Review for Vampire Knight Guilty: Volume 2

Introduction

It's time for another disc loaded with UPOPs again, User Prohibited OPerations that make this reviewer's life a chore. I suppose it's okay for people who just want to sit down and watch it, without taking notes. But the previous volume of Vampire Knight Guilty only added to the burden by offering a less than appealing visual transfer. Vampire Knight Guilty has some clawing back to do if it doesn't want my scant appreciation (I'm not a natural fan of moody and elegant vampire stories) to ebb. It doesn't look like this second volume will do it.


The Cross Academy is a boarding school with a difference. It's also the venue for a unique social experiment, where vampires are trying to co-exist with humans. Of course the humans can't know about this, so the school is divided into the Day Class and the Night Class, and the only time that the human students interact with the vampires is at twilight, when the classes change and the Day Class return to their dorm. All they know is that the Night Class is full of handsome boys and beautiful girls, aristocratic and elegant. It's down to the Guardians to keep from the Day Class from learning the truth about the Night Class, two students, Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu who have to protect the humans, should the worst happen. The school's headmaster adopted Yuki when she was five, after a trauma that left her with amnesia, while Zero's own traumatic past has left him with an abiding hatred of vampires, and a secret that he keeps hidden.


The first series introduced us to the volatile triangle of Yuki Cross, Kaname Kuran, and Zero Kiryu, and the complex world that they inhabit. It's volatile as all three are conflicted by their pasts, but most of all Zero, who after the attack that destroyed his family, was left with the inevitability of becoming a vampire and degenerating into a monster. As the previous series concluded, the vampire that attacked him, Shizuka Hio, returned to complete her vengeance, not least by revealing that Zero's brother was still alive, but now her loyal servant. It also transpired that the 'cure' for Zero's affliction lay in Hio's blood, but it was cure that he chose to shun. As the previous series concluded, Zero was on the verge of becoming a Level E, when Kaname approached him with an offer.


The next three episodes of Vampire Knight Guilty are presented on this disc from Manga Entertainment.

5. The Subordinate's Trap
Life is never easy. With the embers of the past beginning to flare up again, Yuki is gradually becoming more and more haunted by visions of blood. She realises that the only way to banish them would be to fill in the gaps in her memory once and for all. But realising that those gaps have something to do with Kaname, and recovering that past may irreparably alter the way that she sees him, makes her hesitant to ask. At the same time, Zero has to deal with a new transfer student in his class, his twin brother Ichiru. It gets worse when he goes to confront Kaname about how he treats Yuki, only for the confrontation not to go the way he expected. And when Yuki finally gets up the courage to demand the truth about her past from Kaname, he counters with an unexpected condition.


6. The Fake Lovers
It's all because Kaname has sensed the danger that now surrounds Yuki, even as she is tormented by her lost memories. The change in their circumstances allows Kaname to assign bodyguards to Yuki, although having four moody elegant vampires accompany her everywhere doesn't have a good effect on the Day Class. Normally she'd be embarrassed by the attention, but the headaches and visions keep getting worse to the point that she collapses in class. And in the infirmary, Ichiru pays her a visit with a vial of blood.


7. The Kiss of Thorns
Night Class student Shiki has returned, only he's not Shiki anymore. Soon chaos is spreading through the Night Class as a new Pureblood plan begins to unfold, one that is distinctly at odds with Kaname's ambitions. The previously united vampire community at Cross Academy begins to fracture and divide. Against all this, Kaname decides that it is time for Yuki to recover her memory. Only it involves him drinking her blood… and her drinking his!

Picture

Vampire Knight Guilty gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, which as is often the case, is an NTSC-PAL standards conversion. For the second disc in succession, someone dropped a spanner into the conversion process, as it suffers from horrendous judder throughout. Any time there is any lateral motion of the camera, vertically or horizontally, the playback is subjected to an intermittent stop-start effect every half second or so. It's annoying, it's damned distracting, and it makes watching the show an utter chore.


