Vampire Knight
Information
Plot
The cheerful Yuuki Cross and the gruff Zero Kiryuu are members of the disciplinary committee at Cross Academy, which houses two very distinct classes: the Day Class and the Night Class. Their job consists of upholding order between the classes when they switch out. While that may not seem like an especially difficult task, the Day Class is unaware of the truth behind the Night Class—their utterly gorgeous students are vampires.
Ten years ago, Yuuki was saved from a vampire attack by Kaname Kuran, a Pureblood vampire. Now, Kaname is the leader of the Night Class, and Yuuki's disciplinary committee position allows her to see him again, making her feelings for him grow complicated. Meanwhile, Zero bears a white-hot hatred of all vampires and believes they can never live in harmony with humans. But a secret from Zero's past soon threatens the fragile peace of all at the academy, and things may never be the same again.
Review
Definitely one of the weirder anime I have watched in my childhood. Back then, my tween self enjoyed vampire stories (having also been a fan of Twilight) so this seemed right up my alley! It’s hard for me to determine what I truly thought of this show at the time as it was such a long time ago. All I remember is that it was highly popular among my peers and on the shelves of all libraries that had manga (which were not many at the time).
Let’s get the positives out of the way – the MUSIC. The soundtrack is fantastic, both opening songs were straight bangers and I can still jam to those today. The ending songs were creepy and probably not something I would listen to out of choice, but it fitted the vibe of this tale very well.
Back to the actual plot, I cannot get through a re-watch now as there are many tropes that are hard to sit through. The relationships in this show are very questionable, they try to excuse it by saying that they are beasts and therefore do not abide by human laws – but as a human viewer, it is hard to separate what we deem acceptable in the real world with what is acceptable in this shows lore.
Other than the weird dynamics, the characters themselves – especially the main leads, Yuki and her main love interest, Kaname, are also hard to watch now. Yuki is quite a bland character and has a lot of emo monologues – I could see this appealing to all of us in our edgy phases of ’08! Kaname is highly creepy with pretty much everything he does and says. Zero is probably the one character I actually liked, sure, he was angsty and loud at times but he also was NOT RELATED to the female lead and he had a genuine friendship with her before it all went down. Perhaps I just can’t get over the fact the leads are related but I couldn’t root for them then, and I most certainly can’t now.
The ending of the show didn’t properly conclude their stories, which meant I had to turn to the original source material – the manga, to find out what happens in the end. If I thought the dynamics were were in the show, the manga is on a whole another level. Yuki has children with both lads! I do not wish to remember anything more of this weird series so I shall conclude the review there.
