‘Vampire Hunter D: Vol. 8’ worth the wait

Mount up and move out, hunters! After 10 years of waiting, the second half of the manga edition of the “Vampire Hunter D: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea” (1988) finally hit bookshelves in North America in February.

The year is 12090 A.D. The vast landscape known as The Frontier is prowling with various beasts that could only be described through the endurance of nightmares. Humans lived in fear underneath the tyrannical ruling of the vampiric monstrosities for several millennia best known as The Nobles.

However, in the past few thousand years, the nobility slowly and mysteriously began to die off. What keeps the thinning line between them and the survival of humanity are hunters hired to eliminate the menacing fanged creatures of the night.

One hunter, known only as D, a dhampir who carries both the blood of a human and a vampire, scours The Frontier seeking only his next job, hunting and annihilating the blood-craving half of his own kind.

In this story, D follows a fisherwoman, Su-In, back to her hometown of Florence (named after the Italian city.) With five assassins working under a Jabba the Hutt inspired thug, Gilligan, along with an obsessive swordsman, and a professor, they are all in pursuit of the mysterious bead of which Su- In’s younger sister, Wu-Lin, lost her life to in the previous story.

Worse, after 5,000 years, a powerful and ruthless noble known as Baron Meinster emerges from his crypt beneath the sea to terrorize the fishing village. D must battle the Gilligan five, while keeping the hungry noble at bay.

According to Digital Manga Publishing, this volume will be the last in the manga adaptation of the series while Dark Horse continues publishing paperbacks; “Volume 30: Gold Fiend” will be released on Dec. 26, 2023, according to Amazon.

In the postscript of the original novelization published in 2007, creator Hideyuki Kikuchi said that although he did not like anime, he would have been satisfied with an animated feature film of this book.

“The problem is, the president of the production company the director belongs to [Madhouse] doesn’t care too much for the project,” Kikuchi said. “’Demon Journey to the North Sea’ is a work that I’m fond of. I have high hopes for an anime adaptation of it.”

Co-director, Yoshiaki Kawajiri of “Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust” (2000), an adaptation of Volume 3, said he was interested in creating an anime movie based on Volumes 7 and 8: “Mysterious Journey to the North Sea,” according to Kikuchi’s postscript 13 years ago.

The plot had an alright setting. It reminded me of the 1993 film “Ninja Scroll,” another of Kawajiri’s featuring a similar story of a hired swordsman cutting through seven bandits with demonic powers before reaching his arch enemy; with a little bit of “Evil Dead” (1981). So Kawajiri would do well to adapt the book into a film just as he did before.

This two-part story wasn’t my favorite. Saiko Takiki did her job well in bringing the characters to life from the 1988 and 2007 original paperback, whereas Yoshitaka Amano’s sketches, are hard for me to analyze.

“Vampire Hunter D: Mysterious Journey to the North Sea” sits on my bookshelf with the other seven volumes. The only drawback is the cover since it’s not folded out with the artwork of the cast of characters, and it features Samon, a villainess with Marilyn Monroe features.

Happy hunting, readers!

Grade: A-