Hello everyone, in this week’s review I wrap up my look at series based around school. This week’s series serves as a nice segue into the main theme of my reviews for next month. As next month is October, I’ll be spending the entire month reviewing horror themed manga series. Now, enough screwing around, let’s get into this week’s review. The series I’m looking at this week is Akihisa Ikeda’s popular harem series Rosario + Vampire.
Rosario + Vampire focuses on Tsukene Aono, an average 15 year old student who couldn’t get into a regular high school because he failed the high school entrance exam. As a result he has to attend the Yokai Academy, a school in the middle of nowhere. There is a macabre secret to the Yokai Academy, however, as the school is really a school for monsters, as evident by the school’s name, for you see yokai is a Japanese term for a class of supernatural beings. On Tsukune’s first day at the academy, he crashes into a girl riding on her bike.
In the aftermath of the crash, Tsukune finds that his hand has landed on her inner thigh, and this embarrasses Tsukune a bit. To make matters worse, when he gets a good look at the girl’s face, we see that she is incredible beautiful, the combination of these two things makes Tsukune’s nose bleed, and the girl blushes and begins reaching for Tsukune as if to kiss him, but she instead bites his neck whilst telling him she’s a vampire.
Aw, love at first bite.
The girl reveals her name to be Moka Akashiya and says that Tsukune’s blood tasted very good. Moka asks Tsukune to be her friend, since she is new to the school as well and doesn’t know anyone, and Tsukune accepts her offer of friendship. In his homeroom, where his homeroom teacher is a carefree catgirl, Tsukune learns that Yokai Academy is a school to teach monsters how to coexist with humans. One of Tsukune’s classmates asks why they don’t just eat the humans, and their teacher tells them that there aren’t any humans in the school, because Yokai Academy is in a hidden sacred place and that any human that knows of the existence of the school will be executed.
Wait, what happened to humans and monsters co-existing?
On the way to their dorm building, Moka reveals to Tsukune that if she removes the rosary around her neck, she goes from her normal human form into an evil and scary vampire form. She then tells Tsukune that rosaries have the ability to seal away a vampire’s true form, and that she put her rosary on herself because she hates her true form. The next day, Tsukune decides that he wouldn’t be able to survive the three years he’d be at the academy, so he prepares to leave. Moka tries to stop him, but he reveals to her that he’s human, and not a monster.
Moka begins crying at the thought of Tsukune leaving when she is caught off guard by a new student known for his penchant for molesting human women. He plans on doing the same thing to Moka, but as she refuses him, he transforms into his true form. Tsukune returns just in time to stop him and draws the attention of the student. As a result, Tsukune gets beaten to a pulp and Moka runs to his side. Tsukune gets up, but the student kicks Tsukune in the back of the head, knocking him down again. On the way down, Tsukune accidentally grabs Moka’s rosary and pulls it off. Moka turns into her true form with her eyes turning red, her fangs growing larger, and her pink hair turning pure silver.
Hmm, I dunno, that's more sexy than scary, if you ask me.
Moka’s true form defeats the student with one kick and takes the rosary back from Tsukune, telling him that she won’t bring harm to him as the gentle Moka form likes the taste of his blood, and she puts the rosary back on, reminding Tsukune to look after the gentle Moka while doing so. The rest of the series follows Moka and Tsukune as they encounter, and befriend, several other monsters, such as the extremely busty succubus Kurono Kurumu.
She's more stacked than a pile of pancakes at IHOP.
The problem is most of these monsters they befriend are also female and they all develop feelings for Tsukune. Thus, with each new friend, Tsukune’s harem grows even larger.
The series lasts for 40 chapters and was bounded into 10 tankobon volumes, which were licensed in the west by Viz Media. In addition, a 26 episode anime was made for the series. There is a sequel series currently running called Rosario + Vampire: Season II that picks up right where the first series ends.
Rosario + Vampire is an interesting take on the harem series trope commonly found in manga and anime, and is in the same ilk as another harem series, Mahou Sensei Negima, in that while it is a comedy harem series, there is a lot of action and fight scenes sprinkled in as well. If you like harem series, or even just action series, I say you should definitely give Rosario + Vampire a look.