天下制覇

Put up a fight at least, Shizuka.

Impressions:

That felt… uh… a bit odd. I guess things should be winding down since the first ‘season’ is ending soon, but since they announced that there’d be a second season after the second or third week of this, it never really struck home. With all the focus through the middle on Yuuki and Kaname, I just feel sort of weird as we go into all Zero all the time for the finale. Yuuki’s still around and trying to martyr herself for him (while simultaneously complaining about him trying to martyr himself), but I dunno… it just feels a little weird to still have so much left unanswered with Zero being the only one apparently getting resolution. Yeah, I already know where things go, but it still seems like a weird place to take a 3 month break. It just doesn’t feel at all like it’s ending… which I suppose it’s not, but they’re not even really trying to make this feel like a potential conclusion either.

That complaint aside, this was still a rather good episode. I wish Shizuka/Maria had gone out with a little more of a fight though. After all the mind crushing on Zero earlier, she basically just died with a whimper to Kaname. All in all, she didn’t even really do anything even vaguely menacing in the present anyway. She showed up, pranced around a bit, annoyed Zero, told Yuuki that she could save Zero if the girl wonder helped her kill Kaname, and then died. Shouldn’t she have at least eaten some farmboy or slaughtered a Level-E vampire or 8 to prove her menace? Even Aidou manages more damage than she inflicted just by hitting on Yuuki.

I’m getting sidetracked again. It was a good episode, but I expected a lot more from Shizuka overall. I hope she retreated back into Maria’s body or something because honestly… what was the point? Just to show that Yuuki would choose Zero over Kaname? I’d choose my adopted brother over the creepy guy raising me to be a killer and his bri… a nice, well adjusted prefect. Well, maybe they’ll do a little bit of a better job of wrapping things up in the not-really-a-finale next week, even though the main villain and catalyst for all the drama of the last month or so is dead.

Brief Summary:

Yuuki decides to take Maria up on her offer, whereupon Maria has her true body, that of Shizuka Hiou brought in and she reverts back to it. Before they can seal the pact though, Zero comes in to break things up even though Yuuki tells him it’s all to save him from becoming a Level-E. After fighting off Shizuka’s parental vampire MINDCRUSH and blood drinking by shooting himself in the leg, he manges to pick her up by the throat and shoot her in the chest a few times (of course, we just get to see the gun and not what’s actually happening), but then she blocks any further damage with her sash.

Ichiru tosses a sword into Zero’s arm, letting Shizuka retreat to heal. Ichiru and Zero fight (well, if you can call that a fight) where Ichiru basically goes nuts saying how Shizuka really cared for him, enough for her to leave him as a human, but Zero took everybody else from him, and even now she thinks of him instead of Ichiru. Zero gets knocked down, but manages to disarm Zero as we get some hot twin on twin straddling action.

Kaname meanwhile was waiting for the wounded Shizuka. She warns him that the path he’s on now is going to be terrible and dark and filled with so much vampire angst. He hugs her from behind and sticks his hand through her chest before drinking her blood and finishing her off.

Ichiru sense something’s wrong with his master and runs off. Zero goes to follow, promising Yuuki that he’ll come back to her and assuring her that he’ll fulfill that promise. Ichiru finds Shizuka’s body.