Undead Girl Murder Farce – 02

「吸血鬼」 (Kyuuketsuki)
“Vampire”

The atmosphere was perfectly unsettling- the old creepy mansion, the rattling carriage through the woods, the murder. It gave me the feeling of an old Hammer Studios vampire film. We transitioned from the yokai vs. human in Japan conflict last week to the humans vs. vampires tension in France this week. No matter the country, humans don’t care to co-exist with the supernaturals, even if said supernaturals are supposedly human allies.

One such friendly creature of the night is Goddard (Kinoshita Hiroyuki), who claims to not have had a drop of human blood in 20 years. Despite being a model citizen, he is assailed by a hunter bearing a silver stake, silver being akin to acid or holy water on vampire skin. What a perfectly timed piece of foreshadowing there, Goddard explaining to his son Raoul “I’ll lock it away so Charlotte doesn’t play with it” just prior to discovering the broken lock and bloodied stake. The echoes of Charlotte singing with the maid sent chills up my spine, made me as hesitant as Raoul and Goddard were to open closed doors for fear of what would be found.

What was behind that door? A bloodbath and the corpse of Goddard’s wife. Rather than getting justice, all Goddard gets are accusations pointed at him by the humans- time to bring in the 3rd party detectives, our Shizuku-Aya-Shinuchi trio. We have a time skip for these three between when we last saw them and now, they’ve been busy solving supernatural crimes and building themselves something of a name.

Aya and Shinuchi have an entertaining dynamic, Shinuchi playing the comic man and Aya, the deadpan. That whole scene in the carriage had some classic lines “If you could slowly hurry” or Aya’s “Even if I wanted to hurl, I would have no way of doing so”, topped off with Shinuchi arguing for a return policy on the carriage ride. The funny bits fit so smoothly into the episode, it in no way distracted or disrupted the serious murder at hand, which takes some serious skill to pull off.

Once Aya and her not-apprentice Shinuchi make it on the scene, she quickly comes up with 7 problems, only 5 of which we hear. The overall conclusion we can take- it wasn’t an outside job. Someone had to know the family and their circumstances to do what they did. Along the way, Goddard lets drop that his wife used to be human- just when and how that happened (and did Goddard have a part in that process??) isn’t said, but it seems like something important to keep in the back of one’s head, along with Hannah’s wood working hobby and the holy water.

According to this lore, vampire cells revert to human-like post-mortem, meaning holy water doesn’t burn them. Judging from the empty vial and unburnt limbs, holy water was thrown, but only after Hannah’s death- the question of the hour: why? Secondly, why didn’t Hannah scream- as Aya pointed out, as a vampire, she had heightened senses. And doesn’t it seem too convenient for her wood-working mallet, perfect for stake-driving, to be at hand? The hunter, too, is curious- was he a set up for what happened later, a pawn, or were his attack and the subsequent murders uncorrelated? I have my own theories on this, but I’ll keep silent on that for now to avoid any accidental spoilers. I found it interesting that while Goddard was guiding them to the crime scene, his and Shinuchi’s silhouettes were back-lit in a neon green- I’m sure it has some significance.

Lastly, the fear of the hunter is rather subtly played out. We can feel the threat of the hunters merely from the presence of the bullet and murmured talk about them, all without actually seeing them- until the post credits scene. It leaves me burning to know what this hunter will actually be like and if he’ll live up to the reputation of fear surrounding him.