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.
About the Manga
I merged the post on volumes seven and eight into one, since they were both part of the same story, and were read together.
Firstly lets get the art out of the way, it sucks, completely, again. Once again we get a set of disgusting black blob art that does nothing for the volume. The cover for volume seven is frankly ugly, and eight is only a bit better.
The inner art sadly is wore, it resembles a lump of black ink mostly. Remember those stupid ink shapes that doctors ask you what they look like? that’s what a lot of the art looks like in these volumes hehe.
Thankfully though we don’t get these novels for the art, we buy them for the story. And frankly Hideyuki has done a pretty awesome job on this story.
This was his first multi-volume Vampire Hunter D story, and according to the notes he left it was something he had wanted to do for a while. Given that single volumes only gave him a limited scope to play with, limited characters, development and story, due to the page count limit.
In some ways he succeeds, but in others he doesn’t. While it’s certainly true that this story has a lot more in the way of characters, I also found it a bit lacking on the explanation side of things.
Hideyuki carries on with his trend, in that the past few volumes of novels have had weak starts. This is the same, it has a rough start but it does improve rapidly.
I like the characters that are introduced at the beginning. Wu-Lin Is a good character, with a good strong personality. Unfortunately the bad guy, Gilligan, has nothing going for him. His personality is a bit flat, and he doesn’t really come across as a strong (as in impression wise) character.
As the chapters go by more and more characters are literally just dropped on us,with very little explanation. This isn’t so bad, since we do have a lot of time to explore them, but I felt that it was to much to fast.
What I really loved about this was the main character. Typically we get another girl, but this time she’s normal. As in she’s just your average every day girl trying to get by. She’s not some weird experiment of the nobility, or a mutant or anything like that. This make for a nice change, given the last time we had a girl like this was Doris way back in volume one.
Unfortunately I found that these two volumes suffered from tolkienitis, as in they’re very wordy at times, and to descriptive. For me this is a big issue, since I have both a fertile and highly overactive imagination 
Tolkienitis is where the author spends to much time describing everything, from grass colour to insects buzzing around. Hideyuki sadly has this issue and it’s all the more evident in this story. As a result I found the story restrictive, it locks the reader into the authors version of what’s happening, rather letting the reader find their own way through.
The other aspect that I found lacking over the two volumes was the bad guys. Hideyuki said he wanted to do a multi-volume story so as to have more characters. And this is the case in this story. However the way he uses the characters can only really be described as haphazardly.
The way their abilities and motivations are revealed is horrid. Usually fast, and for no other reason that it was getting to late into the story and they had to be revealed quickly.
This is a shame, since the characters themselves were pretty interesting, and would have made for some really great characters, with a bit more work. I was also disappointed with the way he only focused on a few of the bad guys, with the appearances of the others looking more like after thoughts rather than being genuine articles.
However, all of that aside I have to admit this was a great read, especially since we get to see D becoming more human at times. He has a bit more in the emotional side of things. We also get to see that the thing on his hand (ya know that weird face), while giving him a huge advantage, it isn’t all there is to him, and it’s great to see him fighting without relying on the hand.
The other main girl of the story, who comes up later on, Su-In, is another well developed character. I was especially glad to see she was also a normal girl, though with a dark secret in her past. It was a wild ride following her adventure with D as she tried to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
While it’s certainly an enjoyable read, but I have to admit that looking at the whole I was a bit disappointed. Especially with the way the story unravels. As it gets towards the end and certain events are finally revealed I found myself wondering just what the hell was going on, because the story didn’t really make much sense.
The core hook of the story is a good one, and if Hideyuki had spent a bit more time explaining things, since the weird aspects really did need explaining. The ending of the volume was a bit sad (emotionally sad), and I have to admit that once I read it through a few times it made for a good ending. However it only really worked well when I’d figured out a lot of what was missing.
Overall I have to admit, that while I enjoyed the story being spread out over two volumes, it does only heighten Hideyuki’s flaws more. But it was a good read, though I find it lacking in the power of the first novel.
As such, I’m not adding these two volumes to my Essential Read list. If you’re a completionist like me, it’s nice to have the full set, but I don’t feel it’s good enough to be on my list.
Where to Buy
Volume Seven
Volume Eight
March 17, 2010 @ 15:53.
Nice post, good conclusion . i was a big fan of these series and game on playstation ^^
Edward´s last blog ..Manowar Vikings 13th Warrior