天下制覇

You know what says season’s over? Flashbacks.

Impressions:

Ha. Wow. That was… just awful. About half of the episode was twittered away on flashbacks and explaining Shizuka’s motivations and past. Yes, the finale was about 50% flashbacks of a dead character. What made matters worse were the flashbacks within flashbacks. Seriously, when you have to step outside of current events to explain the past, you’re already probably doing something wrong. When you have to step out of stepping out of the past to explain the past’s past, then the narrative at that point is just plain buggered. Combine that terribleness with the next 25% of the show being a bunch of talking heads droning endlessly on about Shizuka and the ending not even trying for even a modicum (heh… modicum) of closure and I want to hit someone.

Basically, everybody goes on and on about Shizuka’s tragic past with her somewhat more mortal lover before she turns into sparklies which apparently means that Zero is doomed to go level E. Then every character explains about Shizuka for a long time while Yuki wonders where Zero is being kept. He’s chained up in a dungeon, begging for them to kill him. Then Kaname, paragon of virtue that he is and fresh from saying "I won the game vs Shizuka, time for the next game to start!" comes down to force Zero to drink his blood, telling him it’s for Yuki. That’s how the episode ends. With Zero chowing down on Kaname’s neck while all the vampires in the school go "zomg, Vampy sense tingling! Someone call for a webshooter!?"

Quasi-final thoughts after the imagery.

Quasi-Final Thoughts:

As you may know, there’s already a second season planned for October, which I think Deen took as an excuse to just stop making the show without actually providing any sort of resolution for this part. So as far as an ending goes here, I’ve got nothing to say except that it’s terrible. I guess at least it’s not a cliffhanger, but going into a three month break with an episode mostly about a dead character who has only been around for… what… four episodes anyway? What’s the point? Again, all she really did was suck and die. I’m not even making a pun, she was promising at the start, making Aidou think that she was about to crush his skull, but that was apparently the height of her malice… picking on Aidou. Yeah, that’s evil.

The Zero angstiness over being a vampire was unavoidable, but I’m amazed that they managed to stretch it out for the full 13 episodes and apparently it’ll be continuing into the next season. It was nice at the start when the vampires actually threw their weight around and bloodwhipped each other to death. By the end though, apparently the budget ran out or the angst was running too thick to even bother with the climactic encounters between Zero and Ichiru, and Shizuka and Kaname.

I really did enjoy it at the start since it had charm, style and a nice twist on the whole vampire thing, but by the end, you couldn’t walk for five minutes without tripping over a flashback or the same angsty generic vampire whininess that the characters had been blathering on about since episode 3. Hinano mentioned this a little while back, and I’m inclined to agree with her at least so far as Vampire Knight goes. Although I still think Kaname’s an overbearing dick that doesn’t deserve anything, let alone his little overly needy waif.

I’m really not sure at all if I could stand another 13 episodes of angstiness. I was kind of looking forward to them revealing Yuki’s past/true nature, but… eh… I know what happens already. I can only imagine them flashing back to this season so they can flashback from there. Ugh.