I think that
Yagari the vampire hunter wasn’t originally supposed to be in this anime. He wandered in from some other show’s set,
and the writers figured that they’d stick him in somewhere. However, I’m extremely thankful for this
mistake. Because he taught me something
I never would have thought of otherwise: shoujo anime need more grizzled,
badass vampire hunters with deep voices.
In fact, all anime do.
One joke
that a lot of people make about Twilight
is about what would happen if a vampire slayer showed up and took out all of
the Cullens, and how cool that would be.
While I wouldn’t say that this anime is exactly the same as Twilight (it’s significantly more
tolerable, and I don’t necessarily hate any of the characters enough to wish that
they died), this is basically that happening.
Well, of course, Yagari doesn’t kill anyone (for, as we all know,
bishies have plot armor), but he still threatens people and saunters around
being awesome, so I’m fine with it.
We also
learn why he has to wear an eyepatch, and it’s partially Zero’s fault (Zero
tried to prevent Yagari from fighting a vampire that was someone he knew, and
the vampire slashed at Yagari’s face in the confusion). I don’t know whether this should make me mad
at Zero (he made my favorite character lose his eye) or thankful (The eyepatch
definitely contributes to the ‘grizzled badass’ image).
Of course, directly after I make the
prediction that the headmaster switches between comic relief form and serious
business form every episode, he breaks sequence. In other words, he was in comic relief form
this time ‘round. I’m thankful, though,
because he provides entertaining contrast.
He was actually in a fairly serious scene here, but his glasses firmly
remained opaque. And he helps out Zero
and Yuuki, like a good daddy. Which means
that he basically displayed all of his likeable traits this episode.
Why are the
two best characters in this not the
mains? In fact, this anime’s treating
Yagari like he’s a bad guy for, y’know, trying to prevent Zero from going nuts
and attacking the day class students. It’s
not like he’s shown excellent restraint against his blood-sucking urges. And why the hell don’t they transfer Zero
over to the night class? It’s not like
the matter of whether or not he’s a vampire is debatable like it was in earlier
episodes. In fact, right now, he’s
significantly more dangerous than the
night class students. For one, he can’t
take the synthetic blood, so he’s constantly hungering for the real stuff. For two, he has the possibility of going all
Level E and killing everyone sitting around him.
I mean,
having Yagari the badass teaching the class is a bit of a help, but it still
seems to be pointlessly putting the students in danger. And someone’s bound to notice Zero’s fangs
and stuff at some point, so it also means that that asinine ‘keep the vampires
secret’ plan is going to fail (or a metric crapton of memories are going to
need to be erased).
The only
reason I can really see why they keep him in is because plot convenience. The writers want Yuuki and Zero to remain in
the same class so that they can interact more (even though he can't be bothered to show up half the time). The in-show reason basically boils down to ‘Yuuki
asked them to keep him in’. Hmm… what
matters more? Whether or not Yuuki gets
to hang out with her friend, or the lives of her fellow students?
I guess that
you could say that Kaname’s pulling a few strings (He’s the highest ranking
noble in the night class. That means that
they all listen to him, and theoretically he could threaten to have the
vampires attack the day class students or all leave the school on his orders if
he doesn’t get what he wants) because he wants to appease Yuuki so that she’ll
like him more. He doesn’t really care
what happens to the human students, anyway.
However, this is all speculation on my part.
Yuuki
actually surprised me this episode, because she somewhat broke out of her
character mold. Usually, the leads in
this sort of show often refuse to take any action on their own, often just watching
the fanservice guys/girls do everything, probably to make it easier for the
audience to insert themselves into their role.
However, Yuuki actually does something,
and something fairly major at that. I
don’t necessarily think that it was a good idea, but I have to applaud her for
actually being an active character instead of a passive one. *slow clap*
Basically,
she decides that, since he can’t take the blood tablets, she’s going to let
Zero suck her blood on a regular basis to stave off his vampiric urges during
class, and to let him have the strength to fight off degenerating into Level
E. This is probably a pretty bad idea,
and I can think of a better solution (raid a blood bank!) right off of the top
of my head, but I gotta give props to Yuuki for being a really caring friend.
However,
again, she isn’t very smart about it. I
do agree with her decision to keep it secret, but she does a terrible job at it. Wandering around school with a band-aid on
your neck is about the same as wearing a neon sign on your back saying “I’VE
BEEN BITTEN BY A VAMPIRE” to those in the know.
And, from then on, it would be really easy to deduce which vampire it was. The folks in the night class would probably
brag about it to each other if they were the one who bit her (especially Aido,
that would probably make Kaname bitchslap him, after all), and, even if they
didn’t, they probably wouldn’t lie about it to someone like Kaname.
In fact,
anyone who knows about her relationship with Zero and all of Zero’s problems (AKA
everyone) would instantly be able to figure out it was him. Hell, Kaname figures it out the moment he
sees her in the scene directly after
Zero biting her. In fact, he seemed to
have figured out what she was going to do before she even did it.
TL;DR: Yuuki
gets an A for effort but a F for execution, the entire day class is in danger,
and this anime is focusing on the wrong two guys. And there wasn’t a gun duel.
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