For millennia, the Poe clan have lived in the shadows as they pass through one human civilization after another. Never aging, never dying except under the most extreme of circumstances, and never giving birth to new members of the family, they are the kind of creature that mankind secretly fears. Siblings Edgar and Marybelle weren’t born into this family but now their fate is forever entangled with it for the rest of their immortal lives.
The Poe Clan is a gorgeous looking tale about vampires (“vampirnellas” here), family bonds, and sometimes love; it is also absolutely a manga where the pacing and the overall flow will drive some readers crazy. Chronologically this first of two omnibus volumes covers roughly from the 1700s, when young siblings Edgar and Marybelle are discovered abandoned in the woods in England, to 1959 where Edgar is now attending a German boarding school. The first three chapters aren’t even really about these two siblings or the larger Poe clan, but rather about other, ordinary humans who encounter these vampirnellas in different times and who never forget the experience.
I’m not convinced that Moto Hagio actually knew precisely where she was going with these first three chapters. The first chapter seems almost like a pilot for a similar but different story, as if the entire series was going to be a collection of stories of regular people who met members of the Poe clan (instead of focusing on them directly), and while the extremely winding nature of chapter 3 does match with the pacing in other chapters it contributes more to a sense of tone than anything else and content-wise feels very different from the rest of the story. These chapters are also on the long side — chapter 4 is 128 pages, chapter 5 is 160 pages, and chapter 6 is 135, which did make me appreciate Fantagraphics decision to go with omnibus volumes (although on the flip side that means that the $40 MSRP of this volume will attract fewer, new Hagio readers like myself).
In addition to a plot that winds and a story where the chapters aren’t presented chronologically, I felt like there were some genuine continuity errors which had me flipping back and forth through this huge book in order to keep a relatively simple story straight in my mind. The Poe clan are the type of vampires who never age and while both Marybelle and Edgar were quite young when they were turned, when I read these first few chapters I thought they were both around 8 or 10 years old, not the 13 to 15 years old when it actually happened. Marybelle in particular is drawn wearing far more mature clothing and with more adult mannerisms while she is still human than she ever is as a vampirnella; I can’t tell if this is a genuine continuity error or if I’m supposed to read something into the fact that Edgar ages quite a bit mentally when turned while Marybelle seems to “regress” instead. We still haven’t seen the moment yet when she was turned but this and a few other, more spoilery details concerning the village the Poe clan made their home in really frustrated me as I tried to understand what events the characters went through to make them who they are in each part of the story.
The Poe Clan is a beautiful looking story that is none the less a little tiring to read. It’s one of the few times where I’ve wished for an adaptation, not to draw in more fans, but because I think I would have been better able to follow the story with musical pieces, greater visual differences between the characters (i.e, hair colors other than “no shading” and “all ink”), and other cues. Of course, this would result in the hypothetical trade-off of Hagio’s art which I think is truly the biggest draw for the series. I will admit to being frustrated by some of her same-face syndrome amongst the young men of the cast (also, the way the coloring and shading is done on Fantagraphics cover looks exactly like the beginning of mold/other forms of decay which alarms me every time I see my copy) but the art is gorgeous none the less. I hope that my quibbles with the continuity are resolved in the second omnibus volume so that I can sit back and enjoy the stunning art without reservation.