Anime: Vampire Knight

NOTICE: Consider this review to cover both seasons. Nothing much changes in between them anyway. And don’t get the constant irony and humiliating remarks too personal. They are mostly there for flavor.

THE STAFF
- Animated by studio DEEN, which means bad production values and cheap fan service gimmicks.
- Directed by Sayama Kiyoko, who did a somewhat good job in Skip Beat but otherwise produced nothing much of value.
- Based on the only manga made by some nobody.

SPECIFICS
Vampire Knight has a huge fan-base and it’s not due to its themes. Two lines in reading the description and you already know it has to do with shojo romance + vampires. Twenty six episodes later and you barely get anything other than that. Let’s not kid ourselves; it was the hype built by the success of the Twilight books and movies that mostly made this anime so famous. And we all know why Twilight is so famous.

“Oh look at me, I’m a dumb cute broad living a simple boring life. Oh look at him, he is a super gorgeous hunk whose whole life is an exiting adventure full of mystery and suspense. Oh look at us, we both have zero depth so we fit to be together. The storytelling sucks monkeyballs but as long as we can have this stereotypical shallow romance that can never happen in real life and make so many unsecured teen girls’ privates go wet with the stupidity of it, who cares?”

And here I thought the Titanic was overhyped… But enough with these ridiculous western trash; let’s focus on this anime trash instead. So just like the above, we have a show whose main attraction is its pure stupidity. In case you didn’t figure it out yet, the more stupid the characters are, the better the romance feels in such shows. Make them dumb as sea cucumbers and you got yourself the most awesome romance ever made. Oh, and of course make them all as beautiful/handsome as you possibly can because ugly people don’t deserve ideal romances and you are after all supposed to identify with the unrealistic characters. Hard to do that with a whale and a pizza face.

Despite my mockery, I actually liked some parts in the whole story. There is this school, during day the humans study there and during night, the vampires get their turn. It is a world where they coexist with this method. Plus, they freely allow bites amongst each other since only pureblood vampires can turn you to their own. Plus, the school is full of bishonen vampires and idiotic girls who scream for them to suck them dry every afternoon, to the point they need school security to keep them from removing their pants in front of them. So far it looks as a nice premise; we get to see the coexistence of two different species and possible romances between their different lifestyles. We clearly see screaming fangirls and lots of bishonens; so why not?

The problem is that they barely try to do anything with this; it’s just there as decoration. All you see is Yuuki, the average klutz stupid girl with eyes half her head, constantly getting to all sorts of trouble and constantly screaming helplessly for Zero to come and save her. And Zero, a human midway to become vampire, that has license to kill uncontrolled vampires, who needs medication in order for his dark side not to come out and kill everybody. Oh, and Yuuki has amnesia too. Do all that seem original to you? No they are not and frankly they are not supposed to be for the romance to work. It is supposed to be ideal and ideal romances lack variety.

But hey, I am willing to accept that as long as they do something out of the ordinary. I mean, if it remains ordinary, then it’s an average show. And they didn’t for the most part; 50% of the plot is silly girls screaming over pretty boys, eating cake, going to bawls, and 45% about Yuuki looking all surprised with a dumb look, always going to places she shouldn’t, getting into trouble again and again and again, and Zero acting all emo before coming to save her again and again and again. That is the archetypical shojo after all; stupid frail girls and emo tough boys. The other part is some crummy plot that happens so slowly you end up forgetting it or not caring.

They didn’t even bother to excuse very basic elements. Like, how the school principle allowed for such a young and highly unstable individual to become a vampire hunter. It makes no sense. Or how do people in this world coexist exactly if they are constantly attacked by vampires. And for Pete’s sake, what are the police or the teachers or the parents doing all this time?

You know what? To hell with the story not making sense or being unoriginal. It would still be ok if the pacing was balanced and we got some developments on each episode. Well for a twenty six episode show we only get crummy plot in barely 1/4th of those. Many secondary events seem to repeat at least 10 times just to stall time and bore us even further. Where are the romantic polygons? The constant turn heels? Some characters other than the main two who actually matter in the plot? I barely cared or remember anyone else from the cast.

The production values kinda help to keep you interested a bit more than a few episodes. The environments have a very good atmosphere, with nice details and dark colors. And the characters are all members of a model agency and wear funky uniforms, while the plot is full of scenes where Yuuki gets all rosy cheeked around hunks. A weird thing is how the artwork was in the first season heavy on chibi and other simplistic drawings during silly moments, a thing that was lowered a lot in the second season. On the other hand the soundtrack was exceptional in the first season but went rather mediocre in the second. In overall, they are both good but show many signs of weakness that detract you from the show even further.

Vampire Knight would make a fine corny 6 OVA romance show. They would dense the plot this way as much as it needed and the production values would be even better. It wouldn’t stretch its plot to eventually bore you with its cheese. As it stands it is nothing but a boredrome and I choose Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust anytime over this one.

Animation[br]The animation is suited to the story, nothing fancy, but it is consistent in its quality throughout the series. Action sequences are fluid and blood splashes nicely. Contrast between day and night sequences in the same environments is particularly well done. I really enjoyed the Gothic architecture of the surrounding city and campus. [br][br]Sound[br]Voice acting was solid and I liked the dark, brooding OST.[br][br]Story[br]I have not read the manga so I cannot make any judgment on whether this adaptation deviated at all from its plot. However, the plot and setting presented are fairly interesting. Yuki Cross, protagonist, was the victim of a vampire attack at a young age, her life was saved by Kaname Kuran, also a vampire. Yuki grows up as the adopted daughter of the headmaster of a school dedicated to bringing together vampires and humans on a single campus. Yuki and her adopted brother, Zero, patrol the school grounds keeping the peace between the day class, humans, and the night class, vampires. The day class is kept ignorant of the nature of the night class. Events occur that could compromise the peace on campus and imperil the lives of students. While trying to work against these forces, Yuki is caught in a love triangle between her adopted brother and vampire savior. [br][br]Characters[br]The main character is sympathetic, whenever she fell into peril I was genuinely anxious as to her well-being. Her two love interests provide nice foils of each other. I did not care for the father figure. He seems to randomly sweep pendulum-like from comedy relief to concerned headmaster. No matter how the series attempts to explain his behavior he comes off as entirely unbelievable or mentally ill. [br][br]Value[br]The series is an interesting contribution to vampire lore. I would not watch it a second time, but do look forward to the sequel series. [br][br]Enjoyment[br]Overall an enjoyable viewing and I feel I can recommend it to anyone interested in either vampires or shoujo.