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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane All-around average teenager Tsukune can't get accepted to any high school save one...but on his first day he finds the rest of the student body doesn't appear average in the least. Best of all, the cutest girl on campus can't wait to fling her arms around his neck! Wait a sec'--are those her teeth around his neck too...? Tsukune's going to have one heck of a hickey when he gets home from Monster High! But does he have a chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks of raising his grades at a school where the turf war isn't between the jocks and the nerds but the vampires and thewerewolves? This is my first volume of Rosario + Vampire, so the first thing I did--after reading it--was take a quick look at the two earlier reviews of the series here on MangaLife.com (for vol. 1 and 3). First lesson: we only review odd volume numbers. Second lesson: opinions vary quite a bit. My first thought is that this isn't the most original premise ever: the protagonist, Tsukune, is a normal human boy who winds up attending a school for monsters, where he tries not to blow his cover. Tsukune is involved (to an extent I can't quite figure out from this one volume) with a vampire girl named Moka, whose powers are kept in check by a rosary, and who has shared her blood and power with Tsukune; the effects of this sharing are temporary, but may be having more of an effect on him than either of them had realized. Meanwhile, a classmate who's been absent returns for the new term, and is much more interested in Tsukune than he's comfortable with. None of the plot twists are terribly surprising, but some of them are interesting despite that. Tsukune and Moka's relationship doesn't get a whole lot of development in this volume, but it seems like there's a solid foundation there. There's quite a bit of fanservice, as you'd expect from the cover art, but the female characters are at least flashing their panties while being magically powerful, rather than being caught by stray gusts of wind. Tsukune himself is a sympathetic character, an ordinary guy caught up in a bizarre situation but doing his best to make a go of it. As is often the case with this kind of story, he's somewhat hapless but also has things he's particularly good at; he's unassuming and kind, but able to step up and be brave when the situation calls for it. In short, he's exactly the sort of fictional guy that makes every fictional girl within a hundred pages want to either jump him or be his best friend. We've seen this plenty of times before (I'd make a list of titles I've read with similar male leads, but I really doubt I'm the only one who can come up with five or fifteen off the top of my head), but the reason so many creators go with this formula is because it works. I can't say Rosario + Vampire is jumping up and grabbing me, but since I don't usually go out of my way for stories about lone guys surrounded by a growing circle of female characters, I don't think it's a flaw in the series. I'm just not really its target audience. Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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