Record of a Fallen Vampire 9

Kyo Shirodaira / Yuri Kimura – Viz – 2010 – 9 volumes

The thrilling conclusion!  This is an extra-long volume.  I figured the story would be twisting and turning right up to the end, but the only really big surprise comes in the form of an ultimatum Strauss offers the Black Swan.  Most everything else goes more or less according to plan.  Not to say that it isn’t awesome.  I mean, the climax of the series (in a matter of speaking) is a pair of vampires flying through space to swallow an alien spaceship with their powers in a battle that takes place on the moon.  Just because I knew it was coming didn’t make it any less awesome.

There’s lots of final conversations between characters, as expected from a last volume.  Everyone loves Strauss, which runs fairly contrary to the first volume, where everyone hated him.  It’s been a wild ride and a pretty satisfying 180, I have to say.  My favorite conversation was actually between Strauss and Laetitia, his little Dhampire assistant, the one person who didn’t hate him.  She was also the only one that didn’t get all weepy, and the only one that got an “I love you” out of him.  Aww.  We get a last word for pretty much everyone but Sabarhagen.  Well, we even get a last word from her, I suppose.  The talks do drag the story on a little, and I was really dying for the conclusion while everyone was still talking, but they did have to be there.

The final outcome was not expected, though not the earth-shattering twist that “unexpected” implies from this series.  I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll only say I had mixed feelings about it.  One of the things I like best about this series, though, is that whenever something unusual comes up in the storytelling, Shirodaira discusses it in his essay in the back of the book.  This was no exception, but he really offers no explanation other than the story, especially the ending, was heavily inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac.

That’s right.  A story about that ends with vampires fighting aliens on the moon was inspired by Cyrano de Bergerac.  What’s more, I can kind of see it after he brought it up.

Marry me, Kyo Shirodaira.

I was pretty satisfied with the conclusion, and I was more than satisfied with the series as a whole.  I still can’t get over how well the unusual story was told, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who wants a well-written, bizarre story full of twists.  It’s got to be one of the best for this, and I think it (or at the very least, its panache) will stay with me for quite some time.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.