About the Mangaka
Kikuchi Hideyuki is famous for his horror novels, specifically Vampire Hunter D, and has been compared to both Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft.
Kikuchi wrote his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku, in 1982 and has written numerous horror novels in the past 20 years, including the 19 novels about Vampire Hunter D.
Couldn’t find much on Shin Yong-Gwan, beyond him also doing the art for Eternity, which was published by Tokyopop.
About the Manga
What can I say, this volume really blew me away I loved it loads, which after the VampD manga I wasn’t expecting.
I don’t really like the cover, something about the colour just really puts me off. That said once you get past the cover the art really does get better.
The second page, where we get a close up of the leads face is pretty damn creepy. On the second read through I felt that close up really showed off Akamushi’s personality and aura really well.
Sadly the very next page, where we get a full side view of him doesn’t do it justice, the face just looks a little weird, as though it was drawn with a ruler.
Once we get into the meat of the volume the art gets a lot better, and I was really impressed with the scenes Shin draws. The settings and characters designs are all spot on and really draw out an eerie setting.
After a few pages we get another look at just Akamushi’s eyes, and I have to admit that I agreed with woman, he’s got scary eyes >.<
Shin manages to covey a sense of majesty, and creepiness in his art. Especially when Akamushi is on his Noh stage. One panel in particular I thought was amazing, where Akamushi jumps and we get a him jumping in front of a huge moon. I thought that panel alone made reading this volume worth while.
The various characters we get in this volume are really well thought out and designed, even the support and cannon fodder characters have depth to them usually missing from a lot of manga.
We get several more stunning scenes where nothing really happens, but they just look so breath taking.
I liked Megumi (the obligatory damsel in distress), she’s a fun character a well developed personality that really does get to shine well in this volume, despite there not being a lot for her to do.
And we all love our favourite whip toting S&M Queen, who really lived up to the part. Though I have to admit I was disappointed we wont be seeing more of her in the future volumes. She was a fun character with a great design and even better, if warped, personality.
I loved the scene towards the end of the volume where we get to see the real Akamushi, and his facial expressions are really amazing, yet really sad.
Hideyuki’s story is done really well, though I have to admit that despite everything that happens in this volume nothing is really revealed, and by the end of the volume we’re left with nothing but questions.
I liked the way the story progressed through the volume, it was exciting, thrilling and enjoyable. Yet at the same time nothing major is given away, classic Hideyuki from his VampD.
It’s very hard to judge the story based on this volume because so much is hidden, but it has a lot of potential, and at the very least is better than the VampD adaptation.
DMP did a good job with the translation, it flows smoothly with no obvious hic-ups, and nothing that feels like a rewrite. The fonts for the most part were well chosen, though I’d have preferred something better for the SFX’s, some of them were hard to follow. Overall though it was an excellent release, and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading and I cant wait for volume two.
I’m half minded to add it to my Essential Read list, but I’m holding myself back since I’ve read to many series that start of awesome but flounder. If volume two is this good I’ll add it to my list. In the mean time though I do highly recommend you buy this volume.
Where to Buy
Note: Once again the UK is struggling to get supplies of this volume. Your best bet is WHSmith or Waterstones who can import directly from the US. Amazon UK have never had any supplies of the volume, and are still trying to get some.
