Blood+/Headscratchers

• So why does Moses end up committing suicide with Carmen anyway? From what I recall, unlike Carmen, he hadn't shown advanced signs of degeneration from Thorn yet (and as the Schiff selected to serve as the ideal prototype for the Corpse Corps probably would have been the last of them to do so). Even though Kai had exposed him to sunlight for a few moments as well it would still have taken some time (during which time a cure could have beem found)for him to develop it. I don't really buy the Ho Yay explanation since there was little to no foreshadowing for it (weren't they all supposed to be 'brothers and sisters' anyways?) It seemed a rather pointlessly Wangsty way of making sure all the Schiff but Lulu were dead by the end of the series.
  • I recall Moses saying that his being exposed to sunlight would only really last until sunset. He said it felt like his body was burning and would last until nightfall. So the sunlight argument can't really be it. Perhaps he just felt alone? Lulu felt at-home with the humans, but he still felt out of place. Without Carmen around, he'd feel really isolated. I agree that's a pretty poor reason, though.
• When Hagi is human and first starts to wonder about Saya it involves her healing fast and not aging, but Hagi has been around her at this point for at least a decade. Shouldn't this mean that Saya should have gone into hibernation during this time?
  • Its explained in the anime that upon reawakening from their hibernation, queens need to consume the blood from their chevaliers in order to regain access to their natural abilities. Before a queen went into hibernation mode she'd need to have at least one chevalier to feed from. Presumably a queen's hibernation cycle would start after she had made a chevalier which is why Saya was able to pass for decades without falling into the sleep since Hagi didnt become a chevalier until the 1880s. Likewise diva probably didnt fall into the cycle until after she made amshel a chevalier since saya was able to converse with her for years. For that matter what's the point of spending approx. 30 yrs in a deep sleep, awakening for 2 to 3 yrs then falling asleep again?
  • How would Saya's body know she made a Chevalier? It makes some sense when Diva's blood loses potency after she becomes pregnant, at least I can see that the body itself would adjust, but there's no real way to affect a Queen's body by having her give blood to someone else. It should be no different than all the other times she got cut and bled.

• What actually are Clara and her crew? Are they veterans of the U.S Army? Clara herself looks about thirty/forty-ish..what conflict did she serve in?
  • This was actually brought up in the anime. Clara served in the CIA with Lewis.
  • Clara states that she served in Nicaragua.
• On the same note of the above, Elizabeth (that's her name, right?) the Red Shield agent on the train said she served in the Soviet-Afghan war. I didn't know there were any women in the Red Army.
  • There were, actually.
• Does anybody besides me ever wonder if Saya or Diva could create a female Chevalier? Yeah all the Chevaliers in the series were male, but was it ever explicitly stated that they could never be female?
  • It's never stated that there couldn't be and given that there are female Schiff, I'd say it's entirely possible.
  • In the second season, there's a young girl Chevalier who could fly. So I'm guessing this is a yes.
    • I thought that she was a girl whose blood Rasputin had drunk. Chiropterans can choose to look like people whose blood they have drained.
      • Right, that Chevalier wasn't actually a girl, "she" was Rasputin shapeshifted into the form of a girl whose blood he had drunk, just like Amshel took Elizabeta's form after killing her during the train ride.
  • It would be inefficient since in order to bear children, queens have to mate with chevaliers. Since queens are female, chevaliers would have to male in order for pregnancy to be possible. Hence, chevaliers are male.
    • Ehhh... I don't think mating between Chiropterans is the same as between humans. Diva got pregnant from Riku, and he hadn't even hit puberty yet. I always thought they just needed Chevalier blood in order to procreate. That would at least fit with the theme of the show.
  • Not impossible to create female Chevaliers, just not practical enough; see by the Chiropteram mutants, there were both male and female being turned as such; if we think about it, it's sort like a dysfunctional bee colony: the males are workers and drones, and the females probably become sterile. Which could make female Schiff sterile too, by proxy.
  • Whether or not it's possible or efficient, they might just not want female Chevaliers. Saya has created Chevaliers only out of ignorance or necessity, and Diva simply seems to enjoy being surrounded by handsome, subservient men.
• Also what was up with Amshel suddenly shooting off energy blasts in the last few episodes?
  • Rule of Cool?
    • I think they were supposed to be bad depictions of supersonic attacks, like weaponized bat sonar.
    • The novels wrote it down as electric attacks.
• Why didn't anyone try drawing some of Saya's blood and put it on their own swords? or bullets, or whatever?
  • Maybe there is a potency factor. Saya's blood might have a short use time before it expires and more blood is needed. In some fights she did have to reapply blood to her sword, although that might have just been because it had dripped off.
    • If this troper recalls correctly, the US military did in fact try this, but to no avail. They were puzzled by why it didn't work, and decided that there must be some unknown factor when Saya fights.
    • Saya even has to re-apply her own blood in combat, actually. It either has a limited time frame, or she simply slings it all off during combat.
      • Her own blood draws a Berserker factor on her, hence the Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • It's likely to be a time factor. One one occasion, Saya's shot, and the bullet goes straight through her and kills the Chiropteran behind her. So putting her blood on a bullet is apparently sound in principle, but it either can't be stored or they were storing it improperly.
  • So why not just constantly position Saya between you and the Chiropterans and shoot through her? Kind of like the Torchwood?.
    • Because that would probably tick Saya off and would cause her to re-enact the Vietnam fiasco
  • During episode 12, the Red Shield agents with Clara asked the same thing so David offered a rather lame response which basically claimed that the reason they never tried was because they had no Chiropterans to test the bullets on.

