Record of a Fallen Vampire 4

Story: Kyo Shirodaira / Art: Yuri Kimura – Viz – 2009 – 9 volumes

I know I said I wouldn’t read this series again until I picked up the early volumes, and it deserves no less.  But I haven’t seen them on sale the past several months, and I just got the newest volume, so I’m going to keep reading for now, though I’ll go slow in hopes I can pick up the first two volumes somewhere and give myself a refresher before I get too far.

I like this series a lot, and it is way, way better than it has any right to be.  I mean, it is, at its heart, a story about the King of Vampires being launched into space to save Earth from an alien invasion, and that is insane and horrible.  Except in the context of the story, it’s weird and awesome, and I can’t quite explain why that is.  Perhaps because the actual story is more about the pasts of the characters and how it affects what they’re doing now.  Everything going on in the present hinges on a single set of events in the past that several of the characters experienced.  However, I think their interpretations of them, and what they took away from said events, differ wildly, as do interpretations of characters who are much younger and have taken sides without knowing the full details of past events.

We are seeing the story through the eyes of these younger characters, and it seems like a good portion of the series will be these flashbacks, presumably one each from Strauss, the Dhampir General Bridget, and the soon-to-be-revived Vampire Queen.  Each one should be a different spin on the truth.  It’s an awesome, awesome technique, and it makes me wonder why it’s not used more frequently.  At the end of the day, I think the alien invasion/saving Earth will be secondary to the wish that all these characters seem to have for killing each other.  That should prove to be interesting in the end, too.

The most interesting character is Strauss himself, who looks and initially seems to be a horrible anime stereotype of the young-looking, depressed Vampire King.  And yet, he goes from a mopey protagonist searching for his lost love to a horrible monster out for revenge to… well, then you don’t really know, because he always seems to keep his real motives hidden and never lets on what he thinks about anything.  It is a stereotype, and aggrivating in a way, to have an all-powerful character that says nothing, but he fits in with the mood of the series quite well.

I absolutely love it.  No plot description will ever do it justice, since it will always sound like an outlandish alien-infested take on a typical angsty vampire story, but it’s the storytelling that make this series stand out.  And I say that after reading two volumes in the middle of the series.  I can’t wait to get my hands on a few more and see where it goes.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.