The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life. This week, Mel Lake looks at “Children of the Night.” With a name like “Children of the Night” if this wasn’t a vampire romance wth a shojo art style I would be disappointed. Thankfully it is those things.
Children of the Night
Chapter 1-9
Updates every other Monday
Created by yuugi~
Reviewed by Mel Lake
I can’t come up with a better tagline for this story than the one provided by the author herself: “It’s like ‘Pride and Prejudice’ meets ‘Dracula’.” Add some manga/webcomic tropes and that’s exactly how I would “Children of the Night,” which is available on Webtoon. If you know you enjoy each of those elements, then this comic will appeal to you. If not, there’s plenty of fish in the Webtoon sea!
Since this is a Victorian-era gothic romance, we start with our heroine, a bookish young lady named Elizabeth (Beth, for short). She would much rather stay in her room and read “Wuthering Heights” than endure her mother’s constant criticism. To escape, she goes to confession, where she meets Lawrence Aspen, a man beset by guilt. Since we know this story involves vampires and this lad is a beautiful tortured soul, it comes as no surprise when we learn that Lawrence is a vampire driven to starvation because he can’t stand the guilt that comes with killing a human. And since we know this is a love triangle, we soon meet Kenneth, Beth’s new husband-to-be. He’s initially arrogant and cold to her, driving her into the comforting presence of Lawrence. But as Kenneth and Beth get to know one another while Lawrence is away dealing with the rules that govern vampires, Beth realizes she may have misjudged her betrothed.
Listen, none of this is new. Love triangles, gothic heroines who are moody and love to read, broody complicated men who seem awful but are harboring tragic secrets … it’s all good stuff. It’s the stuff of the Brontes and it’s popular for a reason. Add vampires to the mix and the story becomes juicy enough to sink your teeth into. (Sorry.) As a wannabe author myself, I’ve written my own take on vampires, and let me tell you, it’s hard to come up with something original to add to the myth. So while I appreciate new takes on vampire tropes, I also appreciate a story that takes classic tropes and employs them well. “Children of the Night” ticks off all the expected boxes for a gothic romance and does it so that even though you know exactly what’s coming, you still want to keep reading.
Besides a love of vampires, the art style of this comic will either appeal to you or not. If you know what I mean when I say the early chapters of this comic look like CLAMP, then you’ll likely know whether you’ll love or hate it. The story starts off with an absolutely gorgeous manga-inspired style that I love. Julien, the character who originally turned our vampire love interest into a vampire, has a character design that looks like he came straight from the pages of a Kouta Hirano manga. (And as a major “Hellsing” fangirl back in the day, I consider this a major plus.) As the story progresses, the artist’s style evolves. The newer pages look more like a modern webcomic. Still gorgeous, but with much less emphasis on textured clothing and manga hair. The shading moves from half-tone dots to cel-shading. And the layout changes from a traditional page approach to a continuous vertical scroll. While I understand these changes, part of me misses the older, shoujo manga-inspired style.
Vampires, love triangles, repressed Victorian-era social mores…if you like those things, this will be right up your alley. The only hesitation I have with reviewing this comic is that, since the comic is on the Canvas section of Webtoon, the author regularly plugs her Patreon at the end of each page. Everyone has to make rent and I’m all for artists making money doing what they do! But be aware that the ads are for NSFW material, so even though the comic itself is about as tame as a comic about a vampire romance can be, it has teasers for less tame material elsewhere.
