Review for Vampire Knight: Volume 1

The Pre-Review Rant

Just when you think that common sense has finally taken hold, things slip and slide backwards into the dark ages. Once upon a time, anime was expensive. It's not exactly mega-cheap now, but four or five years ago, it was Expensive! There was a time when anime was primarily sold in single disc volumes, released two months apart, and on occasion with just three episodes to a disc, retailing at £20. Now the current going rate for your average anime release is £25 for a 2-disc 13-episode collection on DVD. Yet it looks like bad old those days are upon us again, at least with Manga Entertainment's new partnership with the French company Kazé. Since last year Kazé is Viz' European subsidiary, and it would make all the sense in the world for Manga to get PAL transfers for Viz titles from Kazé instead of Madman in Australia, as has usually happened up till now. After all, the difference between 26 miles and 20000 miles is obvious, as is effectively eliminating an extra dimension to licensing contracts. Also, the European love affair with anime and manga is greater than our own, and even now, Europe often has anime titles that never make it to English speaking territories. Kazé released Vampire Knight and its sequel Vampire Knight Guilty in France last winter. The US and Australian releases are only happening now, and since we had to wait for the English dub, it's why we get Vampire Knight now as well. But the PAL masters have been around for over 12 months. And as the recent release of Professor Layton and The Eternal Diva showed, Kazé's masters are pretty nifty.


It would seem like a win-win situation, except that Kazé have a different perspective on releasing anime, which harks back to the bad old days of anime DVDs and prices. In the US, Viz are releasing the 13 episode Vampire Knight series on three discs. In Australia, Madman are doing the same. No doubt, the Vampire Knight Guilty release will get the same treatment. In France, Kazé released Vampire Knight in two, 2-disc sets, four discs in total. They did the same for Vampire Knight Guilty. That's one disc of four episodes, and three discs of three episodes apiece. Manga are releasing Vampire Knight in individual volumes, so that will be four Amaray cases on your shelf where normally just one two-disc case would sit. To counter this, they have at least lowered the price, and the RRP for the Vampire Knight Volumes will be £12.99 each. If you think that the French had it better with their two-disc collections, they actually had it worse, with a 40 Euro RRP applied to each set.


On top of that, while the transfers may be sweet, Kazé have some antiquated ideas about UPOPs on their DVDs, User Prohibited OPerations. I noticed this on the Professor Layton DVD as well. The discs get locked during playback, you can't alter the display beyond elapsed time, so there's no way of finding out how much time remains, and you can't change audio or subtitles on the fly. Pick English and you're stuck with signs, pick Japanese and the subtitles may as well be burnt in. It makes logical sense when you think about it, but for me, losing control over something that I pay money for is just annoying. And if you are learning Japanese, or are a native speaker and would like to watch it without the subtitles, well tough! Personally, it just makes it inconvenient as a reviewer when checking for dubtitles, and a nightmare to screencap! If you were French, you'd pay 80 Euros retail for all of Vampire Knight. Manga Entertainment will just ask four pence shy of £52, which isn't quite as bad in comparison. But the forthcoming Viz region 1 boxset of Vampire Knight has all 13 episodes squeezed onto two discs, and an RRP of just $49.98, and no UPOPs. Of course online discounts will ease the pain wherever you buy from, but the US release will still be cheaper, and take up less space. Also, even if Kazé has released all of Vampire Knight Guilty in France, we still have to wait on Viz for the dub, and they haven't even scheduled a DVD release as yet, although they have streamed it online. So annoying discs, at twice the price they ought to be, and we'll have to hurry up and wait for the sequel. You know that Vampire Knight doesn't have to be good to impress me. It had better be bloody spectacular!

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Introduction

Well, Vampire Knight has the bloody bit down pat, being about vampires and all. I must admit that my heart did sink at that. Vampires are ubiquitous right now. Worse, vampires are cool, they make pre-teen girls go all giggly and weak-kneed, and not in the exsanguinations sort of way. Ripping someone's throat out is just a minor character flaw when you have a pale complexion to die for. I'm not sure when it happened, but vampires are now romantic. But, Vampire Knight is an uber-selling manga series that even I with my disdain for the unborn-again pointy-teethed ones have read a few volumes of. With that kind of popularity and fandom behind it, Vampire Knight has to be worth a second look.

