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I just finished reading Vampire Game after all these years, wanting to return to one of my favorite manga series, giving each volume a rating and review for Goodreads.
Much as I enjoy it, one thing which never satisfied me was the answer to the Phelios question.
Warning, this is where things get spoilery. If you haven’t read Vampire Game (and it’s an excellent manga which I strongly recommend picking up) you may want to wait on reading this blog until you’ve finished it.
There’s been plenty of hints that Phelios may have been in love with the Vampire King Duzell. Ishtar once asked Duzell if he’d been in love with Phelios. He replied that his was the stupidest question she’d ever asked.
Was it? Why did Duzell devote himself to hunting down Phelios? Why did Phelios tell Duzell that he wanted the vampire king to be his, only to forge Sidia, and cast La Gamme, destroying both of them?
More than revenge, I think Duzell wanted the answers to those questions.
And what of Phelios? What did he want badly enough to die in battle for? Enough to reincarnate as Duzell’s brother in the last pages of the last volume of Vampire Game?
Duzell and Phelios didn’t just reincarnate as brothers either. They reincarnated as Ishtar and Darres’s sons.
Whose dying wish was to reborn in his next life with Ishtar and Darres? Whose blood was never sampled by Duzell before he died, even though he cut himself and offered it for the vampire king to sample? Who gave Duzell a dramatic, teasing look in the very first volume, back when Duzell was pretending to be a krawl kitten? Who was devious, manipulative, heroic, and caring, much like Phelios himself may well have been? Who put those qualities to work for Pheliostra and the people he loved, pitting them against Sharlen, the enemy of the realm and the heir to Duzell’s former dark dreams? Who else would have had the nerve to call the Holy Knight Phelios inconsiderate other Phelios’s reincarnation himself? (Well, Ishtar would have, but everyone, including Duzell himself thought she was his reincarnation at first.)
Perhaps someone who’d proved throughout the series that he had a melancholy, self hating, self destructive streak under his teasing smile. Someone who always wanted what he couldn’t have, yet did the best he could for everyone around him.
Think about it.
Much as I enjoy it, one thing which never satisfied me was the answer to the Phelios question.
Warning, this is where things get spoilery. If you haven’t read Vampire Game (and it’s an excellent manga which I strongly recommend picking up) you may want to wait on reading this blog until you’ve finished it.
There’s been plenty of hints that Phelios may have been in love with the Vampire King Duzell. Ishtar once asked Duzell if he’d been in love with Phelios. He replied that his was the stupidest question she’d ever asked.
Was it? Why did Duzell devote himself to hunting down Phelios? Why did Phelios tell Duzell that he wanted the vampire king to be his, only to forge Sidia, and cast La Gamme, destroying both of them?
More than revenge, I think Duzell wanted the answers to those questions.
And what of Phelios? What did he want badly enough to die in battle for? Enough to reincarnate as Duzell’s brother in the last pages of the last volume of Vampire Game?
Duzell and Phelios didn’t just reincarnate as brothers either. They reincarnated as Ishtar and Darres’s sons.
Whose dying wish was to reborn in his next life with Ishtar and Darres? Whose blood was never sampled by Duzell before he died, even though he cut himself and offered it for the vampire king to sample? Who gave Duzell a dramatic, teasing look in the very first volume, back when Duzell was pretending to be a krawl kitten? Who was devious, manipulative, heroic, and caring, much like Phelios himself may well have been? Who put those qualities to work for Pheliostra and the people he loved, pitting them against Sharlen, the enemy of the realm and the heir to Duzell’s former dark dreams? Who else would have had the nerve to call the Holy Knight Phelios inconsiderate other Phelios’s reincarnation himself? (Well, Ishtar would have, but everyone, including Duzell himself thought she was his reincarnation at first.)
Perhaps someone who’d proved throughout the series that he had a melancholy, self hating, self destructive streak under his teasing smile. Someone who always wanted what he couldn’t have, yet did the best he could for everyone around him.
Think about it.
