Vampire Hunter D (novels) Vol.#03

By: Chris Beveridge
Review Date: Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Release Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2005



Creative Talent
Writer/Artist:Story by Hideyuki Kikuchi, Artwork by Yoshitaka Amano
Translated by:Kevin Leahy
Adapted by:

What They Say
The vampire hunter known only as D has been hired by a wealthy, dying man to find his daughter, who was kidnapped by the powerful vampire Lord Meierlink. Though humans speak well of Meierlink, the price on his head is too high for D to ignore and he sets out to save the girl before she can be turned into an undead creature of the night.

In the nightmare world of 12090 A.D., finding Meierlink before he reaches the spaceport in the Clayborn States and gets off the planet will be hard enough, but D has more than just Meierlink to worry about. The dying man is taking no chances, and has also enlisted the Marcus family, a renegade clan of four brothers and a sister who don't care who they kill as long as they get paid.

The Review
The third novel in the series from creator Kikuchi, Demon Deathchase served as the basis for the most recent of theatrical interpretations, Bloodlust. Book to move adaptations have always been something that I've found, like many others, to be rather lacking in how it's approached but this is something of a rare case where the movie manages to be better. The film follows what's here fairly well with little really left out and not much added beyond elements that make the film move better. The story of D and his basic journey to rescue a young maiden who doesn't want to be rescued from the old vampire who wants to live with just her is simple at its core because it's just a chase movie.

With this and the movie being so similar, each form of the story has its advantages. The movie I think manages to be much creepier and spooky than the written word is here but the book is able to bring much more of the background and inner monologues to life that otherwise come across as hokey dialogue in the film. More of the motivations of the characters become apparent during the chase and the backgrounds of the various locales are far more expanded as are the Noble's in general which helps to make it all the more interesting, especially if you've seen the movie because it takes an area such as space travel which seemed positively out of place and puts it properly in context here along with the satellite system.

This was my first experience with an "anime novel" though several have come out in the past couple of years. While I was able to enjoy it on some level for bolstering my appreciation of the movie, it in a way confirmed some of my worst fears about such novels. They're highly reminiscent of some of the Young Adult novels in the 50's by Robert Heinlein, especially in comparison to his other works. There's a simplicity to the writing here, a lack of deep detail and expansiveness that as I read it kept feeling childish. I can easily imagine being all over this kind of material back in my early teens and beforehand but even then it feels weak compared to other books I read at the time like the Xanth books, something else that's in the Young Adult category. The world and its setting are all very intriguing places but the novel just feels like it's not going to be the place where anything really noteworthy is going to be done. It's light escapist fantasy when it could be so much more.