天下制覇

They're not very self-aware, are they?

Impressions:

This is another episode that is majorly undermined by its weird blinders. It's making this huge mountain out of "vampires can be dangerous too," as if they weren't constantly rubbing elbows with drunks, prostitutes, drugged up playboys, and violent stalkers. When a human was trying to violently kick down a door, you bent over backwards to give him every benefit of the doubt. Your high school friend giving this speech is apparently in a relationship with a woman twice his age. We're just ignoring that? It's almost as bad as the 'cliffhanger,' of the detective calling the cops and telling them that a kid's out at night. A kid. AT NIGHT. Well, jump that right up to the top of the todo list. Must be the same police as in Lycoris Recoil.

Kou does eventually get to the painfully obvious argument that every vampire who's not self-destructively denying their their nature is totally fine and barely different from humans. You'd think they could make some parallels there to other societal pressure issues. So much could fit there from mental health to family problems to LGBTQ, but it gets ignored too. The argument to make is repressing yourself is bad. Or maybe that the cackling sadistic lunatic that you saw kill someone instead of trying to help them and is now rationalizing it as a mercy killing for a deviant might be some kind of radical fanatic. Likewise, it raises that Kou's fascination with the night is pretty superficial immature… but not because he finds joy in everything he does, really, but as part of a Harry and the Hendersons "go away," speech… which is ignored anyway, and has little to do with all the rest. So much in the show at the moment feels like it's completely missing the forest for the trees, and I don't see a good way they can pull it all back together. Probably won't, since the source manga is some kind of Dragonball these days apparently.