Chibi Vampire Manga Style

Here is my first review of manga style. I've decided to begin with Chibi Vampire, for no reason but it seeming simple. 

Chibi Vampire is a manga about a girl in a family of vampires, but she was born with a weird disorder of sorts. Basically instead of having to drink blood, she has to give it away once a month. If she doesn't she gets nosebleeds and feels awful. When she gives it away it helps people. That's pretty much all that was established in the first volume.

I think how this will work is I will begin with notes on style (in no particular order, because the cover ended up somewhere in the middle) and then at the end do an overview. 

Keep in mind that these notes were taken purely on what I thought of the art and not the plot. 

Also, I apologize if the pictures aren't clear. They were taken with my iPad while reading, while in various different places.

The first thing I have is one of the first pages. This is an overview of the characters and who they are. While this isn't really about the style of art, it allows you to get a sense of who the characters are or review before a new volume of the manga. I've found that sometimes it can be difficult to figure out relationships in manga without it being bluntly obvious, or stated at the beginning. I enjoy these pages.

These next few pages are simply ones that I think are cute or really like the style of. Some pages are just difficult to resist staring at and admiring. For example, I love the shading in the first picture. I also like the proportions in the second and last. Overall the pictures in these just seemed like they stood out.

 

These pages have a particularly funny style. What I've found is that despite dark themes that some manga/anime may have, they still manage to keep it funny. These pictures stood out as interesting to me.

 

One thing that I decided was important was to review the cover. Since it's the first thing you see when picking up a new manga, it's pretty important. For many mangas that I've read, the cover's shading seems to change the entire view of the book. Typically covers make me want to back away. However, this manga has a nice enough cover. The shading is well done and the colors aren't weird like they tend to be.

In most mangas that I've read, the author draws themselves saying certain things about the process of drawing the manga, their lives, or simply joking about the characters. I've found that the style of the author is usually very simple. but typically amusing. I'd like to play with my own style of "author drawing" later.

 

This is an interesting feature in manga. When a character is angry, their eyes become shaded to make them look intimidating. Either this, or they get angry and no one takes them seriously. It depends on the character. Obviously for this character his anger is taken very seriously. This is something I need to work on.

  

One thing that stood out to me about this manga (and annoyed me) was the amount of errors in proportions. By that I mean something that looks off. For example, in the first panel the guys head is too big. In the panels following the girl always has weird proportions for her head. Proportions that are off tend to entirely ruin a manga for me. That may not be the case for others, but personally it bothers me a lot.

Something I've never been able to pull off is the darkness shown in this panel. It's typically shown when someone is moping or irritated. It's another thing I need to work on.

In  manga, nose bleeds show up often. In this case it's not the typical nosebleed; instead of relating to beautiful people or stressful situations this is due to the girl being part vampire. I took this picture mostly because I wouldn't be able to draw blood (or liquid in general) and need to work on it. 

I like the fanciness of this house. There's not much more to it. The style is very nice.

OVERVIEW:

Plot - I personally enjoy the premise to this manga. I think that it's interesting, and I definitely haven't found anything like it before. 

Style - The style of this manga may be nice in some parts, however I think there are some flaws. Like I pointed out, the proportions sometimes go wrong, and as I said, that bothers me enough that the style can be entirely ruined at some points.

Read Again? - I think that because I like the plot I will be giving the second volume a try, but I'm not sure yet. I'm usually one to stick it out with manga and anime, because I know that sometimes they're hard to get into. I'll keep an eye out for volume 2.