Oho, I love it! As someone who has not (yet?) read ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ, could you talk a little more about it? What’s it about? Why’s it a good beginner series?
I especially love point 2, getting all 吸血鬼 media graded; goals like that get me excited to contribute, haha. It could be fun to have a 吸血鬼 book club run here if folks are interested, too! That’d be a great way to get stuff graded and to get the good 吸血鬼 word out.
I talked a bit about it in the what are you reading thread but its basically about a girl and her brother who find out they are 吸血鬼 (1/4) and become 大使 for Japan in this worldwide 精霊 organization so they have to deal with all the foreign 精霊 and 妖怪 who can’t behave.
It’s the easiest 吸血鬼 related book that I know of. That’s the only reason why really haha. To be fair, I would have much rather read this as one of my first series over stuff like 娘じゃなくて私が好きなの!? 7 | L25 and 執事なシツジと魔法契約 | L26. It’s cute and silly and at the very least not another ecchi slice-of-life romcom LN. 吸血鬼はお年ごろシリーズ (series) | L26 might be another viable option but I haven’t read it yet so 大使 will be my easy recc for now.
I don’t think I can take on much in the green zone right now. Plus, holy shit it’s 52 volumes!
Welcome to the society. I also plan on getting to that one but I have easier series I want to get through first. My current plan is to get through ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ by the end of this month, read nothing but standalone 吸血鬼 novels for the entirety of October (our favorite month, right?), then maybe start 僕の血を吸わないで (series) | L29 in November before eventually getting to 吸血鬼はお年ごろシリーズ (series) | L26. I have my eyes on ぼくが恋した吸血鬼 講談社ノベルス | L26 and 人外サーカス | L33 for the October reads but maybe I should let Natively voters decide?
Oh, speaking of vampires, I just remembered that, when I started learning Japanese, back in in the year 200X, one of my friends made me read a few vampire related manga, such as 真月譚 月姫 1 | L24?? and blood alone (not on natively).
I don’t know if I would recommend them First one is an adaptation of a visual novel with err spicy scenes, the second one is a romance story, but between a vampire girl who got turned when she was 13 (so her body is still at that age) and the 20 something vampire hunter checking she doesn’t do anything bad (and doubling as care taker in the meantime).
I remember having a debate about whether or not that’s… you know… a bad thing that I don’t really want to type on a public forum. I don’t remember what happens, though.
Vampire manga reminds me, there’s also ポーの一族, which hasn’t been added to Natively yet. It’s a 1970s vampire manga by 萩尾望都, and it’s a classic which is still famous and in print. It has some similarities to “Interview with the Vampire” but it was written first, so I guess both authors must have been influenced by previous things I don’t know about. I read the first volume last year and the artwork is beautiful 1970s shoujo style. The language felt quite difficult, but I don’t know how much of that was my reading level at the time vs. ‘70s style dialogue.
I loooove vampire media in English, so I’m more than happy for an excuse to do it in Japanese too. Once I have cleared out my current pile of books, I will start on something vampire related.
So I’m looking at seeing if I can read this in October; my (English) book club is reading the first three volumes, and I thought it’d be cool to read the original Japanese. The level 40 tag kind of intimidates me, though; would you say level 40 is a good estimation of the difficulty level of the book? If so, what makes it really difficult? Just trying to prepare myself.
Maybe it’s easier to read if you’ve read the translated book before the original. I love the all the related anime.
Please let me know as you proceed with the reading.
Sure, will do. I have no exposure to the series beyond reading charai’s review on the book page, so it’ll be interesting, if nothing else. I’ll probably start sometime next week after finishing up one of my current books; will update here when I remember. o7
Alright, I’ve set up a poll to pick a children’s vampire book to read for the month of October. Please be sure to vote~!
If anyone’s looking for a non-children’s vampire book to read, 吸血鬼は目を閉じ、十字を切った | L35?? is on sale on Bookwalker for the next couple of days. I haven’t read it but the title caught my eye.
Thank you for joining me in October 吸血鬼 reading! BTW, if you feel that the book you end up reading might be a better recommendation for our “official” beginner recommendation, let me know. I only recommend the current one because I don’t know anything easier, not because it’s a particularly good series.
I was thinking that since we don’t have tags yet, we should probably create some megalist of all the 吸血鬼 books on the site so people know what all their options are. I’m don’t think linking them all in a wiki on the OP is too practical (probably 200+ at this point.) I guess I’ll have to stop being lazy and just put them all into a custom list or pastebin or something. I’ll figure it out.
Sounds like a good idea to me. When tags are implemented, it’ll be super easy to reference that list to fully tag everything as well. You could create a google spreasheet or something and link it here; you could even allow editing privileges so all the work’s not just on you.
