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27morecomics
, October 11, 2013
(view all comments by 27morecomics)
Vampire Game is the only series of JUDAL that has been licensed into English. Over time its more or less faded into obscurity by manga fans, so is it worth the read?
JUDAL suffers from something that most shoujo artists do. Everyone has the same body type (the only way to tell the difference between people is hair and clothes), older people have lines on their face to imply wrinkles. Bad backgrounds. Animal anatomy is atrocious (the only horses shaped like those in Vampire game are broken ones). Unless you enjoy the archetype shoujo style, this might be an eye sore for you.
But if you can get over that, Vampire Game has a great story with fun characters (as you will notice that despite my gripe on the art, I rate this baby 4 stars). While there are some classic tropes which tend to come with the genre of Vampires, there are some story tropes that are taken far more maturely than you ever see in any fiction, comics or novels regardless of country. I'd go into the detail of what but that presses into spoilers.
Another thing I enjoy whilst characters will have their opinion about what they decide what is good/bad, the narration doesn't support any opinion. Giving it a grey feeling and leaving the decision of whom to root for to the readers.
For translation, this was during Tokyo Pop's time of '100% Authentic Manga' leaving the book unflipped and sound effects untranslated. However, there are a few pieces of dialogue that have been changed. No censoring, just a few jokes replaced. As anyone familiar with Japanese will know, some things just don't translate well, so even a purist like me can let that slide.
More or less, I consider Vampire Game a hidden gem of manga with a unique take on reincarnation and the prices of inbreeding (both bad AND good) in royalty.
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