Wings of Vendemiaire
"God's creations need no wills of their own... they should listen to the voice of god." |
Wings of Vendemiaire (Vendemiaire No Tsubasa) is the debut manga by mangaka Mohiro Kitoh, who later went on to create the better known Narutaru and Bokurano. It is a two-volume collection of short stories involving six Artificial Humans known as Vendemiaires. It takes place in Europe both before and after the first World War, and starts off when Ray, a young boy, meets Vendemiaire #1 for the first time, and ends the day after Ray dies.
Tropes used in Wings of Vendemiaire include:
- Armour Piercing Slap: Vendemiaire #5 to Avary
- Artificial Humans
- Children Are Innocent: Mostly played straight, unlike Kitoh's later works. Subverted with Brumaire.
- Book Ends: The manga begins and ends with the same shot of a road going over the horizon. At the beginning young Ray is coming home with his motorcycle, and at the end Vendemiaire is leaving on a bike after she had sex with old Ray's dead body.
- Diagonal Cut: The circus ringmaster breaks apart Vendemiaire #1 with a slash of his whip, and also cuts Ray's hand with it.
- Distant Finale
- Goggles Do Nothing: For some reason, The Priest wears goggles.
- Gonk: Some of the circus freaks (it goes without saying). One looks like a monkey.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Brumaire makes Vendemiaire #4 kill a rabbit caught in a trap with a stone. Later, when Brumaire gets caught in a trap, Vendemiaire kills Brumaire with the stone.
- Happiness in Slavery: Subverted with Vendemiaire #5.
- Hoist By Her Own Petard: Brumaire
- Ill Girl: Thermidor
- Multicolored Hair: "Sixty-Three", the orphaned trapper guy, has a head of blond hair with a tuft of dark hair on the forehead.
- Nightmare Fuel: Fairly tame when compared with Kitoh's later works, but it still has its moments - most notably the fifth chapter.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Inverted; Milton dislikes violence and does not fight, unlike most other noblemen.
- Sinister Minister: The Priest definitely counts, he can also be seen as a Badass Preacher, since he's pretty good at fighting.
- Soul Jar: When Milton throws the Priest's bible into the fireplace, the priest catches fire and burns to death.
- Squick: Vendemiaire #1 "playing with" Ray's dead body in the final chapter
- Surprise Creepy
- Theme Naming: In every chapter there is a female character named after a month of the French Republican calendar.
- Time Skip
- Winged Humanoid: All the Vendemiaires except for one.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The main source of conflict.
- Whip It Good: A whip is the circus ringmaster's favourite weapon, he is seen destroying one of his artificial humans and cutting Vendemiaire #1 in half with it.
- You Have Failed Me...: The ringmaster destroys one of his automatons (see above) for not having performed well during the show.