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To be really frank about it, I'm not that impressed with the manga "Vampire Knight" and its ordinary plotline. Yes, it's another one of those stories where an innocent girl falls in love with a vampire. It kept reminding me of the Twilight series, and as I continued reading the manga, I couldn't help but compare them in my mind. This manga was just too saccharine for my taste. Vampires are supposed to be dark and nasty creatures, but "Vampire Knight" puts them in an almost virtuous position.

Here's how the plot goes. In a high school called Cross Academy, the students are segregated into two groups: The Day group and the Night group. The ones who take classes during the day are your typical humans. The ones who take the night classes however are all vampires.

Two of the students from the Day class are School Guardians (think "Prefects" from the Harry Potter series) and they are tasked to keep the Day students from finding out about the secrets of the Night class. Unfortunately, one of these Guardians, Zero, has an immense anger towards the vampires.

On the other hand, the second Guardian, Yuki, feels safe among the bloodsuckers. She was once saved by a vampire when she was still a young girl. Little did she know that Kaname, one of the vampire students she is protecting is actually her childhood savior all along. Yes, this is the whole plot of the novel and it gets sappier every chapter.

The storyline is not always about romance though. They do try to inject some battles here and there, especially between Zero and the other vampires. There are some major twists in the plot which are also pretty cool in a way, but they're not enough to impress me. I am more likely to be impressed if they suddenly shifted the story into a more darker path but I guess that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Although manga creator Hino Matsuri's story is a bit sappy, I wouldn't discredit her art style in Vampire Knight. She really knows how to create amazing illustrations which actually helped me to appreciate the story and move on to the next chapter. If not for her beautiful depiction of the different characters, I would've given up reading this manga entirely.

Anyway, I think some young women who appreciated the Twilight series would also love this manga because of the bishonen art (literal English translation: "beautiful boys") and the romantic fluff. For the guys however, especially those who are looking for a dark story involving vampires, you have to find another manga title because this isn't exactly a shonen manga. It's marketed as shojo manga and it caters to an audience which is composed of young women. All in all, this manga just gets an average rating from me.

Learn more about this author, Julius Albert Custodio.
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