Record of a Fallen Vampire 1

Story: Kyo Shirodaira / Art: Yuri Kimura – Viz – 2008 – 9 volumes

I got some more volumes of this, so let’s see if I can’t work my way to the newest English volume.

Reading this volume after starting further in, my feelings were kind of split here.  On one hand, I do wish I had started here, because the first volume paints a picture of the lonely Vampire King working against all odds to find his Queen and be together with her again.  It’s very romantic, and this volume sort of humanizes Strauss in a way that the others haven’t, since it’s here that he meets and takes in his Dhampire apprentice, and we also see how he restrains himself when fighting for the safety of humans, and how fondly he speaks of the old Vampire Kingdom, stuff like that.  It’s interesting to see the genesis of the conflict between Strauss and Renka, which hinges on the death of the former Black Swan.  Killing the Black Swan, just as he’s killed all the previous Black Swans, is the only truly vicious thing that Strauss does, but on the other hand, the Black Swan is also probably the biggest threat to him and the only person that would be likely to pursue Strauss to the point of death, since that is her destiny, so the death makes sense.

But really, it amused me that Strauss was depicted as the mooning lover in this volume, since that’s not at all how he’s portrayed later.  I’m not entirely convinced of the opposite now, after reading this, but seeing him in full-blown tragic mode was great.

All that is good stuff, and really helps me figure out some additional pieces of the story.  But on the other hand, there’s not a whole lot in the first volume to distinguish it from a regular vampire-ish action series, aside from the fact the story is well-told.  We’ve got the brooding Strauss looking for his queen, an elaborate human curse out to stop him, and Dhampires that are trying to prevent his waking of his queen too, since the two of them combined possess the most powerful magic known to exist.  Nothing there really stands out, and for me, the appeal lies in the way the story twists later, so I’m sort of glad I didn’t start with this volume.  On the other hand, I’m a sucker for well-told vampire stories, so it’s likely I would have been even more delighted with the later volumes since I probably would have taken this at face value and loved it.

But let me see where things go in volume 2.  I know volume 3 is where it begins to get nutty, and I’ll probably re-read 3 and 4 before moving on to 5 and 6.