While Nomad will almost certainly go down as the best series of the spring, Mars Red is a quiet contender for the next spot.  Very quiet, even less-noticed than Odd Taxi, which because of its sheer distinctiveness stands out more in a crowd.  We’ve seen lots of series that broadly do what Mars Red does and superficially look like it – it’s just that very, very few of them do it nearly as well.  For anime, it’s probably even harder to make an impact treading familiar boards as Mars Red does than it is to do so with something really different.  But I’m glad whenever either happens.

In some sense things are progressing along a path that seemed more or less expected.  Gen. Nakajima is rapidly turning into the antagonist of the story.  He’s rebelling against the military’s intentions to shut down his program and turn to imports by going fully rogue (up to and including shooting government ministers in cold blood).  The interesting part of that is what happens with Maeda, who while considerably less than sympathetic does seem to have some sense of ideals.  His loyalty to Nakajima is obviously powerful – he’s going to have to make some very hard decisions sooner rather than later.

It seems the pedophile vampires holed up in the Yokohama warehouse district were the defense ministry’s S-class replacements for Code Zero.  While Rufus is obviously there to grease the wheels and obsequiously acts as their servant, providing them ASCRA (which is apparently what the drug is called), his agenda is his own.  And he proves that soon enough, by poisoning the lot of them.  At this point we have no idea what his endgame is but the answer will likely start to become clear very soon.

If he’s a wild card, the biggest one here is surely Defrott.  We’ve seen basically none of his power on display, but one can probably assume he’s the strongest vampire in the country (or close).  He seems to prefer to keep things peaceful in Tokyo, and seems to consider it “his” town, at least in vampire circles.  Interactions like the one he has here with Col. Maeda only deepen the sense of mystery.  Defrott is certainly no bloodthirsty animal – he’s as in-control as any character we’ve met so far.  He and Maeda both look to be delicately poised in the middle, though obviously under very different circumstances.

With the deployment of the vampire units in Yokohama, the shit is hitting the fan for a lot of parties involved.  I tend to agree with Yamagami that Maeda probably had no idea that Nakajima was about to pull this stunt, but if indeed that’s true he’s going to have to make his loyalties known pretty soon.  It also strikes me that if the vampire units (the train carrying them was oddly futuristic, if I’m going to nitpick) are the future for Nakajima, vamps like the ones in Code Zero are pretty much expendable.  Individualistic, varied in terms of strength, unpredictable – that’s not what Nakajima looks to be after here, based on his handiwork with the vampire units.

Nakajima, Maeda, Defrott, Rufus, the government – there are a lot of different interests tangled up here.  And the moral landscape of Mars Red is just as tangled, which is one of the things that makes it so fascinating.  I could see this story going any number of different ways – hell, Code Zero could even up under Defrott’s protection if Maeda sells them out, though I’m not predicting it.  Not knowing is part of the fascination with this series, which truly is managing to be unpredictable even following a very well-worn path genre-wise.