Manga Review Monday: My First Shojo
A few weeks ago, I was in Wal-Mart and I happened to notice some manga on one of the display shelves. It was amidst several other vampire books for some strange reason (I think it was to promote some movie). The manga was Vampire Knight, a Shojo Beat title. I looked at it and thought "Hey, this will be a good chance to finally branch out of all the Shonen Jump titles I read." Granted, Shojo Beat IS just a sister publication, but let's not get overly technical, shall we? Read on to see if Vampire Knight converted me to liking girly manga.
The first thing you notice is the main character Yuki Cross on the cover wielding a nicely detailed pistol. So, it's fair to assume there might be a lot of gunplay in this book (something akin to....Hellsing maybe?). Not so. In fact, she doesn't even get the pistol until the book almost ends (she uses some sort of elongated pole up to that point....but doesn't actually hit anything with it). Also, the thing rarely even gets fired. They show it off a bit, so I assume the very presence of it scares off bad vampires. I'm not sure.
Now, take that last paragraph I typed and throw it out the window. I quickly found that I didn't miss the big splash panel action scenes I'm used too. The characters and plot are that good. I won't spoil anything, but the basic premise is about a high school that lets vampires in at night to take classes. They control their urges by using blood pills, but some of them get out of line. That's where the disciplinary committee, Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu, comes in. They make sure attacks between the night and day classes are kept to a minimum.
I always assumed shojo manga was strictly romance. There is a bit of unrequited love going on here, but the series focuses more on the emotions of the main characters, and their individual circumstances. In fact, I DON'T want any of the characters to hook up, because that would mean one or more would get left out in the cold. Another thing I really liked is that they got the big twist out of the way in the first volume. So many other works let secrets linger on and on to the point that you don't even care when you see the big reveal.
I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised with Vampire Knight, and shojo in general. There will most definitely be more shojo in my future. Got any good suggestions for me?
Il Palazzo
Posted to Review on 8 September 2008
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: Manga Review Monday, Shojo, Vampire Knight
You ONLY read shonen up till now?
Wow! You've really been missing out.
I'm not talking about all the sickeningly sweet romance stuff where the girl gets all these guys interested in her and then she gets to pick. I'm talking about stuff like X (ironically that some shojo have blood and guts a plenty, making most shonen look like sterilised drivel) or Utena (anime recommended over manga though).
Nah, seinen and shojo is where it's at.
Well, I don't JUST read shonen titles. I just look at my bookshelf, and over 95% of the books have that "SJ" on the top. I've been meaning to check out X anyway, and I have a friend that's been bugging me about Utena as well. :-p Thanks for the recommendations!