Killer Vamp - Reviews

Synopsis (as yet no available on the page) 

title: The queen of blood and ashes. Japan, it has been four months since Mt. Fuji erupted and covered surroundings with grey dust from the volcano. However there is some particular purpose to the calamity and side-effect unknown by the general public. The story follows young and eccentric high school boy Zen Sagami (17), who is approached one day by a very beautiful girl. While he encounters psychopathic murderer on the loose, he learns truth behind the eruption and decides to join the girl in a secret war over the next vampire overlord successor.

Review – based on 5 volumes - no spoilers

Basically it’s a horror themed action manga, with bunch of weirdos. The art style is not that bad, but the story gets kind repetitive in my opinion. It has simple pattern that doesn’t change that much, only the accidents (e.g. powers) change. Yes, the girl on the cover is pretty, but that can get you only so far. It’s like a darker version of Black Clover’s Black Bull team, where the captain is a pretty girl instead.
I’ve tried to make the synopsis as much spoiler free as possible. However following review contains some spoilers to that effect. Skip following section, if you don’t want to get spoiled.

Story and characters - spoilers ahead

The first thing I’m going to complain about is why the story is supposedly about vampires, if they bear a very little resemblance to vampires as they are portrayed. Heck they don’t even have to drink blood so what is the point. It could be bunch of demons or mutants. It wouldn’t make any difference. Opting for one of the most cliché horror monster race is just … just why?
The story is just meh. Despite its somewhat adult presentation the story is not that much different from any fighting young comics. It’s about fighting increasingly more tough enemies as the heroes get stronger expand their team and even forge some alliances with other groups.
There is strong emphasis on characters’ hurt and traumas that fuelled their transformation to begin with. So it’s a group, where everybody has its own issues and weird factor. Unlike in more mainstream action young comic’s series even the main character, who presents himself as ever nice guy is deeply wounded inside. As a reader I stand before dilemma whether like main protagonist, who has a rather poker face and constant doubts typical for his particular underdog archetype or one of his team mates, that have their own issues as well. The most fun character is Domino aka the Boss, even if the series up to the fifth volume didn’t show much of her origin story yet.
There is bit blurred line between, who is foe or friend. The allegiance of henchmen to the true vampires, which aim for the vampire king position, are strongly determined by the alignment of ideals or goals. That is one of the positive things about the series.

Art - no spoilers

The art is nice, good. Quality fluctuates between more detailed panels and slightly plain panels. However on average it holds pretty well. In better instances it has decent amount of detail.

Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about the difficulty) - no spoilers

This is one of the shounen manga series, which does not have furigana. To be precise as any normal book would it does use it only occasionally. Vocabulary doesn’t seem that wide, but it’s not for beginner either. The language difficulty is middle of the road.

Overall it’s decent manga for passing time. No regret reading it, but I’m not over the moon about it either. I’m going to read future releases as well, but I don’t care if that is going to be sooner or later.