• What exactly is Haji's cello case made of? And is the interior lined with some hyper-ultra-shock-absorbing lining or does he reduce 10 cellos to toothpicks on any given week?
  • Maybe he reinforced it during one of Saya's hibernations? Not much else for Haji to do except look mysterious and guard a crypt.

• Kai's 1911 pistol. Most of the time it's drawn accurately, but in a few scenes in a few episodes the trigger is drawn wrong. This bugs the hell out of this troper.
  • We call it Off-Model, it happens a lot in anime.

• It's mentioned that chevaliers need more blood to heal wounds--the greater the wound, the more blood needed. Hagi gets beat up more than anybody else, and yet we never see him feed. Even though sometimes he'll get injured multiple times in a battle with no plausible time frame to take a snack break.
  • This is actually especially glaring in that Haji doesn't particularly enjoy doing anything that Saya doesn't like. Hell, he won't even use his Chiropteran form (see: his primary, and strongest combat form) simply because it horrifies Saya. His arm's stuck, and he bandages that out of what I can assume is shame. The only guess I have is that being on moderately good terms with the U.S. military and Red Shield, he gets blood transfusion packs, which he consumes as necessary. Now I have an image of Haji's cello case stocked to the brim with blood packs. That's why it's invincible.
  • It's possible that that largely applied to Riku, who had only been a chevalier for, what, a day? Whereas Hagi is the oldest chevalier (barring Nathan and possibly Amshel).
    • Nathan is the oldest chevalier, isn't he (he was their mother's chevalier, right)? And he was around after Saya pretty much sliced him in twain (which you see at the end), and Hagi (most likely) managed to survive having an entire building fall on him, so I think that chevaliers get tougher and better at surviving the older they get. Certainly the younger chevaliers are a LOT easier to kill off (prime example: Riku).

