by Hideyuki Kikuchi

The melancholy D, an exceptionally skilled Vampire Hunter who is himself half-vampire (and descended from Dracula, no less) returns in the second installment of an ongoing Japanese series that mixes gothic horror with far-future Western, and inspired two popular animated films. In the chilly, isolated frontier village of Tepes, a new horror emerges: vampires who can walk by day as well as by night. The mayor of Tepes hires D to take care of the problem, which seems connected to a laboratory inside a ruined vampire fortress at the top of an enchanted hill as well as to the mysterious disappearance of four village children and the equally mysterious reappearance of three of them ten years ago. As in the previous volume, lush black-and-white illustrations by the designer of the two animated Vampire Hunter D films accompany the text.