Vampire Knight Anime and Manga Review

This review taken from here: http://ofanimeandvideogames.com/vampire-knight-anime-and-manga-review/

About last week, the Vampire Knight manga ended.  I could remember a time when I was hesitant to watch the short anime due to  seeing the words "vampire" and "school" in the summary.  My hesitation disappeared after watching a few episodes.  Eventually I was at Barnes n' Noble buying the manga and then I was reading the rest of the series online.  There was something interesting about the characters, setting, story, and art style.

First season of Vampire Knight anime

Volume 1-10 of the Vampire Knight manga

Summary

Cross Academy is a place where two types of people go to school: the humans during the day time and the vampires during the night time.  Since none of the day class students know that the night class is full of vampires, Yuki (our protagonist) and Zero must protect the day class from vampires.  Yuki has no memories of her past ten years before being saved from a vampire and being adopted by the head of Cross Academy.  She believes that vampires and humans can live together someday and looks up to Kaname, the vampire who saved her when she was a child.  Zero has an extreme hate for vampires before being adopted by the head of Cross Academy and wants all vampires dead.  These two beliefs leads to some conflict between each other and the vampires.

Positives

• I enjoy the shoujo and gothic art of Vampire Knight anime and manga.  Despite almost all of the characters being in uniforms, all of the characters are recognizable in the anime.
• Vampire Knight surprised me with a dark story as I continued to watch the anime and later read the manga.  There were surprising twists and turns as the anime/manga went on.  When Cross Academy becomes less important, the mythos of Vampire Knight is explored, Kaname's motives become clearer,Yuki's past is revealed, and Zero's feelings for Yuki are challenged.

In the Middle

• I do not hate or like Yuki as the protagonist.  There are times when Yuki's actions and thoughts towards Zero and Kaname go back and forth and it seems like Yuki could not make up her mind.   Yuki is not completely helpless as she doesn't back away from a fight but she is often saved by someone or sometimes sits on the sidelines of some fights.  Considering that there are some really annoying shoujo anime and manga female protagonists out there, at least Yuki never wanted to make me stop looking at Vampire Knight.

Negatives

• There are too many series (anime, TV, movies, etc) with vampires in some kind of school.  My interests for Vampire Knight were finally pinged near the second season of the anime.  The beginning of Vampire Knight is slow and I know a few people who dropped the series before things started to become interesting, thinking that Vampire Knight was all fluff and no bite.  
• I felt the ending of the Vampire Knight manga (yes...the anime ends shortly and the manga continues where the anime left off) was rushed.  I had to reread the last few pages, so I could understand what happened.  It was almost like some panels were missing from the manga.  I do like the resolution to the love triangle between Yuki, Zero, and Kaname though.
• The advantages of the anime, is that all the characters are in color.  Sometimes the black and white makes it hard to tell some characters a part in the manga.

Conclusion

Vampire Knight is one of those series that took me giving the series a chance before I became addicted to it.  The artwork is pretty and gothic and I hope I can find another shoujo manga  with similar artwork or a dark story.  If you liked the anime, I would invest some time in the manga as the story continues, there are extra chapters and side stories to enjoy, and more information on the world of Vampire Knight is explored.