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The Record Of A Fallen Vampire, Volume 1 (2008)

by Kyo Shirodaira(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1421517736 (ISBN13: 9781421517735)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

VIZ Media LLC

series

The Record of a Fallen Vampire

review 1: The legend says that the Vampire King, Akabura Strauss, was too strong to resist, and in retaliation, the humans kidnapped his Queen, Adelheid, holding her hostage for Akabura's surrender. Instead, Strauss fought to reach his queen, his kingdom being destroyed by the battle in the process. Adelheid, distraught, sought to destroy the world in retribution by her own dark magic, and the humans sealed her away by their own magic. The king searches for her to release her, and to regain his kingdom, though the humans have set up thousands and thousands of traps and fake seals, in hopes of killing the king before he finds his queen.Strauss goes by the alias 'Red Rose', and to reach each of the sealed areas, he must contend with Dhampires and humans who want to destroy him for ... morewanting to release the queen back into the world. He is an excellent fighter, however, his foes, namely, a woman going by the appellation of 'Black Swan', grow stronger and wiser with each battle. After Strauss kills the forty-ninth Black Swan, Yuki, Rin Jenka, Strauss's oft-time Dhampire opponent, vows eternal vengeance. Strauss also picks up the eighteen year-old, child-like Dhampire, Laetitia, known as the Mountain Cat, and she travels with him from that point on, watching his back and intent on helping him regain his queen.The art is good, though the battle scenes are a bit hard to figure out (too many fancy explosions or something, and a lot of cuts so it's hard to tell exactly what's going on). The story of vengeance and true love is an old one, but the opening chapters of this story are compelling enough, especially with the backstory Strauss offers Laetitia when she complains about how hard her life is and how she wishes she'd never been born. So far, the only differences seen between the vampires, Dhampires and humans is...absolutely none other than what side they're fighting on. The Vampires and Dhampires do not seem to be monstrous at all, despite the legend of the king and queen. The sound effects are translated and there are no Japanese jokes which need to be translated. The characters are more-or-less childlike in appearance, with slightly over-large heads and extra-large eyes, but it seems to suit the dreamlike quality of the story. I will be looking for more of this manga to read.
review 2: The Record of a Fallen Vampire is shonen manga about vampires. Obviously. Well, the vampire part anyway. Right so the story's about this vampire named Akabara who's the King of All Vampires. The story behind his "falleness" starts hundreds of years before with the sealing of his Queen, a being of extreme chaos and power, who was unable to be killed and was therefore sealed in a secret location by both humans and dhampirs. So Akabara basically runs around for ages trying to find the right seal and you know save his Queen. Who may or may not destroy the world when she gets out. Ah, true love.What was that? Seals? Yes, I forgot to mention that didn't I? Because they didn't want the King to find his Queen, the humans and dhampirs created like hundreds of fake seals so Akabara will never EVER find his Queen. Yeah, pretty tragic, eh? Also enables the writers to essentially keep the story going on for like EVER, but I digress. Right so along with these tragic mix of well tragedy is a bunch of dhampirs who's main motivations are basically stopping Akabara. And since they and Akabara can LIVE FOREVVVVEERRR, the dhampirs just keep getting more and more badass. In addition to these is the Black Swan, a spirit like entity that periodically takes over the bodies of chosen female humans for the sole purpose of destroying Akabara. Oh, and they have all the memories of the previous ones, and get stronger every time they die. Sucks for the Vampire King doesn't it?Right, so for the majority of this first volume in the series there's a little of that repetitive intro stuff where we're told the TRAGIC history of Akabara over and over again, and then about the Black Swan, blah, you get the picture. Anyway the story doesn't really move much in this first volume (as expected) until the end where an actual arc starts to appear. But, honestly, I didn't really care for the most part. The manga kind of relies on your pity for the TRAGEDY that Akabara is suffering through, and I felt it was kind of weak to rely on a kind of fairy tale to get me to care about the main character. But I did feel kinda bad for him so I guess it works.The fighting scenes, it's shonen so it's pretty much all fighting and angsty anger, were pretty well done, and have a lovely mix of magic and short swords and daggers. The art overall, in general, is nice enough, though a few characters (Akabara in particular) look a little off. In Akabara's case, I think it's his hair, it looks too flat for some reason. The characters are pretty basic, and don't offer much for personality in this first volume. If I was going to continue the series, I'd assume there'd be more hints to the whys and hows and whats that will give the manga more depth than it has right now. With enough potential for a long story, deep characters, this interesting premise promises a good beginning to the slightly overused vampire genre. 2.5-3/5 less

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