I picked up Vampire Knight believing that it might be an interesting vampire story and I like seeing the different takes on an otherwise old subject.

I will start off with the negative simply because I feel as though this must be said, or expressed:

What it boils down to is that Vampire Knight is a highly, highly confusing manga. In the beginning, as many people have experienced, Vampire Knight was rather simple in terms of plot and scenarios. As time went on, however, questions were being answered but - in the process - more questions were being asked. However, as time went on the facts and situations started to become more confusing, more jumbled and less organized.

The further into the manga I went the less I started to understand - it got to the point where I actually needed to look up the volume summaries after I read them, simply to understand what it was that I had just read.

It is very hard to understand who is speaking and to whom, and where they are, and what is going on. I found that the lines between arcs were blurred to the point where I thought that the first arc was 9 volumes long when in reality apparently several arcs had occurred in that time.

I think that this confusion stems from the fact that the art, while beautiful (graceful, lovely, etc.), is drawn in such a way that oftentimes completely obscures the characters' actions, especially in intense fight scenes where you can't tell who hit whom or who did the hitting, or anything of the ilk. It skips to scenes without explaining where you are and, admittedly, a few of the characters look similar and so it's hard to tell the difference between them. Even on volume 13 I have a hard time telling several of the characters apart.

Finally, I find that the output of information is slow, as I touched upon earlier. More questions are asked than answered, and it takes a very long time for most questions to be answered, if they are answered at all. I believe the manga could be improved tenfold only if we aren't made to wait so long just to receive information that could invest us a little more. Suspense is nice but if you have to wait too long to figure something out, oftentimes the wait can sever your interest rather than enhance it.

Having said all of that, I do believe I've made the manga sound AWFUL and I didn't mean to do that. I don't think it's an awful manga at all - I think it's good; iit's a good manga if you want to read something to turn your mind off. Yes, it's confusing and it will make you think but it isn't terrible.

The characters are all different, even though I wouldn't say that any of them are particularly wonderful (I see a lot of Sue-ish things going on, especially in the character of Yuuki). However, the art is wonderful, the story was good (not great), and I would suggest it for people who are wanting a quick read.