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 four episodes of Vampire Knight are presented on this disc from Manga Entertainment.

1. Night of Vampires
It's not a good idea to be fascinated by vampires, lest they become fascinated with you. Yuki Cross knows all this, and given that the first memory she has is of being attacked by a vampire, you'd think she'd cultivate a sensible wariness. The thing is that a vampire rescued her as well, and Kaname Kuran now attends Cross Academy as part of the Night Class. The 'blood tablet' is the miracle drug that supposedly suppresses bloodlust, and is allowing humans and vampires to interact for the first time as students at Cross Academy. It's a limited interaction though, as Yuki and her classmate Zero Kiryu have to limit the contact between the Day and Night classes, as well as keep the vampires' existence a secret. The thing is that Zero hates vampires, and his idea of limiting contact boils down to picking a fight. And the vampires aren't the only ones taking blood tablets.

2. Memories of Blood
If keeping humans away from the oh so gorgeous vampires couldn't be hard enough, St Xocolatl's Day is coming up, when people give the person of their dreams a hand made chocolate treat. Soon hordes of screaming girls are lined up outside the Night Class Dorms, and Yuki and Zero have their hands full maintaining order. But Yuki's preoccupied with making the perfect chocolate for Kaname, while some girls have noticed that Zero's moody, aloof elegance is almost as alluring as the males in the Night Class. But it looks like Kaname knows Zero's secret, and Yuki may have just stumbled on it as well.


3. The Fang of Penitence
In a change from the normal routine, Yuki and Zero actually have to act as members of the Disciplinary Committee, instead of their real duties as Guardians of the Night Class' secret. It's a sudden dorm inspection, which for the Day Class means searching the girls' lockers for evidence of egregious stalking. Photo albums confiscated, they then move onto the Night Class, but before they can cross the threshold, Yuki confronts Zero about the tablets that he is taking. Telling her to mind her own business, Zero storms off. Yuki follows him into town, but gets distracted, and drawn into a trap.

4. Trigger of Condemnation
The penny has dropped, and Yuki has learned of Zero's true nature in the worst way possible. As so often happens, it's Kaname that comes to her rescue and confronts Zero. It's a situation that cannot be allowed to develop further, and Kaname demands that the headmaster transfer Zero to the Night Class, where he belongs. But even when Yuki learns of the fate that awaits Zero, she refuses to let him go, and goes by herself to the Night Class Dorm to demand that he be allowed to stay in the Day Class. She's walking into a whole heap of trouble. But it may all be a waste of time, as Zero has decided that he can't live that way anymore, and is packing to leave the Academy.

Picture

Vampire Knight gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, which as is often the case, is an NTSC-PAL standards conversion. That said, it's an exceptionally good one, clear and smooth throughout, with no ghosting or judder immediately apparent, and signs of blended frames at a minimum. The only telltale is the overall softness inherited from a lower resolution image. Vampire Knight is a series that is 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.

Extras

Nothing at all here, unless you count animated menus, just a referral to my pre-review rant at User Prohibited Operations locking up a perfectly good disc.

Conclusion

Vampire Knight isn't spectacular. My rant aside, there are some anime titles that you would be happy to pay a premium for. Fans have been going squee for shows like Baccano, Gurren Laggan, and Haruhi Suzumiya to such a degree that companies can, and indeed do add a little extra to the retail price. In return you get what is most likely a classic show, and some added extras, or premium packaging as well. FLCL when eventually released in the UK retailed at around £8 an episode. Yet I don't think too many people begrudged that. Vampire Knight isn't FLCL. It's just another average, run of the mill, anime show, a rom-com with added drama and teen angst, wrapped up in a vampire package. It's entertaining, but there isn't a Vampire Knight shaped hole on your DVD shelf, demanding that you fill it. I haven't seen the packaging, but I guess it will just be standard Amaray, and there's nothing extra on the disc to warrant the higher price. When it comes to the maths of it, you really are paying twice what you ought to for a show of this calibre. That said, with Manga releasing it in bite-size chunks, they are able to justify a low RRP for the individual discs, with a consequently lower discounted price from retailers. It isn't going to burn your fingers too much to try one volume and see how it goes.


