About the Mangaka

Takaki Saiko has been a mangaka for close to a decade, as well as an illustrator and graphic designer. She has worked on numerous projects in both the gaming and manga industries. Saiko was hand picked by Kikuchi to adapt his novels to manga.

About the Manga

9781569708279 vamp d manga 2 vamp d manga 3

I had really high expectations for these volumes when I initially ordered them. As a huge fan of the novel I was looking forward to the manga adaptation, sadly it fails to live up to expectations, in a big way.

Art wise, I had hopes given the covers, which are amazing, as are the colour inserts of each volumes.

Sadly that’s where the good art ends, and it becomes a black and white mess that at times becomes a literal black blob.

The problem starts for me in volume one. Kikuchi has always introduced D as being unearthly beautiful. However in the manga, he’s not even good looking, rather he looks creepy. Sure the covers are pretty cool, and do show D in an interesting light, however the actual manga art just looks pants.

If it was just the character designs I wouldn’t mind so much, since some of the designs are awesome. For example Doris, although she isn’t quite what I imagined her to be from the novel, she is a stunningly well drawn character. Though admittedly at times the design fails and she looks pure ugly.

However, Larmica is pure awesome in a character, her design is stunning, though the colour aspect on the first page is creepy. For some reason however Saiko has this thing for drawing almost everyone as ugly. It makes no sense to me, I could sort of understand if it was just the ‘baddies’ but even the good guys or background characters are ugly.

However the biggest issue I have with the art is it’s crammed into the panels. There’s an over use of action lines, and worse still is D’s hair, which I’m convinced is alive now. There are times his hair takes over the entire panel and it’s impossible to really follow what’s going on behind it.

Unfortunately this bad art carries on into volume two, which sadly I had to force myself to read. One of my favourite characters in the second novel was Lina, however in the manga here she’s pure ugly. Normally character design wouldn’t be a huge thing for me, but this time I really couldn’t get past how bad she was. She didn’t have bags under her eyes, she had an entire set of suitcases!!

Most of the other characters are equally weirdly drawn, and as for D, for get being a ‘beautiful’ guy, with those trucks under his eyes he looks like Joker from the original batman movie more than anything else.

Volume three had a mildly better style of art, though that’s just it was less cramped and crowded than the previous volumes. Again all of the characters looked haggard and like they’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Okay, yeah I know this is a post-apocalyptic world, so having supper models wandering around would be impossible. However even with just more normal character designs, this series would have been greatly improved.

Sadly the story in all three volumes is seriously lacking. Considering we have an adaptation of a novel that follows the novels pretty well, I was expecting a stronger more powerful story. Sadly the stories are flat, none of the characters, including D, have any presence.

In the novels D’s standoffish and aloof personality made for an excellent character. In the manga however he’s just flat, resembling a walking corpse more than anything.

This gets worse over the volumes culminating in the worst of all in volume three. The third novel was one of my favourites out of the novels I’ve read so far. Yet the manga adaptation was the worst, it didn’t evoke any sort of feeling from me, except apathy.

For once the quality of the actual books is a failure as well, which I found surprising considering it’s from Digital Manga, who usually release excellent books.

The first volume slip cover is amazing, I’ll admit that. The title is embossed giving it a glossy, almost shining feel to it. However the red coloured ridge of the pages is a bit yucky. The paper used is also low quality when compared with several other titles I have from them.

Volume two also has the same embossed slip cover, with some awesome cover art, and yet again the coloured rim of the page; though this time it’s blue. And again a yucky looking paper.

However the worst is by far the binding, which is tight. As a result the pages crackle like dried paper, are hard to turn and feel like they’re going to rip. Also due to the binding opening it is difficult, and leads to spine damage almost immediately. After reading volumes one and two I noticed that my spines were already creased.

Volumes three’s quality really took me back, because it’s even worse. First Digital Manga dropped the slip cover and the embossing. As a result the cover looks flat an dull. It lacks the vibrant and lively feel that the first two volumes have.

The colour edge is gone, which I personally like. However I do feel if you start a series a particular way, you finish the series that way. So this series should have continued with separate slip cover, embossing and coloured pages.

The binding however is greatly improved, it’s still a tight bind, but it’s not overly so. In fact I found it easy to turn the pages, no weird noises or creases; and best of all no immediate damage to the spine.

The paper at first glance looks to be better quality, but that’s due to the lack of colouring. In truth it’s the same paper, and I could honestly accept that paper if everything else was improved.

What really annoyed me however is that this volume (volume three) had a dip in quality, and a rise in price. I for one am not happy about that. Volumes one and two are $12.95 each, volume three is $13.95.

Needless to say I’m not adding this to my Essential Read list, rather I’m Junk Piling it. The series is over priced, badly drawn, and badly adapted. Don’t waste your money on it, save it for the novels which are a lot better.

Where to Buy

I always add links to the books even if I hate them, no reason not to and it would be a bit petty IMO.

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