Vampire Hunter D By Hideyuki Kikuchi

 Vampire Hunter D

By Hideyuki Kikuchi

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born on September 25, 1949, in Choshi, Japan. He attended Aoyama Gakuin University and trained under Kazuo Koike, best known in the west for writing Lone Wolf and Cub. Hideyuki Kikuchi released his first novel in 1982, Demon City Shinjuku which was adapted to animation in 1988. His greatest successes are most like the Wicked City series, Darkside Blues, and of course the subject of today's review Vampire Hunter D. He is considered one of Japan's leading horror writers and is certainly a prolific writer. Vampire Hunter D for example has 27 novels in the series, as well as anime, manga, art books, and various guidebooks, and more. Today we're looking at volume one. 

According to Hideyuki Kikuchi, Vampire Hunter D is heavily inspired by the Hammer Horror movies, specifically, the idea for D first occurred to him when watching the movie Horror of Dracula starring Sir Christopher Lee (May his Nazi-hunting soul rest in peace.). Which is another impact that Sir Lee has had on the world, which makes me sad to think we will not likely see someone of his caliber anytime soon. In fact, the first book is dedicated to Sir Lee, as well as Peter Cushing and the entire cast of the Horror of Dracula. Vampire Hunter D doesn't just draw inspiration from the Hammer Horror films but also from gothic films, westerns, science fiction, and folklore. Let's take a look at the setting and you'll see what I mean.

The year is 12,001 AD, sometimes 10,000 or so years ago humanity almost destroyed itself in a nuclear war (We’re still not through that filter, kids!). The vampires, seeing it coming, withdrew to bunkers deep beneath the earth and once the worst of it was over, they emerged, swept away what pathetic resistance the ragged remains of humanity could offer, and took over the world. For thousands of years, Vampires ruled unchallenged, calling themselves the Nobility and reforming the world as they saw fit (I swear on Lenin’s cat…). Through the use of dark science and magic, they created or summoned forth various creatures and beings from mythology and unleashed them on the world just because they could. They created marvels of super science beyond the hope of humanity to understand and even reached out into the dark void of space. They even rewrote humanity's genetic code to make it easier to prey upon us. They engineered us to forget the powers of garlic (one would think that they would have driven the garlic plant into extinction instead) and the cross, and if anyone rediscovered it, they were forced by genetic conditioning to forget it.

I'll admit I'm a bit confused as to why the cross would still injure vampires, as Christianity has been completely forgotten (Maybe it has nothing to do with the religious symbol, but the right-angle?  Like, the high-contrast right-angle raised in relief over a background behind it that is actually three-dimensional causes a processing problem in their brains or something.{Considering they live in squares and artificial environments where right angels abound… I’m thinking blindsight is not the answer here}). I mean, I'm a practicing Christian, I believe in the death and resurrection, and I would tell you that a cross is simply a 't' shape if you don't have any faith in it. The power of the symbol comes from the belief and faith of the people who use it. The Almighty could just as easily manifest himself in a common river rock for as special as the symbol is without faith. Also, if it's just the shape of it? Wouldn't that mean Vampires could be repelled by books or even wooden blocks with the letter t on them? They're just not as terrifying if they flop over every time they see the word the or tree or so on are they? 

However nothing lasts forever, eventually, humanity was able to create a rebellion that stuck. Slaying enough vampires to cause the majority to either flee, place themselves in deep hibernation in the dark bowels of the earth or withdraw to the wild frontiers of the world. There on the edge of human civilization, the last outposts of vampiredom squat in a collection of petty fiefdoms in hollow imitations of the dark glories of ages past. Immortals lost in crushing boredom and strutting in boastful vanity in the ruins of their own empty crumbling monuments of horror and savagery (Good.  Time to finish them off.{Still a bunch of them in space}). Unable to let go of the past or build a new future;  they instead slowly but surely become prey to a new breed of humanity, the hunters who roam the Frontier as mercenaries, lawmen, or even heroes seeking out the monsters that prey on humanity. These men and women slowly but surely push back the borders of degenerate inhumanity and make the world safe for a new human civilization. One that struggles to understand the scraps left behind by the predators it bested. 

