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Yashakiden #4
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess Volume 04 Omnibus Edition
As the immortal Demon Princess inexorably transforms Demon City Shinjuku into a vampire metropolis, Setsura infiltrates her manor house alone. There he encounters the puppet paramours and "picture soldiers" created by the warlock Kikiou. The witch Galeen Nuvenberg once again comes to the rescue. But that only draws her into Princess's crosshairs as well. Meanwhile, panicked by the growing vampire hordes in Shinjuku, the Japanese government and its American allies resolve to sterilize the city with nuclear weapons. As if taunting the stranded and isolated Setsura, the countdown to disaster has begun.
500 pages, Paperback
First published October 31, 2012
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May 10, 2015
I'm so glad that I had two long coach journeys with this otherwise I'm not sure I would have finished this tome.
Yashakiden started out with so much promise. The first volume is AMAZING but its seriously starting to drag by this 4th omnibus volume (collecting together books V and VI) - In the afterward Kikuchi talks about the frustration of his editor - how Yashakiden was originally planned as 3 volumes and is now well into volume 6 (indeed there are 8 in total). This volume is a perfect example of what happens when authors are given free reign. In 482 pages barely anything useful happens.
The basic plot of the series:
Set in the Demon/Wicked City multiverse we have The demon princess and her retinue of 3 evil Chinese vampires (Kikiou - the old warlock, Ryuuki - master of Qi and General Kazikli Bey - basically Vlad the Impaler) arrive with nefarious, but somewhat unclear plans.
Facing off against these we have Dr. Mephisto, PI Setsura Aki, Yakou (a vampire mafia resident of demon city), Czech Witch Galeen Nurenberg, her doll and crow servants.
Caught in the middle is Takako Kanan a college student who gets turned into a half vampire by Princess.
All that you get from the previous books. In this one, the characters all swap sides and fight for possession of Kanan - every combination comes face to face at some point and characters get bumped off or turned into vampires at every opportunity. But vampirism is curable and resurrection is common so even severed heads come back to life. Because death is not final it lessens the impact of the fight sequences and made me simply not care - oh, yet another face off - great!
The series has also lost much of its outrageous weirdness - there are still some rather nice visual sequences but not nearly as much as the earlier volumes: I did like the flying coffins, the scene where Princess pulls General Bey onto her naked impaled body so that the stake goes through his eyeball, Dr. Mephisto having to make bodyparts for Kikou's severed head.
Its also not as sexy, although again two really good scenes spring to mind - Princess seducing Kanan whilst setsura watches and the sex scene of the girl on fire.
Vampire lore-wise I really liked the fact that peaches have the same effect as garlic and that vampires react to moonlight.
By the end of this the only real three plot developments are a nuke is headed towards demon city and Galeen Nurenberg is apparently dead, but has been replaced by her sister and General Bey is dead.... but since resurrection is the name of the game, who knows for how long.
There's not nearly enough Mephisto being awesome in this one for my liking and its also not particularly slashy, unlike some of the earlier books. Its also very disjointed as it jumps around following a multitude of characters - introducing lots of new ones.
I still love the series as a whole and would adore to see an anime of it, but I did find this book to be the weakest in the series.
Yashakiden started out with so much promise. The first volume is AMAZING but its seriously starting to drag by this 4th omnibus volume (collecting together books V and VI) - In the afterward Kikuchi talks about the frustration of his editor - how Yashakiden was originally planned as 3 volumes and is now well into volume 6 (indeed there are 8 in total). This volume is a perfect example of what happens when authors are given free reign. In 482 pages barely anything useful happens.
The basic plot of the series:
Set in the Demon/Wicked City multiverse we have The demon princess and her retinue of 3 evil Chinese vampires (Kikiou - the old warlock, Ryuuki - master of Qi and General Kazikli Bey - basically Vlad the Impaler) arrive with nefarious, but somewhat unclear plans.
Facing off against these we have Dr. Mephisto, PI Setsura Aki, Yakou (a vampire mafia resident of demon city), Czech Witch Galeen Nurenberg, her doll and crow servants.
Caught in the middle is Takako Kanan a college student who gets turned into a half vampire by Princess.
All that you get from the previous books. In this one, the characters all swap sides and fight for possession of Kanan - every combination comes face to face at some point and characters get bumped off or turned into vampires at every opportunity. But vampirism is curable and resurrection is common so even severed heads come back to life. Because death is not final it lessens the impact of the fight sequences and made me simply not care - oh, yet another face off - great!
The series has also lost much of its outrageous weirdness - there are still some rather nice visual sequences but not nearly as much as the earlier volumes: I did like the flying coffins, the scene where Princess pulls General Bey onto her naked impaled body so that the stake goes through his eyeball, Dr. Mephisto having to make bodyparts for Kikou's severed head.
Its also not as sexy, although again two really good scenes spring to mind - Princess seducing Kanan whilst setsura watches and the sex scene of the girl on fire.
Vampire lore-wise I really liked the fact that peaches have the same effect as garlic and that vampires react to moonlight.
By the end of this the only real three plot developments are a nuke is headed towards demon city and Galeen Nurenberg is apparently dead, but has been replaced by her sister and General Bey is dead.... but since resurrection is the name of the game, who knows for how long.
There's not nearly enough Mephisto being awesome in this one for my liking and its also not particularly slashy, unlike some of the earlier books. Its also very disjointed as it jumps around following a multitude of characters - introducing lots of new ones.
I still love the series as a whole and would adore to see an anime of it, but I did find this book to be the weakest in the series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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