D is a pulp genre fiction mashup with a dark background with a lot of influences around Hammer Horror specifically two of mention are the 1958 Horror of Dracula film with Dracula played by SIR Christopher Lee and the 1957 Curse of Frankenstein Film which Kikuchi specifically notes to inspiring him into going into Horror
>“Most fans of outré cinema should be familiar with the film Horror of Dracula, produced in Britain by Hammer Films in 1958. Along with the previous year’s The Curse of Frankenstein, this classic helped fire a worldwide boom in horror films, and, in addition, served as the first inspiration for this humble horror novelist.”
Excerpt From
Vampire Hunter D Hideyuki Kikuchi
though the author Hideyuki Kikuchi who wrote and continues to write VHD for about 40 years now since the first volume was released in 1983 originally a lot of sci-fi aspects of the melted in genres like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and western were added on so the work itself could be titled as sci-fi rather than horror which at the time nobody was going to publish horror works
it was essentially a genre that many publishers did not want to approach
>“I didn’t intend to make D’s story a horror tale set in the future. Well, at its core, the story isn’t far from horror, but at that time, horror wasn’t the kind of product to pull in readers. The target audience of the Asahi Sonorama Library line was teenagers. But the young have the instinctive ability to evade the true fear that horror brings. At the same time, they’re interested in the future and the technology that will accompany it. The only field of literature to incorporate that is science fiction. In this manner, the Vampire Hunter D series became the half-breed child of horror and science fiction. Just as its protagonist is himself a half-breed.”
>Excerpt From >Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2
but it's curious since this led to one of the biggest pulls for D as a series that being the very inspired world that the Hunter inhabits
its a very mad mixture that somehow works with a lot of it being due to the crazy set craft of the world and the myriad of ideas like a magician hat the author can spin from such an insane premise of a dark future of Vampire Overlords
D is set in a timeline where during the 1990's in which total armageddon happened the rain of bombs over the earth set forth a fallout of radiation that killed nearall humans save for a portion of the populace but the horrors were yet to come as despite the population regrowing in size over generations they quickly fell back into a period reminiscent to that of the middle ages
all the while beneath the devastation that had ravaged the earth the vampires that had fallen into myth resurfaced
they predicted the devastation through occult sorcery and intelligence gathering of the oncoming nuclear annihilation and had ample time to prepare for the fallout that was to come making sure they were safely protected in shelters around the globe and safeguarding the minimum amount of machinery and technology that could reset civilization
as humans feuded over the meager resources in a devastated world teeming with mutated monstrosities from the raditation it was a simple thing for the Vampires come out and proclaim themselves the new Nobility the rulers of this new dark future scape
4000 years into the future their civilization is grand and prospering with their science having made leaps and bounds a few examples being spacecraft that allowed the colonization of other planets and systems or generators that could extract energy from different dimensions, cybernetic horses, factories that spawned mythological monsters and bio-engineered mutations that was released into the frontier wilds by the Nobility to terrorize human colonies of which was a long-standing past time of the feudal vampires
at the peak of their civilization though they began to show the first signs of decline over the years with many interpretations given by various human scholars
- wars between feuding Nobles indicated by spacial gravity fields referenced in the fourth volume which were created to prevent Nobles from encroaching on each other's territory
- in desserts of sand the machines of colossal giants of war and starships can be seen reminiscent of something much bigger than the inter-feuding parties something indicative of an almost war of different feuding species one being the Nobility but what about the other
- and some say the stagnation of true immortality began to cause a decline especially when their civilization had just peaked in terms of technological and biological superiority
With this slow degeneration over the years human rebellions in various domains occurred to the point where it turned into a revolutionary army that swarmed the capital of the Nobility of which the colonization of took countless years to weed out the remaining Nobility lurking in coffins stuck in a dead lifeless sleep
The Capital is a fully automated cyber-city, the product of cutting-edge scientific technology. It sits at the center of a system of super-speed highways that crisscross all seven continents yet despite this massive achievement most of the world remains infested wilderness simply called the Frontier of which many villages dot the landscape trying their best live among malicious beasts and demons that slink in the nature
The various regions of the Nobility can be divided into either untamed wilderness or still controlled regions of Nobility Rulership
And the ones to hunt the Nobilities monsters were the class of Hunters that specialized in various types and sub-types of beasts with the greatest, most cutthroat, and uniquely deadly of which being the Vampire Hunters
D stands among Vampire Hunters as an almost myth or legend in the Frontier
Despite this colossal amount of lore there’s a lot of intricacies and addendums made throughout the series expounding on and answering questions
D as a character tends to remain the same in all the volumes this isn't due a lack of intention with the author as more it's an emphasis of character with each Volume of D acting as a snapshot into a corner of the world under the duress of a mutated and dark world
and D's own age is uncertain as he doesn't seem to age which gives leeway to an interpretation of his age being around 10,000 years old
I think the setup of the novels and their format of self-contained stories is a proper outline for why this is and you can even see this during the end of Bloodlust but
Spoiler, click to viewat the end of film, we get a time skip of decades passing and see Leila's own funeral with D in the shadow of a Tree in the back on his Cyborg mount completely unchanged despite the decades that passed him by and him being confronted by Leila's grandaughter that it can ellicit the melancholy of the character