Vampire Knight and its sequel are series that are originally aimed at the wobbly-kneed demographic, so you can expect a whole lot of pretty male characters in this show, tall, elegant, moody, while aside from Yuki herself, most of the female character designs are fairly generic. The world design is stylised but effective and quite detailed, but I did feel that the overall animation was static, or it saved up most of the animation for the action sequences. This is a show where you expect to see a whole lot of rose petals fluttering past moody tableaux.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 2.0 Surround English and Japanese, with player locked signs for the English track, and player locked translated subtitles for the Japanese track. The sound is fit for purpose, and opting for the Japanese track, I found that a favourite voice actress of mine, Yui Horie was voicing Yuki, which certainly added to the show's appeal for me. The dialogue is clear, and the theme songs are the expected power ballads to go with the romantic vampire action. The surround sound is appreciated, but it's hardly a surround intensive show. The English dub didn't immediately strike me as amazing, but it's not immediately bad either. I'm sure dub fans will be perfectly satisfied with it. There needs to be an English cast credit reel after the programme, as the credits aren't translated.

Conclusion

I started watching this disc, fully prepared to give it a slating. Not only does it continue those authoring issues that I feel compelled to whinge about with every disc, but it is the second disc in succession that has problems with the visual transfer, the NTSC-PAL conversion so disappointing that it serves to distract from what you are watching. So far that is 7 episodes, more than half of Vampire Knight Guilty that is presented in inglorious jerk-o-vision, and at this point those like me who are inordinately sensitive to image flaws, will be looking to Region 1 and Region 4 to see if it's better value for money to import. That's what I felt starting this disc. By the time, 70 minutes later the programme had concluded, I had actually forgotten all that, as Vampire Knight Guilty with this selection of three episodes delivers a story so entrancing, so engrossing that the technical problems become redundant. It ends on a cliffhanger and a revelation so astounding that it takes your breath away.


It's obviously not going to stop being the moody, elegant vampire tale, the pseudo Anne Rice nonsense that it is in my genes to avoid, yet for some strange reason that works so well here. It's the story's strength, and the intriguing way in which the characters are written and develop that still draws me to this show. And it's in this volume that the story really kicks up a gear, the point where the mysteries and enigmas that have been slowly, and tantalisingly revealed over the past 1 and a half series start to get some kind of resolution. It's where you get an idea of what the narrative jigsaw is supposed to look like, and refreshingly for an anime show, it happens pretty early on in proceedings. That implies that the next six episodes will be enough to give the story a proper ending that does justice to the characters, and tie up all the loose ends as well. So many shows leave the conclusion to the final episode, and that rarely is enough time to properly end a story.


At the start of the series, the storyline that plays out here would have been played more for laughs, with a far lighter touch. After all Yuki trying to wheedle the truth about her past from Kaname, and Kaname agreeing in exchange for them becoming lovers is throwing the cat amongst girly-squee pigeons, especially with Zero fuming to one side. The requisite girly-squee moments are provided when Yuki's classmates find out that Kaname has 'chosen' her, and almost combust in a fit of envy, but the central players are taking it so seriously that giggles such as that are few and far between. The stakes are so high, with the Night Class and Kaname Kuran the centre of intrigue and Machiavellian manoeuvres, with Yuki's lost memories actually detrimental to her health, and with Zero's torn and twisted loyalties making him beholden to those he hates, that it quickly becomes edge of the seat viewing.


When you add Zero's brother Ichiru Kiryu into the mix, with his hatred for Zero, and the separate agenda that he pursues when it comes to Yuki Cross, it just gets more and more complicated. Frankly the only one left with a sense of humour at this point is the headmaster, but then he is the resident comic relief. Then there is the final episode on the disc, with the return of Senri Shiki to the school. At the end of the previous volume, his family summoned him home, to come face to face with the family secret. That's another narrative bird of ill omen that hangs over the events in the first two episodes, but the disc leaves it to the final episode for the big reveal, as Senri returns altered. The chaos that ensues gives some hint to the direction in which the series conclusion will go, but that is as nothing compared the long awaited reveal of Yuki's memories, we find out exactly what role Kaname played in her past, and right at the critical moment, Zero gets to learn the truth as well, shaking him down to the core. And the consequences of all this will be delayed until Vampire Knight Guilty: Volume 3. Frustration is an understatement.


This is the best of the Vampire Knight saga so far, presented on the worst disc so far. I can wholeheartedly recommend this series at this point; it's a good story, told with no little style. But I can't recommend the DVD.