Rosario+Vampire: Season II, Vol. 5 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: 978-1-4215-3691-0
Rating: 4.5/5
Amazon Barnes&Noble RightStuf ThriftBooks
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
Since I’ve already read a large chunk of the series before, I’m giving the volumes I’ve already read a slight bump in rating to show how much I liked it my first time through. I don’t want my familiarity with the series to hurt the score. There is less thrill when you already know what happens, so I’m accounting for that. The bump is only about a half star.
This volume includes a small fold out poster of Moka holding a watermelon carved like a jack-o’-lantern. Do people actually tear these out? It’s not even perforated. I feel like I’m ruining the book if I remove it.
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.
Kurumu Kurono is the second beautiful love interest. She is the character with the largest breasts in the group, and the whole school also fawns over her, but not nearly as much as Moka.
Yukari Sendo is a twelve year old genius, and a witch.
Mizore Shirayuki is love interest number three. She is a yuki-onna, but the translation constantly calls her a snow fairy. She’s also the most considerate of Tsukune’s happiness.
Koko Shuzen is Moka’s little sister. She thinks Tsukune’s only redeeming quality is the taste of his blood, but she doesn’t go around biting him like Moka does.
Ruby Tojo is a witch met in season one. She currently works for the school to help keep the students safe. This now also entails supervising Tsukune’s training.
Ginei Morioka, also known as Gin, is the Newspaper Club’s president. Normally we hardly ever see him.
San Otonashi is an alumnus of Yokai Academy. She was the president of the Newspaper Club when Gin was a freshman.
Story & Thoughts
This entire volume encompasses one event. I think it’s the first volume in the entire series to do that. It’s summer vacation time again, and this whole volume is “the beach episode.” But don’t let that fool you, some cool stuff actually happens, so it’s not just fan service.
The Newspaper Club goes on another one of their vacation trips to the human world. This time, they go to the beach. Everything is all arranged so they will be staying with a former member of the Newspaper Club, San. San is also the main focus of the book. Using her as an example, we get to see what it’s like for a monster who has graduated from Yokai Academy and continued on to live in the human world.
Fairy Tale shows up, being the main villain for the season. And so does Gin! We hardly ever see Gin, so this is a pleasant surprise. He even sticks around for the whole book. Well, sort of. He’s off doing something else while the main group is dealing with their own problems.
I think this volume has more typos than usual. Aside from that, it has a great story. The insight into a monster living in the human world among humans is something the gang is curious about as they all wonder what their own futures will be like. Obviously this is only one example, so they can’t base expectations off it, but it gives them hope, and it’s good insight for the reader, too.
We also get to see a new monster type. Unlike the usual set ups, we get to see a good version and bad version of them. Normally we only see one, and the gang beats them up, end of story. There’s a little more to it this time.