You might notice the title of his page is from the opening theme, Gessekai (Lunar Realm), by BUCK-TICK. It's a wonderful song with a melancholy feel, and the singer has a very niiiiiiiiiiiice voice. ^_^ Anyway, before I get further distracted...
Nightwalker is the tale of our bishonen hero, Shido Tatsuhiko (Yamazaki Takumi). He strives to solve mysteries involving the dastarly night breeds, which are demons that possess humans and commit crimes. Shido's got a huge chip on his shoulder about protecting humanity, mostly out of a sense of guilt. Shido himself is one of the damned: a vampire, doomed to eternal life, requires to drink the blood of humans to stay alive, while he struggles to protect them from the darkness he knows all too well. Luckily for Shido, he's got a blood donor in the form of N.O.S. operative Matsunaga Yayoi (Shinohara Emi), so he isn't required to stalk the streets for a meal. Let me tell you, Yayoi's sure enjoying all these drinks he takes from her. I mean, who wouldn't? Hot man sucking on MY neck? I wish...sigh. No vampire fetishes here...and there's the whole thing with Shido biting his finger to produce a sword made out of blood (akai Ensui, anyone?)...
Anyway, Shido and his ever-present urban fairy companion Guni (Ohtani Ikue) work with Yayoi and the N.O.S. on cases where a little extra-special (read: nonhuman!) help might be needed. The N.O.S. doesn't know he's not human, but that's not a problem...at least, not a BIG problem... ^.^' Now add in Shido's office-helper, high schooler Yamazaki Riho (Sakamoto Maaya), and we have the whole gang. Riho's not TOO bad, for a high school girl in love with a (MUCH) older man, but she still kind of gets on my nerves. Although, she's kind of cool in her own way. She's desperately jealous of Yayoi at the beginning of the show. Yayoi's got a smart mouth and she delights in saying things to taunt Riho. I'd do the same, if I knew there was a girl there and I had a hot vampire who sucked on me all the time. It's really funny, in the first episode Shido wants a "snack" while Yayoi's driving, but she says no, cause she's driving, and that wasn't their deal. So Shido leans her seat back, takes the wheel in one hand, and proceeds to help himself AND steer at the same time. Pretty hard core. Wonder where he learned to do that...
Although Nightwalker may seems like a disconnected string of stories about Shido fighting night beeds, there is a thread through it all. Shido is a man without a past. Made into a vampire some 2-300 years before by a mysterious man named Cain, Shido had all his memories taken away from him by his sire. Not only that, for a while Shido and Cain were lovers, adn they ravaged Transylvania, killing probably hundreds of people. When Shido sort of came to his senses, he was horrified at what he'd done, and confronted Cain. Cain was none to happy about his creation's sudden conscience. After all, vampires are God's chosen, or so he believes, there to watch humanity and feed on it. Disgusted by Cain's cruelty, Shido left him, and headed out on his own, determined to protect humanity regardless of the personal cost. He's also determined never to return to Cain. That doesn't stop Cain from chasing him around, of course. Or from trying to provide him with salutory lessons, including the use of Riho...
Of course Riho ends up caught between Cain and Shido. Cain kidnaps Riho and uses her to show Shido the error of his ways. He slits Riho down the middle of her chest so that she'll bleed to death, showing Shido the impermanence of humanity and the fruitlessness of trying to save them. Instead, Riho begs Shido to drink her blood and make her a vampire. So, with no better solution in mind, he complies, although he doesn't want to. I have to go on a little rant here:
1.) Cain slit Riho down the sternum. It is impossible to cut deep enough over a bone like that to reach any vital spots.
2.) Even with a cut like that, the human body heals fast enough that she would not bleed to death. For real bleeding-to-death, he'd have to hit either her evisceral cavity (which he didn't) or some major artery (which he also missed).
3.) Shido had plenty of time to get her to a hospital, even if she was in danger of bleeding out. It takes something like 15 minutes to bleed to death, if one hits something major like the femoral artery.
So why did Shido do it? I think he's lonely. I think Cain's taunting had its effect, but not quite in the way he intended. By showing Shido how frail humanity really is, it made Shido want to protect humans even more. In a lot of ways, I think this also for Shido was a way to give Riho a chance to protect herself, and be not so reliant on him in the future. If you ask me, I don't think he's in love with her. I don't think he's in love with Yayoi, either, or Cain for that matter. I think Shido did love Cain, and has a lot of affection for Yayoi and Riho, but isn't in love with any of them at this point. When Shido rejected Cain's way of life, he had to reject whatever feelings were between the two of them. I think he knows that Yayoi has some feelings for him, and he sure knows about Riho, but to Yayoi he feels more like a brother, and more like a father to Riho. But that's just me.