it's just when the premise of the novel is very shy of any human characters and it's mainly D acting on his lonesome that the more barren and inhuman parts of his character are highlighted
I'd say this is why Volume 3 Demon Deathchase was chosen for adaptation over his predecessor Volume 2 Raiser of Gales that and the more action-centric narrative but with Demon Deathchase you have a bigger cast of more interesting personalities to clash with D's stoic demeanor the main one being Leila Marcus a member of the rival party of Vampire Hunters the Marcus Clan and MeyerLing the Noble Lord
Books like Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane excel due to the synergy of the characters in the books and just having more human characters for D to impact and I daresay that the characters introduced into the novels are the main characters with D being a participant of their journey at times
you have scenes where the kurt and stygian cold personalities of D cause anger to flair among his human companions he journeys beside and it's really how their encounter with D affects them and changes their lives with D being the preview overseer to it all that feels the most poignant aspect of D
so while the world of D is great and I like the character I feel like Kikuchi robs himself of greater characterization of D but putting him in some novels where he acts alone most of the time
the self-contained style of the novels doesn't guarantee a totally linear timeline and plot making it less propelling as a light novel series where the characters stimulated growth and his actions on the world and other characters and all the other drama of a good story can drive you see their continued progression and how they'll end up
D does not work like that and the main parts of the novels include a new aspect of the world and maybe some more insight into D's origins as well as getting invested in the featured characters of the novel
Other Problems I have with with the novels include:
- The fact that the author has such florid prose that seems to differ between impressionistic and abstract descriptions to those of tight and choreographed ones the latter holds way more clarity at times for fight scenes and as the series goes on there’s more of a sense of that but this aesthetic of the authors writing is tied to his character and still laid in the novels so a big forewarning to those with Aphantasia or a preference for more direct and clear writing as action scenes can get quite convoluted as the author tries to balance between dramatizing fights for elegance and impact but also there are weird islands of abstraction so murky, almost Kafkaesque in absurdity, that are hard to frame and deliver in literature fashion while trying to remain in that surreal and esoteric fashion of mystifying nature
some examples of this can be dreamlike scenarios as well as visions or that of interaction with Noble Technology
- when it comes to Vampire Hunter D it’s very clear that the author distinctly likes to make use of the synthesized multi-genre epic world of dark future, fantasy, western, and science and fill the plot with various implementations and they can seem quite haphazard and out of nowhere sometimes while others are more deliberate and feel added into the story at the last second these ones can have the affect of causing onset reader whiplash as you’re introduced to these arguably cool but sudden plot contrivances I imagine due to the rate of some novels coming out it can almost be that the author will be writing the novel, have an idea, and then find a way to insert it in without having a rhyme or rhythm for the implementation
its fine to have these ideas especially when it comes to a world such as D's but the problem is when you throw them in half-cooked and cocked into the story sometimes there is a reasonable implementation other times there isn't and even when it is reasonable the book can feel stuffed at times with the seams straining to keep it together
This is my final fantasy VI T-Shirt and this is my mini art book of Yoshitaka Amano’s art the man is a god in my eyes with an art style born for capturing the most majestic and abstract fantastic imagery
his use of watercolors, smooth lines, distinct patterns like that of Gustav Klimt, and wistful expressions while combining aspects of black ink washing as well as certain mannerisms of Ukiyo-e which I see in the eyes of Amano's characters that I dubb the Amano eyes for how they really radiate a melancholic weariness to them all combine for this really dreamlike and majestic artwork
The art style is fitting for a character like D whose feats, skills, and disposition are described as uncommon or ethereal and I think it fits the monochromatic night and day separation between nobles and humans with D navigating both sides as an unearthly haunting figure
Though my preferred vision for the series is melding Amano’s ethereal and enchanting art style with the more grim and grimy style of Yoshiaki Kawajiri in VHD: Bloodlust since it combines the more grim aspects of Vampire Hunter D’s world that come into play especially since D is comparable in many ways to the grim fantasy series the Witcher nevertheless you can argue it was Amano's own carved image of D with ornate black raiments and cape, hooked shoulder blades, and his iconic travelers hat that really sold the image Kikuchi's words on his soul-sucking beauty attempt to capture
>"A black shape passed her. As the man in the long coat headed toward the flames, he looked like some gorgeous idol of a god of war trimmed in crimson lotus blossoms.
I've quite literally started and restarted this review over a dozens time often because I find that writing a review for me is about being self-aware about how much I like or dislike something yet trying to distill a lot of the unnecessary elements which to me comes from in terms of trying to emphasize with my personal and emotional dispensary thoug
it's easy to hyperfocus on what YOU like because YOU like it
similar to that of an author naturally assuming the reader will have his work understood even though an author has a more critical amount of information on the plot of a story and is not seeing it from the readers perspective which is that of a mice in a maze but rather is the human scientist looking down at how the mice proceeds throughout the maze
similarly, I have a great deal breadth more information compounded over my descent into the series
the same dynamic exists for fans of particular media and newbies about to take the plunge there's a different scope on the looking at the bottom
so I've tried my best to balance the equation a bit
you can read Vampire Hunter D by downloading it here for any E-Reader
if you want my thoughts on Bloodlust you can read it here
