#DRCL - Midnight Children #3
Volume 3 of #DRCL midnight children functions as the dramatic fulcrum of Shin-ichi Sakamoto's Dracula retelling: it is the volume in which the series' title is formally explained to the reader, and in which the fall of Luke/Lucy Westenra into vampirism is completed — a narrative climax that transforms the story from a gothic boarding-school mystery into an all-out monster hunt. The volume also stages a pointed deconstruction of the Van Helsing archetype: where the professor represents the authority of centuries of accumulated human knowledge, Volume 3 forces that knowledge to buckle under Dracula's actual, surreal power, ending with Van Helsing's death and the burden of resistance falling entirely on the young protagonists. Sakamoto simultaneously deepens the series' exploration of gender fluidity, as Luke/Lucy's transformation into a fully vampiric state forces a binary nocturnal existence on a character who had previously inhabited a fluid identity — a thematically loaded act of narrative violence that distinguishes this adaptation from every prior Dracula reimagining. As part of a series nominated at the 2024 Eisner Awards in both Best Adaptation from Another Medium and Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia, this volume represents one of the most creatively ambitious manga interpretations of Western Gothic literature to reach Anglophone and Francophone audiences simultaneously.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was conceived after Sakamoto completed his Innocent Rouge duology in 2020 and then collaborated with horror specialist Usamaru Furuya on a fanzine, an experience that led him to re-read Bram Stoker's novel and discover in it themes — epidemic fear, patriarchal resistance, and the othering of the foreign — that felt urgently contemporary. He first self-published a doujinshi version before being invited by the Grand Jump editorial team at Shueisha to develop it as a full serialization; a preview chapter ran on December 2, 2020, with monthly serialization beginning January 20, 2021. The Ki-oon French edition — Volume 3 published October 3, 2024, translated by Sylvain Chollet — brought the title to Francophone readers roughly one year after Viz Media's English hardcover edition began releasing in North America (September 2023 onward), making Volume 3 a near-simultaneous international release milestone for the series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written, drawn, and plotted solely by Shin-ichi Sakamoto (Innocent, Ascension), with no separate scripter; Bram Stoker's novel is credited as the source work.
- The French Ki-oon edition of Volume 3 was published October 3, 2024 (ISBN 9791032716649), translated by Sylvain Chollet; the English Viz Media hardcover edition of the same volume was released in 2024.
- Volume 3 is the volume in which the meaning of the title '#DRCL' is finally revealed to the reader.
- The central narrative event of this volume is the completed 'fall' of Luke/Lucy Westenra — Dracula's bite, the failed blood-transfusion attempt led by Van Helsing, and Lucy's full transformation into a vampire who takes on an insect-like form.
- Professor Abraham Van Helsing — introduced earlier in the series — dies in this volume, his expertise in vampire folklore shown to be fatally insufficient against Dracula's actual power, including a moment where Dracula casually consumes garlic flowers rather than being repelled by them.
- The volume opens with a visually spectacular sequence depicting Dracula commanding an entire zoo's worth of wolves (not merely one, as in the source novel), depicted flying over the London skyline on a wolf-drawn sleigh.
- The series it belongs to was nominated at the 2024 Eisner Awards in the Best Adaptation from Another Medium and Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia categories, and also nominated at the inaugural American Manga Awards (2024) for Best New Manga.
- Sakamoto's broader series began as a collaboration fanzine with horror mangaka Usamaru Furuya in 2020, before Shueisha's Grand Jump invited a full serialization; the French licensee Ki-oon released Volume 1 in January 2024, with Volume 3 following in October of the same year.
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