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Click here to return to the main site. DVD Review
Yuki Cross finds herself stuck between two worlds as a ‘Day Class’ Guardian at the Cross Academy, run by her adoptive father Kaien Cross. Her job is to protect the female students of the day class from the boys of the night class. It’s not just their womanhood that needs protecting as the attractive boys of the night class are all vampires, led by Kaname Kuran. The principle, Kaien Cross, hopes to foster understanding between the two races, but some cannot forgive the vampires for what they are, including Yuki’s partner and childhood friend, vampire hunter Zero Kiryuu... Volume one of Vampire Knight Guilty (2008) has the first four episodes - Burden of Sinners, The Eternal Promise, The Azure Portrait and Devil’s Awakening - of the second season of the show, which eventually ran to thirteen episodes. The show was directed by Kiyoko Sayama and written by Matsuri Hino, who also wrote the original manga. We are still in the meandering maze of the three way relationship between Yuki, Zero and Kaname. With Zero returning to the school, following his wound, we are guaranteed a great deal of musings on love and feelings. Yes this is an anime aimed squarely at fourteen year old girls. It remains true that the main driving force in the show's story is the dynamic between the three main characters and how they stand in comparison to each other. Yuki, naturally as a guardian, is placed squarely between the two worlds of mortals and vampires at the Cross Academy. Zero has a more interesting position being at the same time a guardian and a vampire. The show's enigmatic twists come from Kaname, a trueblood, who seems overly interested in the mortal world. This internal dichotomy and their external tangled relationships are the main reason for the show's existence. If you do not connect with this then you are unlikely to connect with the show as a whole. The story kicks off with the Senate sending an assassin to kill Zero for the murder of a pureblood vampire, only to be saved by the ultimate pureblood, Kaname. What spins out in the following episode is the gradual filling in of the background of the vampire society, as well as a new murder mystery, which further stresses Yuki’s desire for both men. There is no change in the show's visual aesthetic with the characters having an elongated frame and Yuki, especially, having eyes so large that it gives her a permanent expression of surprise. The feeling of the show remains almost atonal. There are some visual attempts at humour, but for the greater part of the show the feeling is one of brooding threat, which you will experience as a greater ambience, or possible find the lack of balance a but wearing. The picture is nice and clean with a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, audio is either Japanese or English DD 2.0 Surround Sound, not a real problem with a show which is mostly about people pontificating over their feelings for one another. The disc contains no extras. If you liked Vampire Knight then it’s a shoe in that you’re going to like this show, which is really just season two renamed. 6 Charles Packer Buy this item online
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