Vampire Knight Volume 2
Disc 2 of the Vampire Knight anime contains 3 episodes that mostly serve as flashbacks, padding out the back story to our 3 main characters and the origins of the school the story is set in.
Almost a 2 parter; episodes 5 and 6 focus’ on Zero and his vampire hunter origins as his old mentor and guardian, Toga Yagari, comes to the school and discovers Zero’s turn into the creature they hunt and kill. Disgusted with himself and fear of hurting others, Zero agrees to lock himself inside his room under his master’s orders, knowing that Toga plans on assassinating him. Except Yuki has other ideas.It’s unfortunate that Toga doesn’t play a larger role in these turn of events as his relationship with Zero and reaction to his turning could’ve really created some interesting dramatic tension into the plot and his interaction with the Night Class is nicely played too. Sadly, Toga doesn’t make a lasting impression, leaving Zero to his endeavours not long after he makes his debut, although the fault is stemmed from the source material rather than just the anime. On the other hand the episodes do allow room for some vampire mythology as well as drag in suspense into the love triangle with added blood thirsty fan service between Zero and Yuki.
The 3rd episode on the disc is fixed on Yuki with back to back flashbacks from when she first meets Kaname, to the early signs of friendship with Zero and the start of the school they all attend today. Episode 7 is strongest of the 3 but is not without its problems; it’s interesting to note that it takes 6 episodes to cover the first 2 books (9 chapters) of the manga, yet episode 7 covers 90% of book 3, so we have a situation where we get thrown multiple flashbacks covering at least 10 years of Yuki’s life with little time to breathe in between them. Although we do get nice glimpses of Kaname’s kinder side and some disturbing imagery of Zero that compliments the series gothic tone and subject matter, the rest flies by you without a second thought. Episode 7 also contains some weird artistic choices made to build up drama in certain scenes, but because they haven’t been used before it comes off as unnecessarily pretentious. For instance we get a scene leading up to finding Zero at his worst by having sporadic flashing text across the screen, similar to the likes of Evangelion in the more psychological episodes to create unique imagery. It was interesting to say the least, but having not been used before and only for about 20 seconds just before the eyecatch, it would’ve been more effective elsewhere.
The 3 episodes provided here aren’t going to be greatly remembered down the line, especially as its story telling faults and forcedly dealt expositions are glaringly obvious, but its mix of teen melodrama and supernatural romance with good looking characters is hard to resist. Its art is still gorgeous, music hitting all the right notes and the dub…well that still needs work but several actors do pull through. Christopher Corey Smith as Headmaster Cross provides the best of comic relief, Travis Willingham takes charge of his character of Toga and Zero has some nice scenes provided by Vic Mignogna (although he doesn’t score major points as Zero only has one mood in this disc: depressed).
DVD extras have still yet to make their debut into this series but the menu art still shines, it’s a shame really they don’t go the extra mile to update the clips running in the background to match the discs content.
Overall, Vampire Knight is still sticking quite close to the original source material and has enough flesh in it to satisfy the casual vampire and supernatural romance fan. This series isn’t going to win any awards for trying to be creative, but you’ll be tied over until we get our hands on disc 3.
