Vampire Game (manga)
Feb. 14th, 2005 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksWe just got volume 10 of this in English translation, so it's been on my mind recently; it was also on my list of titles I liked last year but hadn't talked about.
The Great and Dreadful Vampire Duzell has returned from the dead and decides to take revenge on the man who killed him, the legendary founder of the royal house of the present nation. After all, Duzell reasons, his enemy has to be reincarnated somewhere-- Duzell was, right? Meanwhile, the Princess Ishtar, heir to said royal house, is getting into a rut. She is bored with statecraft, bored with magic lessons, bored with everyone's carefully political plans for her marriage, and madly in love with the Captain of the Guard. Consequently, when Duzell turns up to check her for signs of being a reincarnation, she decides to help him out, the fact that he is the archenemy of her dynasty notwithstanding. One thing leads to another, and soon Duzell is comfortably ensconced in the form of the Great and Dread Princess's Kitten Duzie while they tramp all over the country testing Ishtar's relatives for legendary founderhood.
This summary, while accurate, probably covers less than a tenth of the plot of Vampire Game. There are also princes in disguise, poisons, love philtres, vampires, allegations of illegitimacy, dynastic politics, incestuous longings, bisexual intrigue, gladiatorial tournaments, genderswaps, torture of magical creatures, courtesans, sight gags, and the kitchen sink; fortunately the mangaka takes not one iota of this seriously at any time and piles convolution on convolution with a kind of manic glee. At the beginning, I tried to keep track of the various unrequited loves of the extremely large cast of characters. I gave up when it became obvious that the graphical representation of these relationships would require a computer animation, and now simply assume that everyone is in love with Ishtar or her guard captain Darres or both at once.
I'd find the manga very entertaining if the totally absurd plot were all that was going for it, but it's also fairly accomplished at intentional comedy, with some good snarky oneliners and the Best Valentine's Day Scene Ever ("Despite the oppression inherent in gender-specific gift-giving rituals and the underlying emotional exploitation by the confectionary establishment... here is your chocolate.") The characters are also interestingly mad: Ishtar gets over her initial Mary Sue-ness quite handily and develops a mind of her own; Duzell has a neat case of genderfuck going on; Ishtar's family are the sort of people who find it logical to send her a bottle labelled 'Love Potion' as a thank-you for not pressing charges in a poisoning attempt; Darres sticks out like a sore thumb as the only sane person in the entire kingdom. I find the art only so-so, neither pretty nor terribly distinctive, but it is easy to follow, which helps given the rampant confusion of the other aspects.
If you don't like soap operas, shoujo, or bizarre romantic comedies, Vampire Game is a manga to avoid like the plague, but if those are your cup of tea, it's certainly funnier and stranger than a lot of the other shoujo series coming out in droves right now. I think there are fourteen volumes total. The American publisher is Tokyopop.
The Great and Dreadful Vampire Duzell has returned from the dead and decides to take revenge on the man who killed him, the legendary founder of the royal house of the present nation. After all, Duzell reasons, his enemy has to be reincarnated somewhere-- Duzell was, right? Meanwhile, the Princess Ishtar, heir to said royal house, is getting into a rut. She is bored with statecraft, bored with magic lessons, bored with everyone's carefully political plans for her marriage, and madly in love with the Captain of the Guard. Consequently, when Duzell turns up to check her for signs of being a reincarnation, she decides to help him out, the fact that he is the archenemy of her dynasty notwithstanding. One thing leads to another, and soon Duzell is comfortably ensconced in the form of the Great and Dread Princess's Kitten Duzie while they tramp all over the country testing Ishtar's relatives for legendary founderhood.
This summary, while accurate, probably covers less than a tenth of the plot of Vampire Game. There are also princes in disguise, poisons, love philtres, vampires, allegations of illegitimacy, dynastic politics, incestuous longings, bisexual intrigue, gladiatorial tournaments, genderswaps, torture of magical creatures, courtesans, sight gags, and the kitchen sink; fortunately the mangaka takes not one iota of this seriously at any time and piles convolution on convolution with a kind of manic glee. At the beginning, I tried to keep track of the various unrequited loves of the extremely large cast of characters. I gave up when it became obvious that the graphical representation of these relationships would require a computer animation, and now simply assume that everyone is in love with Ishtar or her guard captain Darres or both at once.
I'd find the manga very entertaining if the totally absurd plot were all that was going for it, but it's also fairly accomplished at intentional comedy, with some good snarky oneliners and the Best Valentine's Day Scene Ever ("Despite the oppression inherent in gender-specific gift-giving rituals and the underlying emotional exploitation by the confectionary establishment... here is your chocolate.") The characters are also interestingly mad: Ishtar gets over her initial Mary Sue-ness quite handily and develops a mind of her own; Duzell has a neat case of genderfuck going on; Ishtar's family are the sort of people who find it logical to send her a bottle labelled 'Love Potion' as a thank-you for not pressing charges in a poisoning attempt; Darres sticks out like a sore thumb as the only sane person in the entire kingdom. I find the art only so-so, neither pretty nor terribly distinctive, but it is easy to follow, which helps given the rampant confusion of the other aspects.
If you don't like soap operas, shoujo, or bizarre romantic comedies, Vampire Game is a manga to avoid like the plague, but if those are your cup of tea, it's certainly funnier and stranger than a lot of the other shoujo series coming out in droves right now. I think there are fourteen volumes total. The American publisher is Tokyopop.
