Ai’s Dads Part 1: Kaname the Sperm Donor

So...Kaname. He’s Ai’s biological father, but from what we’ve been shown, he’s not a “father” in any real sense of the word. To understand why, we have to begin with the beginning--how Ai was conceived.

Let’s break down how Ai even came to be in the first place:

Kaname intends to throw his heart in the forge and turn Yuuki in Night 89.

Even though this is his intention in Night 89, he sleeps with her anyway. (For those of you who maybe aren’t familiar with these types of things, this is known as a “one night stand.”)

He has unprotected sex with a 17-year-old girl and irresponsibly impregnates her. (Condoms are your friends, kids! And if you don’t have one, don’t sleep with her at all if you’re intending to turn her human and potentially take her memories the next day!)

He decides to throw his heart in the forge and turn her anyway, possible pregnancy complications bedamned (he probably doesn’t even consider it possible, see “irresponsible”).

That’s the beginning of Ai’s life. Her father, a man who wants to kill all Purebloods, creates one. Pretty damn irresponsible, especially for the supposed chess master of the story.

If you think that’s the end of his irresponsibility, you’re giving him too much credit! If Zero hadn’t regained his memories, here are five possible fates for Yuuki and Ai since Isaya was going to succeed in turning Yuuki per Kaname’s plan:

Fate 1! - Ai is terminated the moment Yuuki’s body switches to human!

Fate 2! - The pregnancy takes root, but because Yuuki is human she cannot survive it. They both die.

Fate 3! - The pregnancy takes root, but because Yuuki is human she cannot survive it. Yuuki dies. Ai lives and is an orphan raised by...Kaien? Zero? Random PB #6?

Fate 4! - The pregnancy takes root, but because Yuuki is human she cannot survive it. Yuuki is saved by an expert surgeon who aborts Ai to save Yuuki’s life. Ai dies.

Fate 5! - Yuuki somehow manages to survive a four-year pregnancy as a human and has a vampire child she may not even remember conceiving. 

Bonus! Probably Ai gets confiscated, kills Yuuki, or accidentally turns her back (causing her to go insane).

Go ahead and tell me Kaname is a great father figure now that you’ve read the above list. Please. I will try not to laugh, I promise.

Anyway, let’s forgive Kaname for being an irresponsible sperm donor who abandoned his fiancee and child and instead look at how he is as an actual father figure.

Yuuki spends a lot of time feeding Ai stories about Kaname and surrounding her with canon Kaname-fan characters (Ruka, Takuma, Seiren, etc.). Even though Ai as a child seems much more attached to Zero, the characters from the original VK try to paint a pretty picture of Kaname for her to keep her focused on her real father--a man she has never met, who is just a body in an ice cube to her. Ai actively roots against her biological dad in the fight for her mother’s heart. Sorry, Kaname, but Ai prefers Zero.

It’s pretty telling that Ai never talks about her own love for Kaname. She only talks about her mother’s love for Kaname. She herself has no connection with him and doesn’t seem to be actively seeking one unless prompted by school/adults.

Ai eventually begins to find these stories suspicious and starts investigating the “real story” of the trio. Whatever she finds makes her want to disintegrate into pieces initially, so her relationship with her real father is pretty rocky. She and Ren also confess later to expecting to find Kaname to be bad natured based on the stories they don’t want to believe from Yuuki and Zero. 

We don’t yet know how much Ai thinks about Kaname after Zero and Yuuki “make it official,” but given the state of Kaname’s surroundings in Night 93, it doesn’t look like she devoted her life to hanging out with him.

In the future, after Yuuki’s sacrifice, Ai is fairly wary of Kaname. Although she wants to bond with him and tries on several occasions to form at the very least a physical connection to him (sleeping in bed with him and hugging him), both she and Kaname are reticent and don’t immediately warm up to each other. In several scenes, she can be found clinging to Ren (the representation of the family she loves), and she and Kaname have not yet been allowed a single father/daughter moment without Ren to bear witness and offer Ai support.

Ai clearly empathizes with Kaname, but so far she doesn’t seem to be overly warming up to him as a father figure. To be fair, Kaname isn’t really warming up to that idea either--he’s too focused on his “romantic love story” with Yuuki. Ai is actually acting more as his guardian than his daughter at this point. To be fair, she’s a grown woman of 1000 years and has already had another father figure in her life to fill the “father” position.

The facts so far in VKM are not really positive toward Kaname behaving as a real father, despite his condescending head patting episodes. By the time Ai gets to “meet” him, she knows more about his past than he does and she’s acting as the “authority figure” with him, which means the natural parent/child relationship has already been subverted. When he regains his memories, this relationship will probably alter again and they may enter a more adult father/daughter relationship and move on with their separate lives.

So in short, here is the evolution of Kaname as Ai’s father:

Irresponsible sperm donor

Romanticized father figure

Father figure removed from pedestal

Ward to be watched over

None of the above points are particularly fatherly. Therefore Kaname does not actually fulfill the father figure role in Ai’s life, despite his biological X being in her chromosomes. Someone else must do that. Wonder who that could be…