• Umm, what the hell is with the rape part? You know the one I'm talking about! Unless vampires have some really messed up anatomy, sex just... doesn't work that way...
  • Rule of WTF.
  • In reality, they explained that the chevaliers have some sort of mating system that turns them vulnerable and easily excitable when Diva is too much near them. Added to Riku's age (around 13) and personality... Well, it wasn't really a rape...
    • Riku was a timid child who was essentially given viagra and all but paralyzed by his own inhuman physiology so that he couldn't fight back against a psychopathic and homicidal superhuman and you have the BALLS to say it wasn't really a rape?! Did you actually watch the scene preceding the (thankfully off-screen) act itself? He was terrified!
  • Not wishing to sound nitpicky, but Chiropterans are not vampires, despite the fact that they share their feeding habits and strength. The Chiropteran queens age (to a certain point), produce bodily fluids (like tears and saliva) and have none of the vampire weaknesses. What really bugs me is how Chevaliers can mate, considering the fact that they don't need to feed (unless they're injuried) or sleep.
  • Given the fact that the two rival factions must breed with each other, there's probably some weird pheromone thing going on.
  • Actually, there is such a thing as female on male rape. Considering male erection is actually a physiological response to external stimuli, a guy can be traumatised by the event and not want it. Yes it's pretty rare but it is actually a lot more common than you would think in the case of an older female guardian sexually abusing a young boy who has no idea what is going on. It is often played for laughs but it does happen and can really fuck people up.
    • Thank you for actually having common sense!
  • Getting back on topic, I doubt that it was rape in the sexual sense. It's a completely different species and Riku hadn't even gone through puberty it seemed. I would think she just needed his blood (maybe in her special lady place). It would fit with the theme of everything else. Saya and Diva were finally "born" when they had blood spilled on them, blood creates new Chevaliers, etc. I don't doubt that the experience was traumatic for Riku, but I doubt he and Diva had sex in the conventional human sense.

• Just where do Chiropterans come from? Are they really supernatural beings?
  • The series tries to use scientific explanations for chiropterans, but a lot of it comes across as supernatural. It's probably just something each viewer will have to decide for him/herself.
  • In the Expanded Universe it says that they're an evolutionary offshoot of early humans, but that's debatable in the anime.
• I've seen a lot of statements that a chevalier or queen has to drink someone's blood to shapeshift into them. Is this ever outright stated or just implied? Every instance I recall of a chiropteran turning into someone did occur after drinking their blood, but I don't remember anyone ever saying it was a necessity.
  • Considering the shapeshifting abilities of a regular chiropteran are pretty high-end, I really want to say that they can just make themselves look however they want, but it's easier to impersonate a specific human more accurately if they've drank some of their blood to get a blueprint instead of doing it by memory. Sort of like how an artist's painting done with a model in front of them would be more accurate than an artist doing a portrait of someone they've only glimpsed, or trying to re-paint the same portrait identically many times.

• The fact that the only thing Riku got out of becoming a chevalier was being harder to kill (okay so not that hard) really bugs me. Every single other chevalier in the series gains strength, speed, and other abilities from it. It evens gets pointed out after his transformation, but they don't even try to handwave it.
  • Well, he was only a chevalier for a short while before... yeah...
  • In the manga where he lives he takes a level in badass learning the same blade shifting attack as Solomon and strong enough to become a member of Red Shield.
  • Riku had the latent abilities, yes, but he had no way to develop them and learn how to use them because Saya adamantly refused to let him fight.
  • It seemed like it would take time for his body to further develop into a full chiropteran's, and would gradually acquire more abilities as time went on. After all, Haji wasn't leaping around and stabbing people right after he first became a chevalier, either.

• Does Haji's clothes heal with his wounds? Or does he have a closet full of black suits inside his cello case?
  • The clothes that Chiropteran wear are strange in Blood+ . The first time I saw Amshell transform from Elizabetha to his normal self in just one second, I asked myself: "Where did the woman's clothes go and how come he's fully dressed?!" I also wondered how Diva manages to somehow keep her long white dress. She had it when she attacked Joel and company and she still has it by the time the anime takes place.
    • Diva did mention that at least one outfit was ruined in a fight, and was peeved that she'd have to replace it.

