Kyuuketsuki Miyu Manga
Although my pages are supposed to be dedicated more towards the anime, I feel obligated to say something about the Vampire Miyu manga since that is where everything began in the first place. I'm not actually overly knowledgeable about the manga, and I only have two issues of Shin Vampire Miyu, but I'll try my best with what little I have to go on.
Vampire Miyu is written and drawn by Narumi Kakinouchi. If you don't already know the basis of Vampire Miyu, then I'd recommend looking at the OAV section since I'm not going to repeat all that stuff again. There are however a few differences between the manga and anime. The biggest difference would probably be that of Larva. In the OAV Larva shows up.... and basically hovers in the background (and never speaks). The manga is a bit different. Larva does wear his mask quite a bit, but he shows up regularly without it too. Larva also talks. Since Vampire Miyu is in the shoujo (younger girls manga) category, it would probably be pointless to have a good looking guy as a main character who is always covered up!
As for the manga itself... it's rather hard for me to describe. Although the plots tend to be fairly intriguing in themselves, they are also to some extent... simplistic. Dialogs are broken up quite a bit, long dialogs are rare, if even present at all. This tends to make an issue sort of drag out. The manga itself might be very interesting, but you realize once your finished that not a whole lot was accomplished.
The art work is really something else. If you've ever seen Kakinouchi's color works, there is no denying that they are simply gorgeous. This wonderful technique does carry over into the manga, but it is sort of transformed once it is put into the base black and white form of Japanese manga. Backgrounds are simplistic, if even present at all. More often than not the manga actually resembles a collection of pencil sketches if you weren't to look at the bigger picture of the manga. You could think of it as de-emphasizing the petty details to accentuate the lines that count. For a comic this is unusual, but if you look at other more traditional Japanese artwork, you can see that Vampire Miyu is much like a blend of traditional Japanese art and manga. It can be distracting at times however. Swirly lines adorn pages in such a way that it's almost hard to tell what's going on. If artwork were judged with how much you could get done, with the least amount of pen ink used, Narumi Kakinouchi would certainly be the undisputed queen.
As a small side note, I think I should mention Vampire Yui, which is also a manga by Kakinouchi. From all indications it would appear much to be a Vampire Miyu clone. The premise is much the same same: supernatural girl who has a guy protecting her, and she ends up fighting other supernatural beings.... etc. Yui however, seems more human. While Miyu being detached and aloof can be interesting in a way, it's also hard to relate to. The Vampire Miyu story also goes in depth about the story of Shinma and such, while the Yui manga tends to focus more on relationships. Yui has also made appearances in the Vampire Miyu manga. Quite a few images on the Internet that are supposed to be of Miyu are actually Yui.