Alright, I finished ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ (series) | L23. Here are my final thoughts: This isn’t quite the Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear killer that I hoped it would be. It peaked at volume 4 but went totally downhill from there. I think I might bring the final 3 volumes down to 2 stars. It feels like the author planned on writing more volumes but couldn’t, so it ends pretty abruptly and it’s unsatisfying. I guess the search for the best-pretty-easy 吸血鬼 book series is still on. (I have a feeling it might be 吸血鬼はお年ごろシリーズ (series) | L26, but we will see!)
On the manga side of things, I would think ハピネス (series) | L16 is the no questions asked, defacto beginner recommendation. It’s without a doubt the most popular 吸血鬼-related series on the site right now. I don’t read manga right now but I think it’s probably the safe choice to recommend given how low it’s rated.
So, with that out the way, since I finished ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ a bit earlier than expected, I’m starting my October reading with ぼくが恋した吸血鬼 講談社ノベルス | L26. Let the 吸血鬼 marathon begin!
On second thought, managing a huge spreadsheet or doc seems like a lot of work. I just went ahead and put them all into a custom list (吸血鬼 Books on my profile). The current count is 168, but there’s probably more on my wishlist, since I forgot which books actually had 吸血鬼 in them. I’ll keep updating it, so we will break 200 sooner or later anyway.
This does remind me that I haven’t compiled any 吸血鬼 manga. Does anyone want to take on the task of adding all 吸血鬼 manga they can possibly find? (Probably not, I’ll get to it sooner or later)
I realize now that this makes it seem like I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s not the case. The first book I read was ポレポレ日記 いざ、流星学園へ! | L21 and ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ is way better! I would have loved to have read it instead. I just thought the last few volumes felt a little rushed
Just out of curiosity, what are the U and F custom lists on your profile for?
Is it possible for us to add a book to a custom list without adding it to any of the “main” categories? I don’t think it is, else I’d volunteer. Sorry, just want to keep my profile as clean as I can for now. I can definitely help research what 吸血鬼 manga need to be added, though! Here’s a few to get us started, + some novels I don’t think you have added yet @Drinos.
Also, this might be a silly question, but we’re not counting works where the only vampire(s) is/are side characters, right? Like, the work has a vampire in it, but they’re/vampires in general are not the focus of that work?
U is for Unfinished. I don’t want to forget that I only read the first part of タイム・リープ lol. F is for Future, basically just series I plan on starting eventually and don’t want to forget.
I can totally understand that! I went ahead and started the manga list too. My library is already such a mess that it probably won’t make too much of a difference if I added a couple hundred more entries. Either way, it will be useful for when I actually start reading manga. Thank you for pointing these out to me! If anyone finds anything else that I haven’t added yet, please let me know.
As long as the book’s plot revolves around 吸血鬼 or has very prominent 吸血鬼 character(s), I would count it. If it’s just some irrelevant side character, I would say not to count it. Basically, if the fact that some character is a 吸血鬼 is relevant to the plot, I would count it, even if the book as a whole doesn’t totally revolve around 吸血鬼. Most of the books I have on the list so far do seem to have 吸血鬼 as the focus of the work, so I don’t think it will be too much of a problem. If there’s something that doesn’t seem like it belongs, let me know.
I’ll keep adding to that original list as I go along and mark out new batches I add; I don’t know if repeated tagging actually notifies the person I’m repeatedly tagging, unfortunately. Just keep an eye on that space, then? Unless someone has a better idea.
Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind as I add. I have two works in mind where the character in question is a prominent-enough side character, but the work doesn’t really depend on them being a vampire or anything. I’ll keep them in my pocket for now.
So I’ve been doing some research on the かりん series, localized in the West as Chibi Vampire by Tokyopop. The LNs are here on Natively and are easy to find on Amazon/auction sites, but I am having a way harder than imagined time finding the manga. That’s not on Natively, so if anyone finds it, add it!
Alright, I know I’m supposed to be reading ぼくが恋した吸血鬼 講談社ノベルス | L26, but I ended up reading the first volume of ハピネス (series) | L17 instead. I figured that if I’m going to start listing manga, I might as well just start reading it too. This is the first manga I have read in Japanese, I haven’t even attempted to read any before. I have to say, it really is easy. The little dialogue that’s there feels like it was specifically made for beginners. Reading with pictures isn’t that bad! I feel like I’m going to start really getting into manga now, I don’t know why I’ve been avoiding it…
Also, I edited object #1 to include ハピネス (series) | L17 and added links to the manga and book list to the OP for anyone looking for something to read. Requested 50 or so more series for the book list today, so look out for those soon. The manga list is will probably end up being larger than the book list, so give me time to hunt those down.
I also plan on getting to that one but I have easier series I want to get through first. My current plan is to get through ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ by the end of this month, read nothing but standalone 吸血鬼 novels for the entirety of October (our favorite month, right?), then maybe start 
First one is an adaptation of a visual novel with err spicy scenes, the second one is a romance story, but between a vampire girl who got turned when she was 13 (so her body is still at that age) and the 20 something vampire hunter checking she doesn’t do anything bad (and doubling as care taker in the meantime).
Once I have cleared out my current pile of books, I will start on something vampire related.
