There’s something vaguely Sisyphean about this season of Yofukashi no Uta. The more secrets are revealed, the more new questions are asked. The more we did into the past, the farther away we seem to get from the present. It’s all interconnected obviously. And in a vacuum what we’re seeing here is very interesting stuff. But connection is the issue – I find myself drifting away from the story a bit as all my anchor points get further away. In short this is all dragging on longer than I’d like, and guarding its secrets a little too well.
It also strikes me (like literally, just now) that the first season was mainly about psychology, and the second is mainly about plot. Which you prefer probably comes down more to personal taste than any objective quality difference. Those two pools obviously bleed over into each other, but the proportions have changed a lot. Kou and Nazuna’s relationship – and indeed his character pretty generally – have been fairly tangential to this season’s storyline. There’s a laserlike focus on the mechanics of vampire society in Saitama. Which is, again, interesting. But not as interesting, for me anyway.
One element of this that is interesting (because of the psychology involved) is that this is a topic vampires seem so little interested in. It’s only an existential threat to their existence that’s caused them to look at their society. I think that says something about vamps in this mythology, who seem to symbolize eternal teenagers more than anything. They aren’t introspective as a whole. They like to have fun and get caught up in their internal cliques. Boredom seems to be their greatest enemy. It’s ironic in that sense that Kou wants to join them, as that’s theoretically what he’s rebelling against in human teen society. But these vampires are the outsider kids, the ones who don’t fit in. That’s their appeal to him.
Well, in any event we have a lot going on here vis a vis Anko-san. Is she in love with Nazuna? Plainly. And while Naz is enjoying their time I don’t think she feels quite the same way. But Anko is also in love with her parents. She wants a normal family life, and hates her father not because she hates him as a concept but because his actions have taken that life from her. When Nazuna offers to turn her, Anko has every reason to be tempted even if she claims to be unable to fall in love. What would she be losing? She even lets Nazuna feed off her, and a plan is made to make things official at two in the morning.
However, that all changes when her father seemingly repents. He apologizes to her mother, and then to her. He takes responsibility for the harm he’s caused and offers to make amends. Whether either of them (especially the mom) should be willing to accept this is a valid question. But in practice they clearly are. The lure of what this represents is enough to get Anko to break her date with Nazuna, and presumably to reject the idea of becoming a vampire. But it doesn’t wind up being quite so simple.
So what does happen here, exactly? It seems indisputable that Anko’s father has been turned into a vampire. It’s strongly implied that he was sent home with the suggestion planted that he should say what he did, and that he genuinely believed it when he was saying it. But a switch is flipped at some point, and he shows his true colors. This further implies that the one who turned him intended for him to kill his family, though why they should care about that is an obvious question. There are no obvious explanations for all this, but there are less obvious ones.
The answers seem tied into the stakeout Anko and Nazuna staged at the family restaurant, where a couple of odd things go down. In the first place something very weird happens when Naz goes chasing after the taxi Anko’s father gets into – something stops her, violently. And she has no idea what it was. The other thing – and I confess I didn’t notice this until I saw a comment about it later – is that Kiku is walking outside the cafe, which we can see when the camera does a long tracking shot from the exterior to the interior of the restaurant. As such, Kiku being the one to turn Mejiro-san seems a given. And Anko’s hatred of vampires is thus quite clearly explained. A couple of answers but more than a couple new questions – that’s the story of Yofukashi no Uta this season.
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