The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress

What's It About? 

The world is full of vampires. Supernatural creatures who drain the blood from humans without mercy—fighting such beings is the foundation of Isuzu Osaka's life. But humanity is losing the war, and so desperate times call for desperate measures...And so, Isuzu sets out to strike a deal with a powerful vampiress whose beauty drives all who gaze upon her insane in the hopes of protecting his friends...

My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress has a story and art by Chisaki Kanai, with English translation by Giuseppe di Martino. This volume was retouched and lettered by Anthony Quintessenza. Yen Press will release the first volume on May 23.

Christopher Farris

Rating:

Sometimes the warm-up period before you really get into a story can be trepidatious. Especially in the case of some sort of supernatural indulgence like My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress here, you might approach its opening fable of grandiose vampire backstory and wonder "Oh no, what's this thing getting up to?" Fortunately, it's not too long before that is dispensed with and a member of an anti-Dracula task force is spouting the line "Time to kill us a vampire— using good ol' violence!" and a sense of relief washes over you. My Dear Curse-Casting Vampire is indeed camp as Christmas, and it wears it about as well as one could hope.

There are definitely elements of the setting here that could be expanded upon. There could have been details explored about how everyday people in this world readjusted their lives to the sudden appearance of vampires as, effectively, a recurrent natural disaster. But My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress clearly isn't interested in that angle, nor is author Chisaki Kanai trying to serious up things like the artistic presentation too much. Angles and aspects of characters can get downright cartoony at times, with their way of drawing impact, particularly making it somewhat hard to tell which way the action is going right from the beginning. And yet it all feels calculated for the maximum simple-minded fun factor, like the titular vampiress Baroque (yes that is her actual name) having all facial-expression energy dedicated to rendering her as moe as possible in key moments. One minute we're cutting to two new bloodsucking baddie girls introduced in the middle of fondling each other, and then a second later they've murdered a couple of cops and are strolling away from burning wreckage while munching on body parts. I can cast no aspersions on this manga's aspirations here.

Operating almost entirely as it does on B-grade horror action schlock energy, the quality of My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress is mostly going to be down for your patience for such things. I would never insist that anyone go full "turn off your brain" in order to enjoy something, and it's not like this manga is devoid of opportunity for thought or engagement. The whole curse system that Baroque uses in combat has the calculated quality I appreciate in fictional magic setups, for one. But stuff like that or the technicalities of blind-spot curse-pattern paintings are balanced out by simpler pleasures, like watching main man Osaka spin into battle using some absurd crutch-based combat techniques as he just can not stop being mortally wounded running the offense for his government-assigned vampire girlfriend. My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress is mostly dumb fun, but "fun" is the operative word there, and it's worth a go if anything I've said sounds like your jam.

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Here's a cute mix of vampire-hunting action and will-they-or-won't-they romance! While the circumstances that bring Isuzu and Baroque together are pretty outlandish, it's nevertheless cute to see Baroque fretting over Isuzu and his genuine kindness towards her or Isuzu fearfully trying to respect Baroque's boundaries or feelings. It lends a very fun dynamic between the two as they hunt vampires. There are moments where the relationship feels a little unequal, particularly when the story leans into Baroque acting as young as she looks, but she and Isuzu are just cute together when she sits on his shoulders or when she carries him as she jumps around the ruined remains of vampire-infested Tokyo. The action also rings very true, with fun encounters like Isuzu desperately trying to hold off a vampire before his face is ground into the pavement from a moving car, or using an optical illusion to trap a vampire in a magic circle. The art also has some clever flourishes, from Baroque's doll-like beauty to vampires not casting reflections in video feeds (causing her bondage mask to look like it's simply floating in mid-air).

There are a lot of places where My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress Named After A Sega Saturn RPG could stumble in the future—but for now? It's a ton of fun in so many different ways. Keep an eye out for this one, I think it might become a bigger deal if it ever gets an animated adaptation.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It's amazing – if you treat a person with respect and dignity, they might respond better to you than if you lock them up for twenty years and make them submit to humiliating interrogations. Also, if there are legends about a vampire who slays other vampires, and the number of vampire-on-human attacks rises exponentially after you capture said vampire slayer, maybe you need to rethink your strategy. That basically sums up the premise of My Dear, Curse-Casting Vampiress, a story that works better in execution than it does in summary. That's not to say that the brick-headed stupidity of the government agency tasked with handling vampire attacks isn't just as annoying as it sounds. But at least they eventually figure out their mistake, which, now that I think of it, may be the clearest sign that this book is fiction.

Sarcasm aside, this is a decently enjoyable take on the vampire story. Isuzu, our male lead, is keenly aware of the rumors about Baroque, a vampire so beautiful that a mere glimpse of her face can cause someone to kill themselves. He has also put the pieces together that vampire attacks have become worse in the relatively recent past. When he realizes that the government has had Baroque bound in an S&M-style holding cell for two decades, he quickly figures out the problem. On the plus side, he is correct. On the minus side, he is now public enemy number one as far as the government is concerned because he freed her... and got her to talk to him, something that no one else has managed. There are definitely some sour grapes going around on that front.

This volume is odd, but at times interesting - a mix of fetish fanservice, vampire-fighting action, and governmental pettiness. Isuzu and Baroque hit it off almost immediately, and they do have a nice chemistry together, even if she falls into one of my less favorite tropes, the ancient being who looks like a pre-teen girl. (So, you know, it's totally okay for Isuzu to kiss her and stuff.) Her reaction to him, on the other hand, makes perfect sense because he's the first person to treat her like a person, with the bonus that he enables her to do what she sees as her mission: defeating bad vampires. The inclusion of a predatory lesbian vampire is unfortunate (and incredibly annoying), but there's enough difference between the various vampires to make it feel like some real thought went into this, and the action scenes are suitably gory. This isn't perfect, but it's still worth reading, especially if you're looking for something a little different in your vampire action romance.