Revenge our deaths
What They Say:
After the world was infected by a mysterious virus, a pair of orphans named Mikael and Yuichiro find themselves being enslaved by vampires. One day they try to escape alongside the other orphans and all end up being slaughtered by vampires leaving only Yuichiro to escape. Upon reaching the outside world, he joins a group dedicated to defeating the vampires and swears to one day have his revenge.
The Review:
Content (warning as some portions of this review may contain spoilers):
So the last time I noted that the show is at it’s best when embracing it’s shonen action roots and world, though less so when it comes to characterization. Sadly the show itself doesn’t quite seem to have gotten that as it once again decides to focus it’s primary efforts on the latter. It’s not quite as ridiculous as the last time, but it does still ring a bit hollow for what the show thinks it’s doing with it.
Starting off with some positives, the beginning highlights that the show hasn’t quite abandoned it’s initial premise. When Yuichiro starts getting popular with the ladies after dealing with the vampire from last week, Shinoa says that he should take advantage of that since the human population is still down considerably, and the world still needs to be rebuilt after the vampires are taken care of. It also turns out that the high school setting isn’t quite as straightforward as it appears either. The bullies from the previous episode ask Yuichiro and Yoichi to go to an area called the “Forbidden Chamber” to rescue one of them and while some of the students are under the impression it’s just a school legend, it’s actually a facility used to train people to control demons and the whole school is a testing ground of potential victims. The latter is particularly interesting since it paints the idea that the army is out to take advantage of humanity’s remnants, and hopefully the show plays with that idea a bit more
The other major aspect of the episode though, is a bit more straightforward. Part of training to handle demons is that they’re used in order to create weapons called “Cursed Gear” that are effective against vampires. Yuichiro wants one for himself of course and decides to take advantage situation to do so when the missing bully gets possessed by a demon. Shinoa warns him that the demon can easily take advantage of his desire for revenge to control him which is why teamwork in the army is so heavily emphasized but Yuichiro ignores her anyway, further noting how much the previous episode’s “friendship” message rings hollow when he’s still so completely self-centered.
Predictably, the demon does indeed attempt to take advantage of Yuichiro’s desire for revenge by showing him illusions of other orphans commanding him to do so. Funimation’s subtitles during the scene has the hilarious typo of fake-Mikeal saying “revenge our deaths”, instead of “avenge” though it does kind of speak true to how silly the execution is since it feels a little forced. Thankfully the show picks up on that too, as Yuichiro sees through the demon’s lies since he knows Mikeal would never tell him to get revenge (even though that acknowledgement makes Yuichiro’s motivations even more awkwardly written) and manages to overcome it. Despite some of it’s silliness, the scene does mostly work for what it’s trying to do, although it does end up once again rewarding Yuichiro for reckless behavior when he’s allowed to use the training facility since he overcame the demon’s temptation. However he doesn’t quite get to have his cake and eat it too since he can’t use the demon’s Cursed Gear even though he defeated it doesn’t quite work that way. It also looks like he may have to rethink his desire for revenge a bit since, if the promotional material and the opening didn’t give it away, Mikeal is actually alive and now a vampire so it should be interesting to see what happens when those two see each other again.
In Summary:
The show pulls out another episode mostly centered around Yuichiro’s characterization and it still mostly falls flat in that area since he never really seems to learn anything. On the bright side though it’s executed a bit less annoyingly than last week’s instance and there’s some interesting set up here as things go slightly back to what the premise had initially promised. Hopefully the show focuses on that stuff a bit more for a while and less on Yuichiro until they’re actually ready to do something with him.
Grade: B
Streamed By: FUNimation
