Tragedy Is The Best Ending

The tag line says Yuuki is bad at studying but…

“If the only option I have is to lose you, then I would prefer death instead.”

— 也先 (@YeXiAncHtun) December 15, 2021

Giving credit to the original artist literally only takes a copy-paste of the link or the name. it’s not that hard

The Castle of Chaythe. Soon we'll be able to see it: the home of Carmila, the Bloody Countess. You've heard of her. For five thousand years her rule of terror lasted, and then, that was that! Your father, the vampire king, grew angry. He was impatient with her vanity; offended by her bloodlust, her gluttony. He grew so tired that he killed her while she slept, impaling her on a sword, and that was it for her.

To Kaname, she is not so much an object of romantic love or affection, but rather a parent-like figure who gave him a new name, a companion with whom he shared and tended each other's wounds, and someone toward whom he holds a feeling of comradeship.

This is an official clarification made by the author herself in 2015, correcting fans who interpreted their close relationship as romantic love.

Hino: shows Kaname kissing HW RIGHT ON FUCKING LIPS

Fans: interpret it romantic (bc the context claimed there should've been a woman who started the Kuran line together with Kaname)

Hino: oh no, don't interpret it as romantic, it was parental hihi

Rrrright bc I kiss my parents on the lips every damn day, of course.

I'm not necessarily pro-Kaname/HW, but I'm against bullshit. You can't just show something like that, put it into absolutely tragically romantic circumstances (yeah, I will fight to death that it is, I am a writer myself and have a thesis in literature. God damn it) and then say this. Nobody claims Kaname belongs to HW, we know that Yuuki was his true and eternal love, but 1) it's nothing bad if Kaname had some romantic affairs before Yuuki, it's normal and healthy, 2) it won't make Yume's love less great and deep, 3) it simply sounds stupid.

This is the wording in the manga: By the time he developed a faint attachment to her, she was already gone.

Meaning he hadn't even developed romantic feelings for her before she was already gone.

They worked side by side for maybe hundreds, even thousands of years, and that's what he calls it: a faint attachment. (Yes, the kiss means they're married, they're in love, they have Kuran together, but they're just faint attachment before she is gone.)

Forget centuries. Just a decades of being together is enough for anyone to develop dependency on someone, to get used to that person's company. Not to mention she was the elder who guided him back to his own group when he was at his most lonely and helpless state.

That kiss was a farewell. Part of the reason she cared for him was because she hoped Kaname would inherit her will and carry on her work in her place. "Good boy." "Work hard for me." She had no interest in any romantic relationship whatsoever. She also knew that he battled suicidal tendencies, which is why she stepped in and took the sacrifice meant for him. She wanted him to keep living. She treated him like a fucking child.

Kaname had suicidal tendencies all along. The anti-vampire weapon was his research, and he wanted to end his own life with it. But she got there first and took his place. Guilt kept him from following through afterward, so he honored her wishes and kept working. But he still couldn't help himself, running off to sleep out of "loneliness" and other reasons.

And later, hooded woman comes back to punish Kaname for slaughtering the purebloods, because he went against her original wishes and the words she left him with. Her line: "I will punish the purebloods who brought everything into darkness." This was directed at both Kaname and Sara, and sara was executed on the spot. That chapter's title: "The Arrogant King, The Arrogant Queen." Because for purebloods, arrogance itself is a sin.

With all due respect, a lot of what you're saying about HW is just kind of wishful interpretation of whacky narration. We know absolutely nothing about Hooded Woman, what and who she is, if she's younger or older, what she believes in and what her intentions are, she's just that - a plot device. Not a character, she doesn't have a name, even the Hooded Woman wording is something the fans came up with to somehow describe her in fandom analyses. So to me it's a bit weird to discuss her wishes and views because it's never clear.

What I'm tryin to convey is that we shouldn't look at HW or Kaname's actions and thoughts but Hino's. She's absolutely insecure as a writer, she created this situation, made Kaname more ancient than the pyramids, said he was the progenitor, and then...stepped back. Saying that this creature didn't form ANY kind of attachment, that he went into slumber because of total loneliness when the narration requires him to have a wife and children (he was declared to be the ancestor, for hell's sake), all of this imply high level of stupidity from the writer to me. Or insecurity, okay.

What I'm trying to get at is that VK's worldbuilding, and its central doomed romance, draws straight from Vampire Hunter D. It's a story where a half-vampire, half-human hunter belongs nowhere, crushed by the isolation of immortality, rejected by humans and never at peace with the vampire side of himself either. Kaname isn't a dhampir, but he's the one who founded the anti-vampire weapons in the first place, and his situation takes the same shape: a pureblood who's been around for centuries and never come to terms with his own identity. To pass himself off as human and fit into human society, he never let himself bond with anyone, and over time he forgot his own name, because no one was ever there to say it. He refused to feed with his fangs, but couldn't outrun what he was, ended up back with the race he despised.

And this isn't just me reading too much into it either. In a 2008 interview [1], Hino herself flat-out recommended this exact novel, describing it as "living precariously, teetering on the knife's edge between human and beast." That line pretty much sums up Yuuki, Kaname, Zero, and even Kaien in one go, none of them fully human, none of them able to fully own their vampire side either, all four caught between two worlds and never quite landing on either side.

