The coolest girl in class, Luna, ends up with a nothing boy, Tatsuta. Again. This time, she also happens to be a vampire whose true persona is that of an awkward dork who can’t properly suck blood to save her life, literally (see: manga title).
Well, this is one of those and I have read more than a few of these by this point. This is certainly another of ‘em and it’s not the worst thing ever, just aggressively middle tier for these sorts of things.
It has a couple flashes of being very clever - when Luna goes hunting for a club to join we get a decent montage that achieves a new level of insanity by its depiction of the paranormal investigation club (suffice to say, they prefer a very direct form of investigating). I wish the story was consistently so wacky.
But basically you’re here so the art can show Luna in all her glory while she and Tatsuta get closer. Since he’s feeding her it at least gives them a legit reason to hang out, so it’s only mostly forced.
I do like Luna’s design and thankfully she’s not shown as lasciviously as some characters in her position have been. She maintains about as much dignity as a character who literally goes into chibi mode when she’s drinking blood can manage.
It gets better as it goes along, one of those statements that makes me have a little hope for the future. Even the more blatant fan service character, Sakuma, is kind of fun with her intense volleyball energy. The way the class begins to worship both sides of Luna’s personality feels very audience surrogate in a cute way.
Still, this is exactly like every other one of these genre stories, clever bits and good art or not. Tatsuta could do with anything interesting about him; even his club is as predictable as all get out. It’s mostly amusing, not funny, with Luna being a crumb dropping slob a lot of the time.
And, you know, there’s a certain air of ‘chasing the trend’ with this. That happens a lot with manga, in my experience, but often the mangaka tweaks a couple things but not enough to keep it from feeling a little same-y. That’s certainly the case here too.
If you haven’t had your fill of the genre, it’s okay enough. I’ll give it another volume and see where we’re going with all this. And, hey, this premise is still far more believable than The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses.
3 stars - if you don’t like these sorts of stories, there’s nothing here that’ll change your mind. Judge accordingly.