Vampire Knight Episode 1 - Night of the Vampires

OP - Futatsu no Kodou to Akai Tsumi (ON/OFF) - repeated, repeated, repeated lyrics. Glass shards and nightgowns - it’s shoujo angst-riffic.

ED - still doll (Kanon Wakeshima) - creepy vampire bunny thing! What a dreary song, though, barely any melody to it. Can’t imagine anyone buying it as a single, certainly.

Years ago, Yuki Cross was saved from a vampire attack by another vampire, the dashing Kaname Klan. Now she polices a boarding school where humans study in the Day Class and vampires in the Night Class, where the vampires are taking experimental blood capsules to stop them needing to feed on humans and Kaname is a student looking not a day older than when he rescued Yuki.

To interrupt the episode synopsis - I don’t have a problem with Kaname being ageless, as that’s standard vampire lore. I do hope, however, that we get a good excuse for him being in school - is he just phenomenally stupid? Does vampirism make you incapable of understanding calculus or something that means you constantly have to stay in high school? Enquiring minds need to know!

Anyhoo, Yuki and her adopted brother Zero are Guardians, policing the interface between the two Classes; Zero’s lack of tolerance of vampires stems from them killing his family, but he appears to have A Dark Secret involving vampiric tendencies and a mysterious tattoo on his neck which will no doubt cause glorious levels of shoujo melodrama at a later point in the series. This episode’s minor piece of plotting involves a vampire losing his self-control and drinking some of Yuki’s blood, but we mostly get a whole load of setup - lots of characters who are all impossibly beautiful and stylish, lots of suppressed memories and past-related drama, the usual stuff.

Ah, what glorious ripe shoujo cheese this show is! The animation’s not great, and the story is mildly amusing in how melodramatic it has the potential to be, but it’s hard not to enjoy Vampire Knight because it doesn’t really get anything wrong per se. There’s a surprising amount of humour in this first episode for what sounds like a broody, gothic story, but it’s generally quite entertaining. I don’t think there’s really much more to say about Vampire Knight thus far - it’s not a show that provokes great thought by any means, but I had fun watching the first episode and definitely intend to watch next week. I think I’ve been lacking ridiculous angst in my anime diet…

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