Rosario+Vampire: Season II, Vol. 12 by Akihisa Ikeda
Series Name: Rosario+Vampire: Season II
Genres: Action, Comedy, Ecchi, Fantasy, Harem, Monsters, Romance, Vampires, Witches
Intended Age Group: Older Teen
Publisher: Viz/Shonen Jump Advanced
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-4215-5702-1
Rating: 4/5
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Description from the Book
Average human teenage boy Tsukune accidentally enrolls at a boarding school for monsters – no, not jocks and popular kids, but bona fide werewolves, witches, and unnameables out of his wildest nightmares! And now he’s a sophomore!
On the plus side, all the girls have a monster crush on him. On the negative side, all the boys are so jealous they want to kill him! And so do the girls he spurns because he only has eyes for one of them – the far-from-average vampire Moka.
On the plus side, Moka only has glowing red eyes for Tsukune. On the O-negative side, she also has a burning, unquenchable thirst for his blood…
Personal & Info
This volume has a mini-poster inside, like volumes elven, eight, seven, and five, it’s a fold out. The poster features Kahlua and Koko sweeping up leaves.
I didn’t recognize Kuhlua on the cover right away. She looks obviously tan in the panels of the manga, and she even looks tan on the color fold out mini-poster. I’m not sure why she looks so pale on the cover. It makes her look like a completely different person.
Characters
Tsukune Aono is the only human at a school for monsters. Due to various events in season one, he wears a chain lock on his wrist, similar to Moka’s rosario.
Moka Akashiya is the beautiful vampire love interest. She is considered the most beautiful girl in school, and the series likes to play up that fact.
Aqua is Moka’s oldest sister. She is has an obsession with Moka.
Kahlua is one of Moka’s many sisters. She participates in the family profession of assassination.
Koko is Moka’s youngest sister, and Gyokuro’s youngest daughter.
Gin and Haiji tend to be tag team fighters. We finally find out what monster Haiji is.
Gyokuro is Kahlua and Koko’s mother, and the leading member of Fairy Tale.
Story & Thoughts
Things get intense in this volume as everything that can go wrong does. Everybody is fighting somebody. It’s so close to the end of the series now, that everything is combat. Unfortunately, Mizore and Kurumu are benched for the volume. We see them unconscious toward the beginning from the events of volume eleven, but that’s about it. Yukari and Fangfang aren’t in this one much either. They appear for maybe a page and that’s it.
The first fight that takes up a large chunk of the book is the confrontation with Aqua. Tsukune finally gets his chance to use his training against her dimension sword. Moka and Tsukune fight together for this battle. It’s nice to see him be a relatively competent fighter compared to how he originally started off in the series as a whole. He’s had a tremendous amount of growth in such a short time.
Koko, whom we haven’t seen much of in a while, finally gets a chance to shine. She gets to show her improvement in skill and confidence with a battle of her own. I get that she’s been spending a lot of time training and everything, but I think it would have been nice to have her in the story more with the main group. She’s one of my favorite characters.
The bonus comics feature Kahlua. She is given a mission by her mother that requires seduction, which apparently is one of the few skills she did not learn in her assassin training.
I think there was a typo on one page when Gyokuro says, “the tide of battle is already turning against us.” I’m pretty sure she means, “against you,” because the following panels show supporting evidence of the typo.