I'm sorry to say that I can't really help on that score though, as I'm still resolutely on the fence when it comes to Vampire Knight, as it has yet to win me over. It has an interesting story, entertaining characters, it's very pleasant to look at, it's exciting, emotive, and funny in all the right places, and the way it begins to be fleshed out in this first volume certainly invites you to watch more. And for what it's worth, my opinion did shift from amiable indifference to active interest as the disc progressed, with the first two episodes really quite disposable, and the second half much more interesting. But I think that Vampire Knight suffers a bit too much from 'a bit like' syndrome, as I found myself comparing it to other shows that I had seen, and comparing it unfavourably at that. Of course amnesiac characters, or characters with dark pasts are two-a-penny in anime, high school shows are practically a staple of the medium, and on occasion it does seem that every other show made in Japan is about vampires.


But it was the first half, the two episodes that I cared least for, which just had me in mind of Ouran High School Host Club for the duration. With its set-up of an aloof and elite class of elegant and aristocratic vampires, each with their unique and quirky personality, being fawned upon by every female in the school, had me thinking that this was the Host Club's dark soul, the Host Club with added bite, and some of the show's early comedic interludes seem to ape the Host Club to an uncomfortable degree. Although in this case, it's the school's headmaster who is more like Tamaki Suou rather than any of the students. That vibe only intensifies in the second episode, when the girls en masse gift chocolate to the ones that they like the most, leading to a stampede outside the vampires' dormitory. But these light-hearted episodes serve to set up the situation and explain the rules of this world, the experiment in vampire human coexistence, the blood tablet that makes it all possible, and the unconventional love triangle between Yuki, Zero and Kaname, the amnesiac girl rescued from a vampire attack, the vampire that rescued her, and the boy with a dark past and a secret to protect.


It's the second half of the disc that takes the show into darker, more dramatic territory and gives this show its appeal. Zero's secret is revealed, and more is unveiled of the dark past that left him hating vampires to such a degree. It's shown that pureblood vampires may be able to integrate and live among humans to a degree with the aid of the blood tablet, but humans turned by vampires are less fortunate, degenerating to beasts in human form. When Yuki encounters such a 'Level E' vampire, the cuteness and elegance of the vampires in school becomes balanced by something darker and more feral, taking us away from the weak-kneed girls who have been reading too much Anne Rice. Given Zero's true nature, this adds a pace, energy and danger to the characterisations. It also makes for a nice reversal in the plot, with the first half setting up the vampires as the aristocratic bogeymen, with the humans tolerating their presence, but trying not to let down their guard. Suddenly it looks like Kaname may actually be Yuki's protector all along, while the true danger to Yuki comes from the boy she grew up with. It also transpires that while Kaname may be an advocate of learning to live around humans, it's only his pureblood status that ensures that the other vampires follow his lead, and that he is something of a maverick among his own kind. Certainly when he isn't around to hold the reins, the other vampires of the Night Class take on a greater menace.


Vampire Knight is interesting, but it feels similar in style and tone, if not in content, to a lot of other anime shows. If your shelves creak under the weight of anime, then it may be that this show won't offer anything new. But if that novelty of a new entertainment medium hasn't worn off yet, and you can count the number of anime shows seen on your fingers and toes, then there are plenty of reasons to try Vampire Knight, as I'm sure that its overall quality will appeal. Two reasons won't be the price or the disc authoring. I doubt that anything can be done about the price at this stage, except go price matching in search of the best discount, but Manga really need to get Kazé to remove the UPOP on their discs, especially as this partnership continues into the future. It's probably not enough to elicit a plaintive whine, but it will discomfit some fans, this fan at least, and the low grumble of fan disgruntlement can be even more annoying than a whine.