Manga Monday: Vampire Knight Vol. 15

  Manga Mondays is a meme hosted by Alison at Alison Can Read where bloggers can share their passion for reading mangas. It's a great place to get new manga titles to try and to meet new bloggers. Vampire Knight is one of my favorite manga series. Getting each new volume of the manga is like watching a new episode of your favorite TV show. Unfortunately, the plot of the manga can be confusing at times, especially when the volumes have a long break between them and the publishers don't write a really good summary of the series as a recap for its readers.

Description: With Kaname missing, Yuki must now step in as acting head of her clan to maintain the fragile peace between the human and vampire societies. Will she be able to regain the trust of the vampire aristocrats, much less Aido?

Review: Volume 15 of Vampire Knight immediately picks up where volume 14 ended. Kaname has murdered two pureblood vampire aristocrats for mysterious reasons and now he is nowhere to be found. The Vampire Hunter society has arrested Yuki in hopes of finding out information about Kaname. Yuki, like the rest of us, has no idea what Kaname intends to do nor does she have any clue about his whereabouts.
I found this volume to be a bit confusing, but I did enjoy watching Yuki stand up on her own two feet. With Kaname absent, she now has to take the responsibility in leading the vampires, tame their frantic aristocrats, and reinstate the peace alliance between vampires, vampire hunters, and humans. Yuki struggles on how to lead her people. She is not a natural leader nor charismatic, but her compassion and her human experiences give her an edge. Unlike Kaname who has ruled with an iron fist, Yuki gives her followers an option and they almost always obey because they know she is right. As her first move as leader, Yuki wants to rebuild a school where Day and Night Classes once again take place. Though the idea of recreating a school may seem an odd move at first, it does reassure the vampires that an organized, structured framework can once again be placed.
  Hino once again teases the readers about the ambiguous relationship between Yuki and Zero, who were once best friends and had the potential to become much more. Though Zero claims to not want anything to do with Yuki, he is always found in her periphery. His hatred of vampires is tangible and understandable given his dark past. He is deteriorating quickly, which he can't hide from Yuki. Similarly, Yuki tries to hold on to her humanity and suppresses her urge to drink from humans in order to be a role model of how she would like her vampires to behave, but Zero knows how difficult it is for her.
  With the exception of the last few panels featuring Yuki and Zero, I was a bit disappointed with Hino's artwork. There was quite a lot of shading and quite a few panels broken within one another. It was a bit hard  trying to figure out what was happening. Also there were quite a few new characters mentioned in this volume that I'm pretty sure weren't there before and I'm really hoping their introduction would be made clearer in the next volume.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Words of Caution: There is some violence and mild language. Recommended for teens and up.

If you like this book try: Vampire Knight Volume 16 by Matsuri Hino, Black Bird series by Kanoko Sakurakouji, Millennium Snow series by Bisco Hatori