Kaname mirrors the strongest Vampire in Vampire Hunter D pretty closely too. Hino writes his deep weariness toward an endless lifespan, and his fixation on turning Yuuki human is arrogant, basically the Vampire's line to his beloved: "You don't understand the pain of having to live forever, I don't want you to experience that pain," met with his beloveds response, "That's only what you believe,"[2] which is close to what Yuuki throws back at Kaname. Yuuki had already decided to follow him anywhere, even to hell. In the end of this tv series it's implied the woman dies and the vampire follows her in death. Whether they actually die is never explicitly confirmed, I think that's just how East Asian storytelling rolls.

This also lines up with what Hino's said about VK's origins, her initial concept was an extremely tragic short story, not a school shoujo romance. Her editor at LaLa rejected that pitch and pushed for a school setting with a bunch of hot guys instead, leading to an opening arc that reads like such a generic school romance and pulled in a fanbase that wasn't really there for a dark story, so it backfired on her later.[3]

So no, I don't think this is Hino not knowing what she was doing. She was clearly trying to draw from the Vampire Hunter D concept of an extreme tragic romance, even within the constraints the school setting imposed on her. Yume was arguably doomed to a bad ending from the very start, and the actual ending of VK Memories is Hino's mercy.

Lastly, and to be clear, the narrative logic never required him to have a wife, just a bloodline heir, and that's why the manga keeps hammering words like "breeding" and "beast". VK constantly reminds you that purebloods don't pair off for love, they pair off to keep the bloodline going. Rido has a child and never married. (and the manga also makes Rido a mirror for both Kaname and Yuuki) So why not just make Kaname the uncle, with the Kuran bloodline coming from his brother, because Hino was writing incest on purpose, an ancestor falling for his own descendant, a gothic, dark relationship. There's even a line in the manga that says she inherited his most concentrated blood, that's the effect Hino was going for. Without that taboo, the whole story loses its point.

[1][3] ぱふ 2008年 08月号 雑誌 "巻頭特集: 魅惑のヴァンパイア 「ヴァンパイア騎士」

In the year 12,090 AD, the world has become the domain of vampires known as the "Nobility." Though showing signs of racial decadence and decline, the Nobility still threaten humanity with their overwhelming power. Among the hunters who specialize in hunting them is a young man renowned for his exceptional skill and striking beauty. His name is "D." He is a Dunpeal — born between a vampire and a human… The series has also been adapted into other media, including OVA anime films, and remains a hugely popular series by Hideyuki Kikuchi.

[2] Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

To Kaname, she is not so much an object of romantic love or affection, but rather a parent-like figure who gave him a new name, a companion with whom he shared and tended each other's wounds, and someone toward whom he holds a feeling of comradeship.

This is an official clarification made by the author herself in 2015, correcting fans who interpreted their close relationship as romantic love.

Hino: shows Kaname kissing HW RIGHT ON FUCKING LIPS

Fans: interpret it romantic (bc the context claimed there should've been a woman who started the Kuran line together with Kaname)

Hino: oh no, don't interpret it as romantic, it was parental hihi

Rrrright bc I kiss my parents on the lips every damn day, of course.

I'm not necessarily pro-Kaname/HW, but I'm against bullshit. You can't just show something like that, put it into absolutely tragically romantic circumstances (yeah, I will fight to death that it is, I am a writer myself and have a thesis in literature. God damn it) and then say this. Nobody claims Kaname belongs to HW, we know that Yuuki was his true and eternal love, but 1) it's nothing bad if Kaname had some romantic affairs before Yuuki, it's normal and healthy, 2) it won't make Yume's love less great and deep, 3) it simply sounds stupid.

This is the wording in the manga: By the time he developed a faint attachment to her, she was already gone.

Meaning he hadn't even developed romantic feelings for her before she was already gone.

They worked side by side for maybe hundreds, even thousands of years, and that's what he calls it: a faint attachment. (Yes, the kiss means they're married, they're in love, they have Kuran together, but they're just faint attachment before she is gone.)

Forget centuries. Just a decades of being together is enough for anyone to develop dependency on someone, to get used to that person's company. Not to mention she was the elder who guided him back to his own group when he was at his most lonely and helpless state.

That kiss was a farewell. Part of the reason she cared for him was because she hoped Kaname would inherit her will and carry on her work in her place. "Good boy." "Work hard for me." She had no interest in any romantic relationship whatsoever. She also knew that he battled suicidal tendencies, which is why she stepped in and took the sacrifice meant for him. She wanted him to keep living. She treated him like a fucking child.

Kaname had suicidal tendencies all along. The anti-vampire weapon was his research, and he wanted to end his own life with it. But she got there first and took his place. Guilt kept him from following through afterward, so he honored her wishes and kept working. But he still couldn't help himself, running off to sleep out of "loneliness" and other reasons.

And later, hooded woman comes back to punish Kaname for slaughtering the purebloods, because he went against her original wishes and the words she left him with. Her line: "I will punish the purebloods who brought everything into darkness." This was directed at both Kaname and Sara, and sara was executed on the spot. That chapter's title: "The Arrogant King, The Arrogant Queen." Because for purebloods, arrogance itself is a sin.

✨ Argentina are through to the quarter-finals! ✨

Lionel Messi began crying when the final whistle blew to seal the Argentina comeback as teammates gathered around the captain to celebrate the result in what is likely the last World Cup in which he will play. The defending World Cup champions carried Messi and threw him into the air at the center of the field before they all embraced each other after another remarkable comeback.

✨ argentina are through to the quarter-finals! ✨