 Hmm. The first volume of Vampire Knight caught my attention nicely - a vampire tale with just the right mix of action and drama - but this volume seems to lose the plot a little, as Yuki starts making rash decision, while indecision seems to be the problem for others...
5 - Moonlight Festivities
Certain steps have had to be taken to keep Zero's bloodlust in check, a condition of his remaining in the day class that Kaname has agreed to - although Yuki has been sternly warned to keep an eye on her friend, lest the measures taken not be enough. No sooner is she warned, though, Zero disappears - and that's just the start of their problems. A new lecturer is Ethics has joined the school's staff, Toga Yagari - and he and Zero have something of a past history. Later, Yuki is attacked by another Level E - an event that leads to a rather unusual visit to the Moon Dorm...
6 - Their Choices
In the past, Toga was Zero's master, the man who trained him to hunt vampires and help reinforce the hatred that Zero felt for them after the deaths of his family. Now, though, Toga is here to kill him, as Zero is now considered dangerous - a vampire who Toga knows has fed on a human. But Yuki believes that there's hope for Zero yet, that he can be stopped from degenerating to Level E, and refuses to allow Toga to carry out his "duty". At that she's successful, but Zero instead ends up in isolation, and Yuki's not happy. With Toga having been instructed by the headmaster to teach the Night Class, he's not exactly in a good mood, either...
7 - The Scarlet Maze
During target practice, Zero reveals that he can sense Yuki's feelings for Kaname through her blood. In a flashback, Yuki recalls when Kaien adopted her and that she was at first fearful of Kaname before becoming close to him. When Kaien brought Zero into the household, he explained to her that his entire family had been killed by a vampire. Shortly afterwards, he established the Cross Academy with the Day Class and Night Class, a move that infuriated Zero. After class one day, Yuki attempted to visit Kaname, and saw him drinking the blood of Ruka Souen. Afraid, Yuki ran away. In the present, Zero finds Yuki asleep and is tempted to drink her blood when Kaname appears. He explains to Zero that the only reason he has not killed him is to keep him alive for Yuki's sake...
So, after last volume serving up revelations about Zero's true nature and his little snack on Yuki's neck, this volume understandably moves on to keeping him on the straight and narrow - with the alternative being to keep him dead, as Toga's appearance on the scene reinforces. If there's one things that's consistent across different shows in terms of vampire behaviour, though, it's that blood lust is a powerful, and ultimately irresistible, thing, and so you can figure out quite early on that "the straight and narrow" isn't going to be an option for Zero. But with his own avowed hatred for vampires making a move to the night class impractical, and Yuki determined to make sure that Zero gets to live as normal a life as possible, what to do..?
There are several problems with this. First, now that Bad Things are on the agenda, the angst level of the series has risen considerably - that's to be expected with a show whose primary audience is going to be teenage girls (it's a Shoujo Beat title, remember), but if you're outside that demographic you could find angst annoyance reaching dangerous levels. The other is that Yuki's actions through the disc don't make a hell of a lot of sense to me, viewed from the point of a passive observer. Fair enough, while she's not blood-related to Zero he's been a large part of her life for quite some time (and there's a whole episode devoted to covering past events, between Zero being adopted by Kaien through to the setting up of the Academy, that looks at their relationship in a bit more detail), but some of the choices she makes here are beyond life-changing for her, without there ever being evidence that her connection with Zero is enough to support them. If anything, she's closer to Kaname than she'll ever be to Zero, and yet his opinions are being overlooked - much to his disappointment.
Another problem is that, once a Vampire Hunter arrives on the scene, I expect some vampire hunting - but Toga, despite appearing to be at least 100% badass and knowing rightly what his former charge has been up to, can't bring himself to do what must be done. Even Buffy was more decisive than this.
So for the main Yuki / Zero story, then, a heartfelt "meh". But there is more interesting stuff here, revolving around Kaname and the vampire - specifically, the level of control that he exerts on them. As a Pureblood, he's at the top of the vampire hierarchy and the other will, for the most part, do as he says - but that doesn't mean they agree with him. The flashback episode makes it clear that Kaname and Kaien had significant contact with each other prior to the Cross Academy being set up; while it's also made very clear that, if it weren't for Kaname's controlling influence, the other vampires would be quite happily chowing down on the students of the Day Class - and there's a certain amount of resentment that he stop them from doing that. So the question is raised: at what point could that resentment boil over? If the position of a Pureblood sacrosanct, or could there be a rebellion against Kaname by the other students of the Night Class? The potential is certainly there, and that's the side of the series that I'd like to see more of, as opposed to the Yuki & Zero Angstfest.
A bit of a missed opportunity this time around, then, but there's still plenty of time left to get things right (6 more episodes in this season, and then the second season - presuming that Manga release it). I do like Vampire Knight, flaws and all, but this volume just leans too much in the direction of angst and away from the good stuff that's here. Still worth checking out, though.
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