Vampire Doll, Volume 2: Guilt-Na-Zan

Well, this is one of the most innocent saccharine series I've read sofar, & it's got lots of eyecandy bishounen & kitten-cute girls, & the writer seems to have Attention Deficit Disorder, & absolutely all of the characters are lovable idiots, but it does have a wicked sence of humor & is teaming with highly suggestive boy-boy platonic romace, especially if you concider that Guilt Na Zan is a man trapped in a genderless wax doll SHAPED like a woman. When I read it, I can even picture the doll having a man's voice...not like it has any vocal cords of it's own to speak with anyway. In that way, if you concider that wax doll an artificial shell, this is also a crossdressing manga. Speaking of crossdressing, there's a couple of very obvious drag queens in volume 3. Well, despite Guilt Na Zan & some other demons being classified as "evil," they're all pretty sweet & soft hearted, It's the "neutral" priest who is actually quite wicked. He's what you'd call a softcore deranged pervert; sticking the soul of his ancestor's enemy into a doll modeled after his little sister & then flirting with it. Some manga sites have classified this as "romance" but as of book 2, no one has flirted with an actual girl, Vincent (who is supposedly the reincarnation of Guilt-Na-Zan's first would-be girlfriend) is very very loyal to his master, Dune is attracted to Guilt Na Zan's negative energy, Dante (another living wax doll) is overprotective of Hugo, & Kyouji teases & irritates Guilt Na Zan, but there's no wiff of any solid romance in the making yet, probably because this is a comedy manga that often branches out into in-between pages of 4-pannel gag strips that parody stuff like JRPGs & breaks the 4th wall.

I'm a big fan of this series. Many reasons attone to that. Firstly, the artwork is amazing. Kari's artistic abilities are amazing and the pictures themselves are complex and captivating. The storyline has a lot of twists and turns, but not enough to make your head spin. Enough to make you strongly desire the next novel...and then the next one. I find the jokes and dialogue to be refreshingly hilarious. I laughed almost the entire time. Between that and the lovable characters, there was a lot to love about the series. The very base of the story reminded me a bit of Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi. However, as the novel goes on the similarities vaporize faster than Guilt-Na-Zan's male presence. the work is a deliciouly unique step into humor. Fans of humor comics and the artwork of CLAMP will love this manga. Its a great follow-up to its amazing first novel. Unlike a lot of humor novels, the two of these mangas actually manage to carry a decent plotline behind it and connect in a seamless way, leaving you begging for more each time. Now, I anxiously await the third installment. This will delight fans of the first manga, and make converts of new readers. Thank you Kari Erika!