Manga Mondays #128: Vampire Knight vol. 14 by Matsuri Hino

Manga Mondays Meme!

I've been doing Manga Mondays every week since I started my blog 2 years ago. It's always been a personal feature, but now I'm going to try turning it into a meme. There are quite a few people who do Manga Mondays. I don't claim by any means that I owned or created the idea of Manga Mondays - it's an obvious choice given the alliteration. I think a meme would be a good way for everyone to publicize their own Manga Mondays and get a little more publicity.

The linky will be below my review.

Vampire Knight vol. 14 by Matsuri Hino

Summary

Cross Academy is attended by two groups of students: the Day Class and the Night Class. At twilight, when the students of the Day Class return to their dorm, they cross paths with the Night Class on their way to school. Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the Guardians of the school, protecting the Day Class from the Academy's dark secret: the Night Class is full of vampires!

The Vampire Hunter Society has imprisoned Aido in order to interrogate him about Kaname’s connection to Sara Shirabuki. Meanwhile, Yuki wants a fresh start with Kaname, but circumstances arise that may force them apart.(courtesy of Goodreads)

Review

*Warning: Potential spoilers. My manga reviews tend to be more of a summary than a review. I find it hard to review manga in the same way I do regular books.

Some manga series are pretty simple. You can step away from it for months, finally pick up a volume, and feel like you never left. Vampire Knight is not one of those series. But I respect it for being one of the more complex and serious series that I've read.


I spent most of the volume thinking "What? I don't get it." It felt like I was reading an epic tragedy, but unfortunately I couldn't exactly figure out who was doing what or why they were doing it. Part of this was because I haven't read the series in months, but I think it was also because Vampire Knight is just plain confusing. The summary of prior volumes at the beginning of the volume doesn't adequately set the stage and there's so much going on, that the happenings in the current volume are extremely confusing.

From what I could figure out, Kaname seems to be going off the deep end. Killing for no understandable reason. Allowing Sara Shirabuki to also kill indiscriminately. As much as Kaname says he wants to protect Yuki, his actions endanger her. I loved Kaname so much in the first volumes. I really don't want him to be evil. I feel like his character is very complex and we'll understand the context of his actions later. But I don't know...

I miss the humor in this series. It's never been hugely funny, but earlier volumes had a few laughs at Yuki's antics and especially at Aido's comical manner. Now, even though Aido and Yuki are both prominent players in this volume, there's nothing to laugh about. I do hate seeing Aido suffer. He's such a nice guy. And I hope Yuki gets back to being the strong character that she used to be. I feel like that will come soon. She seems to be in an emotional transition in this volume.

Part of me wants to give up on Vampire Knight, because it gets weirder and weirder, but I just have to see where it goes. Onto the next volume...

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