• From where does Amshell provide Diva with living humans to feed upon? And how did he manage to cover up the victims' disappearance and get rid of their bodies? At one point in the series, Diva leaves a theatre and Nathan tells her not to eat the driver like she did last time, because they have plenty of those at home.
  • They probably grab homeless people off the street from all over the place. He does have a multi-national company with which to do this. As for the bodies, get some ravenous animals. God, that disturbs even me.
• What just bugs me is they said that it all started in France, but Diva calls Saya "Saya-Neechan" but....Neechan is Japanese, and they lived in France. It just doesn't make sense.
  • Translation Convention. Might as well complain about Diva and her chevaliers speaking Japanese at all. Or watch the dub, and be bothered by all the English being spoken in Okinawa / Vietnam / Russia / France.
• Where do the "regular" Chiropterans come from? Are all Chiropterans produced as chevaliers or via a derivation of the Delta serum? Because sometimes it seems implied that there's another class of "regular / worker" Chiropteran generic mook batpeople that's not a Chevalier or a Delta experiment. A few sources say that Queens can produce weaker and bestial Chiropterans or stronger and and more intelligent chevalier via their blood, but what's the difference?
  • I'm not totally sure, but I seem to recall comments being made to the effect that certain people are better suited to becoming chevaliers than others. Maybe if a person isn't one of those people they just become a regular Chiropteran.
    • I'm not sure about the Expanded Universe, but all of the "monstrous brute" chiropterans that appear in the anime are produced using Delta 67 and its variations; all of the chiropterans created with a queen's unadulterated blood are chevaliers. We don't see Saya fighting Mook chiropterans until the Vietnam War, which was after Delta 67 came into development.

• How come there are always only two Queens? Is it impossible for two sisters to both become impregnated by each other's chevaliers?
  • It's probably more likely that they won't. Nathan implied that the Queens might have a biological imperative to kill each other and their chevaliers. And it seems likely that the rival Queen will kill the chevalier after becoming pregnant, so then the other Queen will go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and kill all of her potential mates before she can actually mate with them.
    • This might be a bad example though, as Diva had a Freudian Excuse in the whole matter.
      • Didn't Diva allow Solomon to leave, knowing he was going to Saya, without even attempting to kill him? Not that she was nice about it or anything, but either Diva knew Saya would never accept Solomon or the queens lack any programed urge to prevent their counterparts from mating. Which actually makes sense. Since giving birth makes them vulnerable, it is likely that many queens have only two young. In order for the species to multiply, both new queens would have to survive.
    • Not to mention the fact that, out of all of Diva's chevaliers, only Solomon (and possibly Karl, in his own twisted way,) show ANY sexual interest in Saya. Saya is most interested in Haji, despite the fact that he cannot give her children. And, even though he was the only potential mate around for about a century, Diva never seems to have shown interest in Haji. Something is terribly wrong here.
    • How are those cocoons supposed to come out, anyway? The origional queen still had hers inside her when they found her. Diva's were cut out also. Do the queens normally hold the cocoons inside them until they die, possibly to prevent competition between the mother and her young? Or do the babies eat their way out when they mature? The latter method would make more sense if the babies looked like the origional queen and Delta 67 creations, as the human-like babies might not be able to make it out with those little teeth. Either way, you would need at least one chevalier to survive the death of the queen in order to raise the young, and in the first example, cut them out of their mother in the first place.
      • I would assume that, after a certain period of development, they would be laid like eggs. Diva probably had them removed surgically to satisfy some sort of mothering instinct.
  • For that matter, do both queens die every generation? What happened to any queens who killed their sisters and all their sisters' Chevaliers without ever breeding? Is their nieces' blood also toxic to them? Can they breed with their nieces' Chevaliers?
  • I wondered about this when I saw the series ending, mainly worried that eventually Saya would feel the instinct to kill her nieces or her nieces to kill her. Looking up info about actual queen bees might shed some light on the issue. For example, when a bee swarm has both a virgin queen and the old queen, the old queen can be killed by the workers to make way for the new virgin queen. Sometimes, when the old queen is advanced in age, she will stop producing pheromones and as such can't lay eggs, so she will be allowed to live until she dies of old age. In the case of the chiropteran queens, ability to create Chevaliers might be determined by age, as both Saya and Diva created their first Chevaliers around the same time. Presence of Chevaliers might affect the queens' already long lifespans, to give them time to mate; when there are no Chevaliers, there is no such imperative for a long life. I'm thinking Saya's situation, where there are no more of Diva's Chevalier's to mate with Saya, might present a similar "can't have babies" situation for her, and perhaps trigger some sort of biological reaction that would allow her to eventually die. This is more WMG, though.
    • Similarly, if there is more than one virgin queen in the hive, they start killing each other until there is only one left, the one who will become the new mother. This tells me Diva's kids may also have a natural inclination to kill each other. Their human upbringing would go against this, and against them creating Chevaliers. If they never create Chevaliers, perhaps they would die eventually-- taking the species with them. Well, except for Nathan. But he's weird like that.

