*Nosebleed* (Chibi Vampire: v. 1 - Yuna Kagesaki)

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Chibi Vampire: v. 1 - Yuna Kagesaki
Date:	27/09/09 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An original spin on vampire stories with engaging characters and good readability value

Disadvantages: Slightly unnecessary ending

Vampires are probably some of the most popular pop culture monsters in the world ever. There is just something about them that appeals to the romantic and horror sensibilities of people decade after decade. From Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, to Stephanie Meyer and Derek Gunn; from tens of movies since Nosferatu in the early 1920s, to games, comics and who knows what else. What is also interesting is that vampires seem to know no boundaries when it comes to their appearance in different cultures since their etymological birthplace in the Romanian wilderlands. By no means missing out from this great popularity ship is Japan, where anime and manga artists are all too happy to also exploit both the horrific and the romantic aspects that are associated with traditional vampire tales. Blood: The Last Vampire, Hellsing, Trinity Blood, Vampire Hunter D, Vampire Knight - to just name a few - there certainly is no lack of vampires in Japanese pop culture just as there is no lack of it in the entertainment cultures of many different other countries. But with all this history, there is one particular vampire series that decidedly steps away from - at least somewhat - from the usual aspects of the base vampire lore's emphasis on tragically romantic anti-heroes or monstrously evil creatures that only spread death. This series is Yuna Kagesaki's manga called "Karin" (or "Chibi Vampire" as it has been renamed for U.S. release to avoid confusion with another manga the publisher was also releasing).

Now what is different about "Karin" is that it doesn't focus on vampires out to suck the lifeblood out of humans like wild animals bent on only feeding, nor does it feature a brooding Dracula-like romantic hero sitting alone in a castle in some abandoned section of solitary wilderness. No, instead Karin builds a very different kind of environment on the vampire mythos by making vampires more like their own race to humans (i.e. not turning other humans into vampires), with the difference that they have to live off sucking a moderate amount of blood from humans when they need it, but otherwise trying to lead a normal, peaceful existence in the modern world. It is their conditioning of being forced to live in a certain way without making headwaves to disrupt their lives since the larger populus of the vampire race was exterminated back on the European continent in destructive vampire hunts two centuries prior, and necessitating them to migrate somewhere where vampires had never been heard of; keeping a low profile with their dwindling numbers in order to survive and prevent any reprisal of such a mass holocaust. It also presents the vampires to be at least semi-benevolent creatures who don't hurt people as such if they don't have to. Instead, every time they suck blood from people, they are careful not to drink too much, and once the process is done, they simply wipe the person's short term memory of the event clean. Likewise, each vampire is characterised by a specific desire for a certain type of blood, such as the blood of liars, of selfish people, or of lonely people, thus actively searching for people with these preferences instead of just biting humans indiscriminately. And to make matters even more interesting, in the process every bitten person will experience this negative aspect of themselves to revert itself (liars become honest, selfish people unselfish, lonely people not lonely etc.) for a period of time the bitemarks remain on their necks.

Standing in a unique position amongst the vampire families in Japan is the Marker family, that has adopted the Japanese transliteration of Maaka as their new name. They for one have been exceedingly fertile in breeding new vampire children whereas many of the other families are struggling with a zero birthrate that threatens the extinction of the vampire kind (after all vampires live a long time, but are not immortal). But the family also has a secret they don't let out to the other families. Their middle child, the titular high school student Karin, has an unusual condition. Instead of being forced to feed blood from humans like normal vampires, Karin instead produces blood monthly, and is forced to inject her blood into other people. If she doesn't, keeping all the blood inside of her can have the averse effect of giving Karin a massively gushing nosebleed in order to get rid of all the excess blood. Standing also apart from other vampires, she can go outside in the sun even after she has awakened as an adult vampire, and can hold regular human relationships and a job for her ability to live in the world of light (she even sleeps in a bed). Karin herself is an exceedingly caring, hard-working, and sweet young girl, though she's easily embarrassed and tends to be extremely clumsy and somewhat dense, too. In many ways, Karin has learned to live the way she does out of consequence, even if she rarely tends to see the rest of her family due to their nocturnal hours of being awake. However, Karin's life is suddenly thrown completely upside down by the arrival of a transfer student named Kenta Usui. When Karin's blood starts mysteriously reproducing when near the new boy, it drives Karin to the pits of despair as all she wants is to live a normal and peaceful life. Matters, however, are not helped as both of them end up getting associated with one another closer and closer, not only in school, but also as Kenta ends up getting a waiter's job at the same restaurant Karin is working at.

It is not until a lot of misunderstandings between the two - from Kenta thinking Karin's a prostitute, to Karin ending up spilling her extra blood right in front of Kenta - that an inadvertent biting of Kenta's rather naïve mother Fumio of all people (whom incidentally emits so many pheromones that makes men crazy, and makes it difficult for her to keep a job she doesn't get harassed at) that Karin discovers her taste in blood is "unhappiness". This makes her resolve to find out what it is that is making Kenta Usui unhappy, and finding out how to make him happy so that her blood will stop increasing in his presence. Now "Karin" is a very different vampire story from the norm, as you probably can tell from the above, and a lot of its charm comes from its very unique handling of the vampire lore. There is enough traditional vampire aspects to not alienate itself so completely from accepted vampire stories like Twilight does, but it doesn't treat vampires as really monsters, but as a race of their own that just happen to be different from humans with their own requirements. It builds up from the old mythologies that vampires are to be feared, and in some aspects certain vampires display deep hatred and distrust toward humans, but generally there is a clear desire for the vampires to coexist with humans, though older families tend to view humans as a sub-species and are somewhat distrustful of them even if they need them to live. To that end vampires never kill anybody, but only render them unconscious long enough to wipe their memories clean of the whole incident, and often even get people to be better off after being bitten. Karin is the perfect representation of the benevolent, modern vampire as she just wants to have friends, do well at school, and look after people irrespective of who (or what) they are just like any normal person would, while hiding her hereditary roots from everybody.

