...A hot mess of a story.
Vassalord is one of those mangas that you love for what it could be, but not what it actually is. And what it is is a series with a disorganized plot which gets further complicated by the chapter. But the art sure is nice to look at.
For me, as well as for a lot of other people, the art is what first drew me to the series and what keeps me coming back for more. The art is, simply put, first rate. All the characters look great and the action sequences are nicely done too. The characters themselves are all highly engaging: cyborg vampire priest? Awesome! Goofy, but cool, hedonist vampire with rock-hard abs and a penchant for running around half-dressed? Where do I sign up for his fan club? And the scenes between the two leads are smouldering. In the tradition of all good vampire stories, we get sex (lots and lots of blood-sucking), but not actually, so it leaves you begging for more every time.
Unfortunately, even with all the good things this manga has going for it, the mess of a plot nearly ruins them all. In Vassalord things seem to happen at random, plot twists come and go, and nothing gets explained when it's all over. In other words, this is the sort of manga where things fall into place for the characters at just the right times without them ever having to work for it and without the mangaka ever bothering to explain how or why all the pieces of the mystery fit together, forcing the plot to move forward at breakneck speed, but leaving the reader behind in the dust. For example, Charley and Rayflo have a run-in with a cranky cop who just so happens to be investigating Vassalord. Then they run across a little boy who just so happens to be the son of the creator of Vassalord. Then on an airplane, they meet an actress who just so happens to have taken Vassalord. All in the space of a few chapters. That's a whole lot of coincidences for characters constantly on the go. Somehow the characters seem to always know exactly where to go and what to do, which is amazing to me as we're never shown where they get their information from. Events happen seemingly at random: you turn the page and the characters are suddenly in another country, are running around undercover, or doing some other inexplicable thing. I don't mind waiting on answers for the larger questions (i.e., why was Vassalord created to begin with?), but when the characters' immediate actions are hard to follow, that's when it becomes problematic for me. And yet, despite the fact that the plot is largely incomprehensible, I come back chapter after chapter because the art is so nice (and good grief are those bite scenes hot). 😛