Count Magnus Lee is one of the last members of the nobility stubbornly holding his sector from his castle fortress with his daughter Larmica as his only real company. Driven by boredom and perhaps something like loneliness, Magnus Lee decides not to kill a teenage girl he comes across one night. Instead, he'll do worse, he'll drain her slowly and turn her into a vampire and then force her to marry him. The lady in question, Doris Lang is less than thrilled with this idea, she hasn't been fending off the mayor's thuggish son, keeping her father's farm going and raising her little brother only to become the plaything of a thing 3000 years her senior. So she hires the strongest hunter she can find, a beautiful young man dressed entirely in black who only gives the name D. 

The novel takes us on a surreal journey through a world that has been utterly reshaped by the mad whims of a predatory upper class and driven to ruin and regeneration. As D, Doris, and Dan, the little brother in question, struggle to not only fend off Magnus Lee, but super-powered bandits, angry village mobs, the mayor's son, and the various monsters and supernatural creatures left littering the landscape by the nobility's cruel wholesale rewriting of the ecosystem. Through this, we see that D is a Dhampir, the son of a vampire and a human and an incredibly powerful one at that. While not invulnerable, he's so powerful that his father may have been the most powerful vampire of them all... Let's go ahead and talk some more about Dhampirs, shall we?

The word itself comes from Albania (Land of a quarter million bunkers.) and was originally applied to the children of vampires, and vampires, without distinction. The idea of vampires having children seems to be mostly from the Balkans among the southern Slavic peoples and there's a lot of variation in the myth. Some say that Dhampirs can practice sorcery or are born without bones, and others grant them various powers that can be passed from father to son. In popular culture Dhampirs usually have a lot of the strengths of vampires and few of the weaknesses; such as being able to roam about in the daylight and not having to fear the menu of an Italian restaurant. D is a lot like Blade in that he has all the powers of a predatory ruling class but instead chooses to use it for the good of humanity and the common people, even in the face of disrespect and bigotry. In D's case, his taciturn and stoic manner may also spring from the fact that he seems to have inherited his father's lifespan, which means he'll be riding his mutant horse and hunting monsters when everyone else has been dust for a thousand years (That would be a very lonely way to exist…{I’m not sure he has much of an alternative}). Well, unless something kills him first. 

I really enjoyed the novel, it has a strange but heady mix of bleak gothic tragedy and wild west style action. Hideyuki Kikuchi takes some pains to let us see this world as both an emerging human civilization pushing back the darkness and a crumbling civilization of vampires who can only remember a glorious past. That said he doesn't pull any punches about the vampire's predatory nature or try to romanticize the fact that they bloody eat people! Magnus Lee may be a person who is bowed under 3000 years of life and struggling with ennui, but he's also a monster who treats everyone else around him as an object for pleasure and amusement. This may be why he's suffering such deep ennui and boredom. Larmica is herself a bit of a tragic figure but she's also a bigot who's more offended by the idea of her father turning and marrying a human girl than his many crimes against the people around them (Gotta end her too.  Full Romanovization. {For the record I don’t condone murdering children because of their family name.  In Larmica case, it would because she literally eats people}). It's their very flaws that led them to their destruction, with D just having to be the active but inevitable agent of their doom. That said, there's a lot of telling when it comes to history and the book is heavy on exposition, which I'm not really a fan of. Because of that, I'm giving the novel a B+. 

I hope y’all enjoyed Fangsgiving, tomorrow our editor will be providing a guest review for us and next week I’ll wrap up with a video.  If you enjoy these reviews consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you’ll get a vote on upcoming reviews, events like a david lynch Dune watch together and other benefits for as a little as a dollar a month.  Hope to see you there, until then keep reading!

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black Text is your reviewer Garvin Anders