Offering their own support to Karin's clumsy way of getting through her life is the rest of the Maaka family. Consisting of a deeply caring and loving father (Henry) who wouldn't hurt a fly if there was no need for it (though he's also very, very protective of his children); a somewhat flamboyant, sexually prominent, and easily irritable mother (Carrera); a teasing, womanising, and somewhat darkly romantic playboy brother (Ren); and a little sister (Anju), who for the majority of the manga has still to reach maturity, meaning she can go outside in the daytime given it isn't too sunny, and helps out Karin a lot as Karin herself is unable to manipulate bats to erase memories, or really doing anything supernatural at all apart from getting herself into trouble. It is a very interesting family unit that works despite Karin's affliction of being more like an ordinary human than a vampire in both strict and warm ways. Particularly Karin's relationship with her younger sister Anju (who regularly carries a doll inhabited by the spirit of a serial killer with her) is one of the most heartwarming aspects in the whole manga as Anju deeply loves her older sister and would do anything in her power to protect her, even to the point of putting herself in jeopardy. And all the while Karin just wishes she had just been born a "normal vampire" instead of being a freak of nature like she is. On the other side, though, Karin's continued exposure to Kenta is making her desire more from her life than she has and starts to develop feelings just as Kenta himself starts to dig deeper into Karin's life. Thus very early on, Kenta ends up learning of Karin's vampiric background and, instead of freaking out over it, accepts this and becomes a protector of sorts to Karin in the daytime, something that even Karin's family comes, reluctantly at first, to accept as a useful compromise regarding their own difficulties in looking after Karin.

As this is largely a comedy manga, a considerable majority of it is played with humour - both slapstick and situational comedy in style. With Karin's clumsiness and the general denseness of both Karin and Kenta, coupled with the differences between the human world and that of the vampires, it creates some fun reading that is both light and enjoyable for the most part. This is somewhat offset with the occasional excursion into more dramatic territory, particularly as we enter the back story aspects and the reasons for Karin's unique condition that tend to get more prevalent as the story goes on, this coming to head from around book 9 onwards, and consequently lessens the preceding comedy aspects. Also what is a major part of the story is the building romance between Karin and Kenta. In fact, one could easily be mistaken into considering "Karin" as being a shojo manga (namely manga aimed at girls), rather than it actually being a shonen manga, the main demographic being boys. It is not usual for a lot of shonen manga to have this kind of emphasis on romantic plotting, but "Karin" is one of these rare manga to straddle both demographics pretty comfortably. And the romantic aspects are only pushed more and more to the fore by Karin's best friend Maki, who is continuously making devious suggestions to drive both her friend and Kenta together for her own matchmaking pleasure, though creating a darker undercurrent to all of this is the complications inherent in a vampire and human falling in love, which is gradually revealed as the manga races toward its concluding stages. The art style itself also tends to hark to usual shojo characteristics, particularly the design of Karin herself with her large eyes, cuteness, denseness, and obsessive behaviour in her love toward Kenta, while a lot of the framing is more clear cut of a shonen manga, so there's only few moments where big, blossoming flowers explode in the background that is so characteristic of shojo art.

Ultimately, "Karin" is an infinitely enjoyable vampire tale that is a hundred times more engaging and likeable than some depressing emo vampire re-imagining a la Twilight could ever hope to be. The characters are almost uniformly likeable, apart from a few characters that can be seen as being less than pleasant, though there too everybody usually sports clear objectives toward understandable goals one can't immediately shut out as being completely wrong. Also the spin on the vampire mythology is certainly a refreshing one as they are never demonised, yet at the same time their roots are not abolished completely from the accepted history of vampiric stories. Admittedly the very ending may seem somewhat unnecessarily melancholy in a certain way after everything's said and done, but largely "Karin" succeeds in being a manga that is a very satisfying read from start to finish. Through its gradual building of romance, its fleshing out of the vampire world, and the deployment of a healthy dose of humour make "Karin" a highly recommendable read to anybody wanting a bit more of a different spin on normal vampire tales. The whole of the series is compiled within 14 volumes (released between 2003 and 2008), while there are a further nine light novels - written by Tohru Kai - released to fit in between the manga volumes, and which are regularly more perverted than the manga is, such as having Karin nearly be raped or killed at various points in them. However, it is not necessary for you to read the these novels as the manga story is really not effected by their events at all. So, for anybody wanting a bit of a change to the age-old vampire stories, "Karin" is a sure fire recommendation... particularly if you have a hankering for nosebleeds.

There is also a 24 episode anime of Karin made between 2005 and 2006 when the manga was still unfinished, and thus veers off from the manga story half-way through to a different conclusion. The general consensus is that the anime is inferior to the manga, but I haven't seen it myself to offer my own opinion.

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: Great and humorous vampire tale with a difference.