I really wish Mars Red were getting more attention, because this show is damn special.  I don’t know how much more you could ask from a vampire story, really.  The vampires are both the heroes and monsters, the human characters are morally clouded, the world building is top notch, and the music and casting is off the charts.  Oh, and it’s fantastically written – it all builds off of that.  This is a series that understands and respects the traditions of vampire mythology but manages to put a truly original spin on them.

Apparently (I was not aware of this) there’s an apocryphal belief that the sky in Tokyo was red on the morning of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.  That’s why I didn’t pick up then that we were about to reach that climactic moment in Japan and Mars Red’s story, but in hindsight the episode was full of foreshadowing clues.  The references to the calendar and the weather, the repeated shots of the clock, the rats, Shirase and her boss’ repeated mentions of the Imperial Hotel opening.  It was really beautifully directed from start to finish – the montage before the quake hit was an especially nice flourish.

The depth of Nakajima’s evil “for a good cause” really came into focus here.  As Suwa and Takeuchi discover he’s assembled a group of 80 in his vampire unit – complete with personalalized coffins.  These were the men of the 16th Special Forces unit, turned into vampires by the ASCRA Nakajima has sourced from Rufus.  Maeda, in fact, is the last one left – and with his heart trouble and artificial arm (both new bits of information themselves as far as I remember) there’s a certain irony to that.  His life belongs to Nakajima, as Maeda so often reminds us.  But it’s still his to decide what to do with, and the moment of his decision has finally come.

There are certainly elements of political commentary here, as we see Japan being dragged into evil by a military man intent on not seeing it be weak compared to its European rivals.  Watching shows like this and Golden Kamuy it’s clear that the Russian war had a huge impact on Japan, the horrendous waste of lives scarring a generation of survivors.  But this is not primarily a political story, rather a personal one, and a musing on what it is that defines humanity.  It’s clear from the events just before the earthquake that the ones Nakajima and Maeda deride as sub-human beasts have more humanity than their so-called betters.

Even with the news that Nakajima “manufactured” his vampire unit out of his former comrades, Maeda still refuses to betray him. In fact he’s prepared to ingest the ASCRA the general provides him, and it’s only the intervention of Kurusu and Yamagami that stops him.  I don’t think Maeda’s sword blow would have been fatal to a vampire like Yamagami, but the intent was unmistakable.  This was a man prepared to go down with the ship, even if Misaki had pleased with him to stop her father from his descent into darkness.

The only downer for me here, really, is Yamagami’s demise.  It was marvelous in every way – dramatic, tragic, essential to the story.  But still, for me he was the best character in the series and Yamadera Kouichi’s the finest in a sea of great performances, and he’ll be badly missed.  I’ll be very surprised if seeing the sacrifice his old friend made for him doesn’t change Maeda in a profound way, force him to confront the reality of what he was about to commit himself to.  Of course he still has to survive what looked like a surely fatal wound – in point of fact, what I expected was for Yamagami to find the ASCRA and give it to Maeda to ingest before he expires.

Now everything changes of course.  Yamagami is gone, dammit, and the earthquake will have scrambled everything.  I’m sure an SA-Class like Kurusu will have survived his fall, but then so will Nakajima’s 80 special forces vampires.  Chaos will reign on the surface even in the absence of vampires, but it’s the perfect environment for those among them who wish it to take advantage of the confusion and feast like beggars at the banquet.  We’re still waiting for Deffrot to step from the sidelines and really being exerting his weight on the story – perhaps this is the impetus for that to happen at last.