Dark Ranters Review: Vampire Knight

Dark Ranters Review: Vampire Knight
With ImpulsiveSpidercide and GearsX



GearsX: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a special Halloween edition of Dark Ranters Reviews. We are your spooky ghosts with the mosts, GearsX a-clockin' on in...

ImpulsiveSpidercide: ImpulsiveSpidercide, overclocked and ready to explode in a shower of blood and guts!

GearsX: As we suck back on some blood and eyeballs, we will discuss vampire-themed anime. There's Hellsing Ultimate, Vampire Hunter D, Blood-C, Rosario + Vampire, and many more. Sadly, we will not be discussin' these awesome vampire themed anime. We'll be reviewin' the mold on the shit at the bottom of the barrel that is Vampire Knight. Tell 'em what this piece of bat shit is all about.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: What is Vampire Knight? Think one of those young adult vampire romance novels in anime form, and you start to have an answer.

GearsX: Much like Twilight minus the wolves.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Yeah.

GearsX: Vampire Knight is a shojo anime/manga, meaning it's geared toward teenage girls or women. While us dudes aren't part of the target audience for this genre, there is a certain shojo anime/manga that does have a male following.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Indeed, like Sailor Moon, because hey, cute girls in short skirts. What can go wrong?

GearsX: Sailor Moon isn't my thing but I will respect the male fans of this series. Now let's discuss the problems that we have toward Vampire Knight but first, let's get the positives out of the way. Like for one, the characters are designed well and the animation is decent.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Yeah. It is good animation, and the character designs are genuinely pleasing to the eye.

GearsX: Yeah but the animation is a bit too brown. You can clearly see there is a emphasis of brown in the animation.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Real is brown, as the TV Tropes site says. It is annoying.

GearsX: We both know anime is known for bright colors and even dark-themed anime have bright colors. The color palette is a bit lazy in the animation. Next, we'll talk about the characters. There's Yuki Cross/Kuran, she's the female lead in this anime. She doesn't remember much about her past except nearly bein' killed by a vampire and was saved by Kaname Kuran a decade prior to the series.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: And now she is a vampire hunter for Cross Academy. Except it's not so much hunting as it is keeping the vampire students in the Night Class in check so they don't feed off the human students in the Day Class.

GearsX: What she doesn't know is she's a full-blooded vampire and is engaged to Kaname. Are they brother and sister or somethin'?

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Something like that. It is fairly incestuous.

GearsX: That's just gross. Next is Kaname Kuran. You can talk about him.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Heartthrob of the Night Class. The pretty boy all the girls want. Has a fascination with Yuki, which puts him at one corner of a love triangle with Yuki's partner Zero. And yes, he is a pure-blooded vampire. Lots of feeding goes on between him and Yuki, in the quasi-erotic fashion popularized by Anne Rice in The Vampire Chronicles.

GearsX: Like I said, gross. He's the head of the Kuran family and that family is one of the last remainin' pure-bloods. Finally, Zero Kiryu, he's the Bella Swan of the love triangle. Zero's a whiny boychild who pisses and moans about Yuki. He too guards over the vampire dorms by night. He's not a pureblood but a level-E vampire. What the fuck is a level-E vampire?

ImpulsiveSpidercide:  A level-E vampire is a turned human who is forever at risk of going berserk because of the vampiric conversion. From what I remember, anyway.

GearsX: Let's get into the negatives proper. Did you have somethin' to say about the animation in dark-themed anime?

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Good animation can make good anime better, make bad anime more tolerable, and make ok anime good. When you have supernatural-themed anime, the atmosphere is often dark and gritty, such as in Hellsing, Blood+, and Vampire Hunter D. However, depicting that darkness should not come at the expense of being able to see what the hell is going on and who everyone is, unless there's some kind of perspective being played with.

GearsX: And we don't get any of that good shit from Vampire Knight. None.  The love triangle between the three main characters is rather forced much like the Edward/Bella/Jacob love triangle from Twilight. Since I don't know much about the romantic nature of vampires, you take it from here.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Yeah. When they're not fighting vampires and dealing with political intrigue from the vampire ruling classes, they're angsting about their chances with each other. Zero hates Kaname because Kaname is a vampire and that he's getting closer to Yuki. However, Zero needs blood to keep from going completely berserk, and Kaname very often gives it to him, thus giving the yaoi fangirls something to fic about.

GearsX: Not to mention these nosferatu take meds to keep their blood cravings under control. I know a McGuffin when I see one. The characters are just blank slates. They absolutely have no personality and depth to them. They are also boring. And the story moves at a geriatric pace. There is absolutely nothin' goin' on at all. There are some action scenes but they just don't happen that often. It's just basically vampires pining after each other and that's it. Now we get to the absolute worst part of Vampire Knight, the dub.

Impulsivespidercide: Yes, the dub. A good dub can make a good anime even better, or a bad anime ok, or an ok anime decent. But a bad dub . . . that just fucks up the whole thing.

GearsX: The English dub of this anime is lifeless and flat. The dub voice actors sound like they didn't put much effort into the dub of Vampire Knight. Either the voice director told them to sound as dull as possible or they just wanted to get it over and done with and move on to something better. The absolute worst performance comes from Vic Mignogna, voice of Zero.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Which is a shame, because he is a great voice actor.

GearsX: We’ve heard him do better. For example, he did a terrific job as Edward Elric from the Fullmetal Alchemist franchise and as Spirit Albarn, Maka's father, from Soul Eater. Here, he portrayed Zero as a whiny little pissant. I'm sure Zero was already a whiny little pissant in the Japanese version but Mignogna made him sound worse in the dub. I'm sure all of you are wondering why we are reviewin' this thing since we aren't part of the intended audience. Well, I’ll tell ya. I bought this anime a couple of years ago, thinkin' it would be pretty good. What I didn't realize was this piece of anime garbage was for the female crowd. On top of that, there were a plague of problems in Vampire Knight. How did you discover this mess of an anime?

ImpulsiveSpidercide: The manga, from a preview in Shojo Beat.

GearsX: Overall, this anime was a chore to watch and like Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills, I don't need to watch an entire show to know how bad it is. The story was weak, the characters are boring, the pacing is sluggish, the dub was terrible, and the love triangle of Kaname, Yuki, and Zero was fuckin' forced and just gross with the former two.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Because incest, man. Incest.

GearsX: Before we close, we have an announcement to make. For the month of December, we will be doin' a review for the Red Ribbon Reviewers. The Red Ribbon Reviewers is a gathering of reviewers bringing awareness to HIV/AIDS. The RRR site is run by Eli Stone aka The Cartoon Hero of Reviewers Unknown. Spidercide and myself will participate in the Red Ribbon Reviewers for this worthy cause. While what we're reviewin' isn't associated with Christmas, it is goin' to be a fun one.

ImpulsiveSpidercide: Very fun.

GearsX: In closing, do we recommend Vampire Knight?

ImpulsiveSpidercide: No. No, we do not.

GearsX: However, we do recommend much better vampire themed anime in the wild. I for one recommend Blood-C. Blood-C has a better story, better animation, and the English dub is better.  

ImpulsiveSpidercide: I also recommend Hellsing Ultimate, along with pissing yourself and praying to your impotent god. Sorry, had to do that. Walter was so freaking badass in that moment.

GearsX: Avoid Vampire Knight like the goddamn plague. That's all for this review, folks. Have a Happy Halloween and do enjoy them sweet treats, heh heh heh heh heh. This is Count GearsX clockin' out.
 
ImpulsiveSpidercide: And ImpulsiveSpidercide, overclocked and ready to burst like a volcano! Sayonara!