I really don’t know how to begin describing my review of this book. As a long time fan of Vampire Hunter D, I jumped at the chance to review something related to the franchise. But having not read or watched anything related to VHD for like six or seven years, picking this novel up was certainly an experience. It was like an acid trip. And honestly, I’m not really sure whether it was awesome or awful yet.
Now, for those of you who don’t know anything about Vampire Hunter D, a bit of history might help. This is volume 19 in the series of Japanese light novels, and only 14 of those have been published in English. The first light novel came out in 1983, and there have been a few popular animated adaptations of the novels. But these light novels are also designed to be able to attract new readers, so even if you’ve never read or watched anything related to the franchise before, you’d be just fine picking this novel up. All the characters and concepts are introduced pretty thoroughly in the beginning; there are a few concepts you’d need a cursory knowledge of, such as dhampirs being vampire-human hybrids with special abilities and D’s possessing a sentient left hand, but you could probably pick up on those things as you read along. So if you have no experience with the series, don’t let that intimidate you into not starting it now.
Vampire Hunter D: Mercenary Road (vol. 19) was originally written in Japanese, and that fact is totally obvious when reading the novel in English. It reads like a Japanese translation, which unfortunately means that it often sounds awkward in English. I still have to give props to the translator, though, because Japanese is really difficult to translate to English as its grammar and word order is very different, making it tough to keep the same content while constructing a coherent translation. Overall, the translation is passable, but I didn’t like how jumpy the novel was. I’m not sure if that’s the fault of the translator or of the author, but at times, it felt like I was reading Japanese postmodernism. Yeah, it was that disjointed at times.
Vampire Hunter D is an amalgam of a million different genres, so it definitely has something for everyone. The setting takes place in a post apocalyptic world in the far future. Nobles, or vampires, have advanced science and technology so far that humans perceive their abilities to be magic, yet they live in medieval style castles and ride horse-drawn carriages… for fashion’s sake, of course. In concepts like these, we can clearly see the mixing of genres; we get elements of science fiction in the technology, supernatural and horror with the vampires and ghosts, and a fascination with the Rococo like image the vampires insist on maintaining through their decadent lifestyle. The novel has a steampunk feel to it, as the bandits and small towns typical of the Western genre mix with the science fiction technology. For example, D has a cyborg horse that he prefers to ride instead of using cars or flying ships or any other mode of transportation, all of which exist in this universe. At times, this genre-mixing can get a little ridiculous, though. I actually cringed when ghost soldiers came out wearing jetpacks, and when one character pulled out a can of bug spray that deflected bullets, I had to have a laugh. And then I wondered why the other characters hadn’t been using that bug spray all along. It seems like a good option if you’re being shot at. The novel is also heavily action focused: most of the novel is devoted to describing the various fight scenes, which honestly start to blend together after a while. These pick up towards the end, though, as our heroes find more difficult enemies to face and battles become more than just pwning lowly ghost minions. There are also ham ships. Confused yet? If not, you will be.
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| D and his cyborg horse. He’s mastered the smize. Illustration by Yoshitaka Amano. |
And now we get to the characters. D is, as always, the stoic, disgustingly hot, ridiculously powerful, secretly caring, Edward Cullen-like dhampir hero we all know is treading the fine line between becoming a Mary Sue and just being the quintessential shounen hero. Seriously, I don’t think there’s ever been a female VHD character who didn’t instantly swoon to near fainting after seeing D for the first time. Oh, and he also turns ALL the boys gay with his beauteous looks and “voice like moonlight.” All of them. Even the dead people. And the people trying to kill him. The dude wins battles just by being super hot. I don’t even know where to begin ranking that on the masculinity scale.
This, of course, is nothing new; it’s your same old typical D. But at this point, I feel like we all get it. This is the 14th volume of this series translated into English, and we already know that D is totally supar hot and that if I ever had the misfortune of meeting him in real life, the moment my eyes beheld his countenance I would instantly become gay despite not having ever had any kind of desire for sickly pale vampire dudes in my life. We get it already. And even if this was the first volume of VHD you picked up, you’d get it too within like the first 25 pages. Seriously, if I had a dollar for every time D was described using terms like “gorgeous fatality”, I’d be a very, very rich person. The author’s made it pretty clear that they know how ridiculous they’re being at this point, too. I did really enjoy the dialogue between D and his left hand that seemed to be spoofing the series; for example, there are several times in the novel where D’s left hand won’t stop giving him grief for all the boners and lady-boners he can’t help but generate in the lesser folk (which is everyone). And maybe I’m just a sucker for guys with parasitic arm weapons (D.Gray-man, anyone?), but their relationship has always really worked for me.
Most of the other characters are pretty unlikeable and irredeemable, in my opinion. There’s one flamboyant punk named Strider who’s particularly awful. I mean, the dude joked about a girl being raped, and he’s actually pretty darn whiny. I think the author was going for the image of a fashionable yakuza-like character, like that time Gackt played a yakuza, with the clothes and the punky attitude Strider has. I don’t think the readers are supposed to like him, but other characters like Stanza and Zenon are much the same.
I’m pretty well acquainted with the .Hack’s and the Chibi Vampires of Japanese light novels, but I can promise you that this novel isn’t like the usual fare. Although this is a light novel, which most assume are children’s books because of their length, Vampire Hunter D is definitely not for kids. The content includes some very heavy stuff like non-consensual situations, rape jokes, gratuitous amounts of beheading, multiple descriptions of boobs, killing children, and other series issues. Also, compared to other light novels, this novel is much more sophisticated, in my opinion. Although the Japanese translation makes the flow of events a bit difficult to understand at times, overall the content and nonchalant style the novel takes makes for a more interesting read than the over emotional light novels of typical fare.
Overall, as a fan of the series, I enjoyed this novel. If you can get past some of the small problems like the difficult translation and jumpy continuity, it’s definitely worth a read for the $11.99 price tag. It’s an easy read for both long time fans of the series and friendly to readers who’ve never picked up a book in this series before. Don’t let the fact that it’s a light novel dissuade you from picking this book up, as it’s definitely NOT a children’s book. If you enjoy steampunk, science fiction and high fantasy, this is definitely a series that you should get into. And why not start with Vampire Hunter D: Mercenary Road?
Spoon is a staff writer for the Red Shirt Crew.
Spoon is a staff writer for the Red Shirt Crew.
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