Vampire Doll Guilt-Na-Zan Volume 5

Guilt-Na-Zan was a vampire, imprisoned in an iron cross hundreds of years ago by a famous ancestor of Kyoji. Kyoji, in need of a servant for the house, resurrected the vampire's spirit inside of a doll of wax, which he brought to life with his occult knowledge. Now, Guilt-Na-Zan acts as a menial servant to Kyoji and his sister, Tonae, and can only regain his former vampire body by drinking a tiny bit of Tonae's blood.

To distinguish between the vampire form and his new form, he is called Guilt-Na or Guilt-Na-Chan in his tiny girl wax-body form, and his full name in his male vampire form. Along with Tonae and Kyoji, Guilt-Na shares a house with Vincent, Guilt-Na-Zan's servant, a somewhat dim-witted bat who is nonetheless completely loyal to his former master, but has a hard time being threatening, menacing or scary. Another character, Dune, is a demon who absorbed negative emotions, who had hunted Guilt-Na-Zan, but has now become a teacher at the school where Tonae attends.

In this volume, Guilt-Na must take Tonae's place when Kyoji senses a new threat to her at the school. One of the girls, Moegi, has been acting strange, and when Dune collapses, he realizes that Moegi is the cause. She has a fallen Shinigami attatched to her, and the Shinigami, for some reason, is seeking Guilt-Na-Zan. But while Guilt-Na, Kyoji and Tonae seek to know why this fallen Shinigami is looking for Guilt-Na-Zan, Dune realizes that he knows the being, and it is he who must save the Shinigami from his fallen state, which he got into by helping Moegi to live and grow strong when she was sickly as a child. For interfering in the life of another, even though it was a good act, the Shinigami fell. But can Dune help his former friend to regain his Shinigami status?

This was an intriguing volume, but flawed in many ways. By getting away from the former storyline of the manga and introducing so many new characters, the story is weakening itself. Perhaps it is just me, but the manga just seems to be marking time. I am more interested in the status of Guilt-Na-Zan and his interactions with Tonae and Kyoji than in the other characters being introduced. In short, the story is fluff without substance, and I find myself not appreciating it any more. I may read the other volumes, but it is going to be hard to convince myself into buying them when the story is "Ooh! Look! Another shiny character!" I am hoping this gets better soon and doesn't become a jump the shark moment.