Bloody Kiss and the Vampire Trend!
Review by: Jd Banks
Created by: Kazuko Furumiya
Published by: Tokyopop
The first installment of Bloody Kiss is one manga fit for the Twihards and the Vampire Knight cosplayers who aren't tired of bloodsuckers and half-baked romances. It begs the question; do manga creators just decide that no matter how overdone a vampire story is, they should add to the fire simply to make sales?
It's no secret that the vampire mythos can sell. Among the uprising of TV shows and movies boasting vampire stories, anime and manga have followed the trend with the same aggression. Unfortunately, the focus on selling drowns out the opportunity for releases to acquire any sort of legacy.
There's a red light somewhere along the line, and creators often ignore it. For instance, after Blood: The Last Vampire took the anime world by storm in 2000, fans received a subsequent anime series, Blood+ in 2005. However, biting a big fat hole into the entire franchisewas the live-action movie in 2009. If creators had stopped at the series, the Blood line [Ouch – Ed.] would be pure enough to be considered memorable anime.
In trying to squeeze out dollar bills from a perfectly fine show, creators don't seem to know when to let it rest. It shows in several shabby releases, including the transparent Tokyopop title, Bloody Kiss. The plot is bland: a high school girl inherits her grandmother's dilapidated mansion, instantly becoming a landlord to two male vampires. On a daily basis, Kiyo has to maintain her school life while trying to keep her vampire roommates off her neck. It's a step-up from Vampire Knight--at least Kiyo wants to be a lawyer someday--but Bloody Kiss falls flat when it comes down to conveying depth. Every serious moment has to have a joke sidelining it. Even then, the remarks aren't really that funny, just sad.
On top of the failed comedy, the characters aren't that lovable, and in a vampire story, you can't expect them to be. Vampire stories aren't about connecting with people-- it's all about the angst and undead creatures. What can be so lovable about those Debbie Downers? Bloody Kiss makes the attempt to inject these bloodsuckers with humor, but it doesn't work in copious amounts of annoyance. It seems that this lifeless manga was rushed out just to make a few more bucks off of a popular trend. But was it really worth it? Was it even good timing?
Though it appears that the vampire trend is as alive as the main characters are dead, a closer look at the trend gives a merciful hint of daylight. It's been 2 years since an army of vampire volumes were released or serialized simultaneously. Between 2005 and 2008, at least eight vampire comics circulated at the same time: Blood+, Hellsing, Rosario + Vampire, and Trinity Blood were released or already circulating in 2005. Dance in the Vampire Bund started its serialization in Comic Flapper in 2006 while Vassalord was released that same year. But after 2008, some series ended and fewer began.
Since then, a big drop from the eight vampire stories from years prior has left us with a mere three. In 2010, Bloody Kiss, along with equally unfinished and un-funny vampire manga, seems to have little chance of surviving its predecessors, soon to fall victim to the overall downturn.
The deflation of the vampire trend in manga may relate to the quality of content from titles. Today's vampire manga rely heavily on gimmickry, and not enough on the interesting aspects of the vampire-human interaction. Compare to the vampire manga of the late 1990s. The core story lines featured vampires without overdoing the dramatic plot twists. The late, great CMX's Canon (1994) starred a sickly girl who uses her second chance as a vampire to exact revenge on a powerful vampire responsible for her classmates' deaths. Tokyopop's Lament of the Lamb (1997) depicted a high schooler who learns that he and his sister were born with the same vampire-like terminal illness inherited from their mother. Even Hellsing (1997) gave birth to an engineered vampire who works against other undead creatures in the interests of Great Britain. No vampires from another planet, no forced jokes, and, aside from Alucard's love of humiliating enemies, no games. The straightforward approach for these vampire stories did well in tastefully humanizing the undead.
Even though taking a hint from the past is a world apart from planning for the future, giving Bloody Kiss and similar manga some extra time for development would have helped their overall quality. Given that more time means pushing against the trend, sometimes the best thing to do is not to cash in on the current buzz.
Written on Monday, 16 August 2010 17:04 by Jd Banks
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