Bloodhound
Bloodhound is a manga series written and illustrated by Kaori Yuki and follows here usual theme and style she uses for many of her stories. Suou is the lead host of Krakenhaus, a Japanese host club with a german name. Suou is the lead vampire who thinks that Rion is a reincarnation of Elione of the pure blood his true love.
The characters weren’t fully fleshed out as well but had a lot of potential for character development.
Rion is a bit ditzy and your stereotypical teenager. She has no idea what is really going and just goes with whatever she is told. Rion is only investigating the mysterious disappearances of young girls because her best friend is missing. Many girls who eventually return after disappearing turn up with their blood missing and are left in a trance state. Rion also finds host club cards that are also connected to the missing girls.
The host club cards lead Rion to a local club run and populated by vampires. She doesn’t believe it at first but when she accidentally breaks a bottle of wine, it puts her into debt with the vampires and she now has to work with them to figure out the disappearances. Rion eventually befriends the vampires and develops a relationship with Suou. They all work together to figure out who is behind it the strange disappearances of the young girls and what happens to them when they go missing.
The atmosphere was a mix of romance and vampire horror but the horror is more downplayed on this story. The focus is more on dark comedy than on the romantic aspects. The comedy elements of the manga are really good and there were plenty of gags that helped relieve the tension. Suou even when he is being serious, can still be a very funny character and he has no ill will towards humans. Suou and Rion have good chemistry with one another and balance each other out. Rion has no interest in romance with the vampires but they got along well and both had mutual respect for one another and the friendship they have was quite useful.
There was some exploration to the themes of reincarnation and how it relates to vampirism it was interesting but not fully explored enough. It turns out it wasn’t the vampires that were responsible for the missing girls but a school counsellor who is very sexually aroused by blood.
The suspense and mystery surrounding who was behind the young girls disappearances were actually quite effective. The vampires where humanized to an extent showing that not all of them are evil and humans can be just as sick and bloodthirsty as them
The art style, like many of Kaori Yuki’s works is superbly drawn and highly detailed, sometimes to the point of going way overboard with character designs and panels ending up being really cluttered and confusing. Because of the amount of characters in such a short story, they really couldn’t be able to have much purpose in it other than to drive the plot forward. It is really short it can take about just a day to finish.
The ending of the story left more questions than answers due to the length. In fact, the ending was really abrupt and very unexpected. As the plot goes on, things get more disjointed and uneven. There was so much more that could have been covered so it feels incomplete.
It gets 3 stars out of 5.
It is not bad but with a concept like this it can certainly work as a full series.
As an anime adaptation of the series this could work.