Anyway, I have a couple favorites parts in this 12-episode series...the first one to mention is "Man on the Run," Episode 3, where a police officer named Taki Ryuichi (Iwanaga Tetsuya) is shot in the head in the line of duty. Although his body is alive, he's in a coma, so he is possessed by a night breed that makes him kind of lizardy. He escapes from the hospital where he was being cared for, and heads out into the city, disturbing Shido and Riho. I guess they were on a date - Riho certainly thinks they were - but Shido takes off after Taki-san anyway. On the way down the escalator, he is passed on the other side by Cain. This is the first time Cain is seen (and let me tell you, he looks awful...the second half of the series has slightly better animation, and Cain looks a lot more bishie, and Shido's eyes are green normally and gold when he uses his powers, instead of gold all the time). Shido is asked by Taki's fiancee, Ohtsuka Megumi, to find him and bring him back. When they find him, Megumi makes off with the possessed Taki, even...um...nursing him back to health by having sex with him and thereby getting pregnant. O_o Anyway, at the end, Shido has to kill Taki, and is surprised to see that the possessed man is trying to die as a human...
One of my other favorite episodes is "Tears of an Angel," Ep. 10. In this one, a lonely girl named Yuki finds a pendant (which looks kind of like a green kidney, to be honest) that brings her luck. The pendant is inhabited by the spirit of an angel (Morikubo Shoutaro) who brings her good fortune. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well...it is. The "angel" is really a breed. It's sucking out Yuki's life force each night through a kissing ceremony (awww, but he's so cute, can you blame her?). It's kind of funny, when I saw it the last time, I was like, "You know, that angel reminds me of Raphael from Tenshi ni Narumon...and he sounds kinda familiar..." He has the same hair. And the whole angel thing. So I checked the end credits...and yeah, one of the breeds was Morikubo-san. Coincidence? I think not...^_^ Anyway, eventually Shido convinces the girl to throw the pendant away, and the angel's true form is shown. She's horrified, but he yells at her that humans judge whether someone's an angel or a devil by their appearance. And which was he really? He was making her happy - maybe only on a superficial level - but it was more than she'd had before. Would she have trusted him if he showed up in his usual form, rather than in the kawaii angel-boy form? Of course not. It doesn't make what he did better, but it makes him a more pitiable character.
And then there's possibly my favorite episode, No. 12. In this one, Cain sends Shido a dream. In this dream, Riho's parents (who were killed by breed before the show starts) are possessed and must be killed by Shido. Horrified and upset, Riho demands to know who died and made Shido god. She leaves and begins to prey on people, turning out to sound a lot like Cain, actually...Shido is forced to go after her. The whole point of Cain's vision is to make Shido understand the darkest fear in his heart: that his creation will turn from him. And why? Because that is exactly what Shido did to Cain. And Cain shows Shido exactly how it felt to be so helpless to watch one's close loves leave. It was super cool, although I kind of wanted the false-dream ending to be a true ending, which would have been very kick ass, only a little sad. I bet Cain could have made it come true. Anyway, Cain shows up and tells Shido all this, then leans forward and kisses Shido, and vanishes after saying "Ai shiteru..."
So what, in the end, does Shido see as his relationship with Riho? Earlier he said he was like her father, because he changed her and was her vampire sire; and that their similar situations made them "comrades." When she asks again at the end of the series, he says, "Precious friends." This doesn't please her either, but I'd like to think she manages to be okay with understanding that he's not in love with her.
Shido from the first episode. He just had a bite from Yayoi. Well...not that Yayoi bit him... you know what I mean. And there's Guni.
Yayoi and Riho. In the second half of the series, Yayoi's hair is suddenly black, and her eyes are blue. Riho's a little less juvenile looking, too.
And the poor angel-breed. Isn't he cute? Doesn't he remind you of Raphael???? =( Poor li'l guy. All he wanted was to live his parasitic little life out by sucking the energy from Yuki. Alas, it was not meant to be. Angel or breed - who decides?
