the manga) Sister Kate is depicted as a young nun, where as in the novel she’s an elderly nun.

As first volumes go, I was really impressed, and Yoshida managed to get me interested enough to buy the subsequent volumes.

So where are the flaws? Sadly they’re in Tokyopop’s handling of the series. While the translation didn’t feel like it was a rewrite, the editing was atrocious. The number of spelling and grammar mistakes was unbelievable. My grammar is abysmal as well, so if I’m spotting mistakes then you know it’s bad.

I also wish they’d settle on a standard format for their light novels, the constant changes of styles is really irritating. Some have near paper style covers (Good Witch), other have a nice high quality semi hard cover (Scrapped Princess), some are in generic book format (Banner of the Stars), and then there’s these. This series has the crappy almost paper cover, but it’s been laminated. It looks and feels horrible and really cheap.

However issues aside I still enjoyed the volume a great deal.

Where to Buy

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