• If the only way to kill a Chiropteran is to get its bodily fluids to mix with the bodily fluids of the other side of Chiroptera (the other queen and her Chevaliers), and the only way for the species to survive is for a Queen to become impregnated by a Chevalier created by her counterpart, then how the heck does the species survive? Wouldn't the two Chiroptera die the minute they have sex?
  • It doesn't seem that a Chevalier's bodily fluids are capable of killing a Queen. The male might die from the experience, but he would no longer be necessary after impregnating the Queen.
    • It is not clear whether it was Diva's "mating" or giving birth that changed the nature of her blood. It may be that the two bloodlines are required in part because that is the only way for the babies to have two bloodlines, but that the mixing damages both, even if the queen is less obviously weakened. Though, the changed blood may be justified by the fact that the mother's own blood might otherwise kill one or both of her young while they were still developing.
      • In the anime, at least, it really is not clear whether the mating itself killed Riku, or whether Diva killed him during or afterwards. All she says in that, since he gave her what she wanted, she gave him her blood. That makes it sound like she deliberately killed Riku after using him. Which makes Solomon's continued interest in "mating" with Saya make a little more sense. If that happens every time, you'd think he might choose to love Saya from afar instead.

• Nathan. What the BLEEP?! We do not know where he came from. He is stronger than Amshel. He knows FAR too much about what is going on, yet does not seem to be pulling many strings, possibly because the characters do what he wants without him having to manipulate them. He acts loyal to Diva, but shows no aggression towards Saya. He never attacks. And somehow, despite being CUT IN HALF with a sword covered in the blood that kills Diva's chevaliers, he survives. WTF?!
  • Do we know for sure that Nathan was Diva's chevalier? I mean, he traveled with her and acted loyal to her, but what is he was the remnant of an older generation of chiropterans? We do not know when he was created. In order to be immune to Saya's blood, he would have to have been made by someone other than Diva. Since chiropterans do not agae, maybe Nathan was a chevalier of Saya and Diva's mother, or of the queen who made the chevalier that fathered them.
    • He could even be their father himself. Yes, he acts gayer than all the drag queens of Key West combined, but it is possible that he would still have been able to play the part of drone to his queen. Since it seems unlikely that the blood of the children could kill the mother they were once INSIDE, maybe the father is also immune. He does seem particularly interested in keeping Diva's babies safe, and sympathetic to Solomon's desire to be with Saya, so while he does not seem to love the twins, maybe is is trying to encourage the increase of his species.
      • He could have encourage Solomon to do the deed since he was too interested in his own sex to father more chiropterans himself.
  • It's very strongly implied that Nathan was a chevalier to Diva and Saya's mother. He does after all make reference to their mother having had a chevalier in a way that indicates he was speaking from personal experience. Whether Diva knew about any of this unknown, but he could've easily allowed her to think she was turning him into a chevalier even though he really already was one.
  • It's hinted in the novels that Diva's mother's Chevalier tracked down the Original Nathan and used his chriopteran Face Stealer abilities to pull a Kill and Replace.

• Why does Diva mating/giving birth make her blood unable to kill Saya? There doesn't seem to be any real reason for this other than to make sure Saya can't be killed. At least the manga was realistic in how Diva died while Saya lived.
  • The most likely answer is that getting pregnant causes the Queen's blood to lose whatever makes it lethal to other Queens, because otherwise the Queen's blood would kill her own children while they were still developing.
    • It still seems like a Deus Ex Machina moment in order for things to be easily wrapped up for a happy ending.
    • Deus Ex Machina might be a little strong. I mean we have all this stuff throughout the entire series about how the nature of the blood is unknown, and how the original queen gave birth to two twins whose blood could kill the other. I mean the entire series kinda rests on the idea of 'the mysterious blood' so its not like it came totally out of left field. A little convenient twist, yes, but not quite a DEM.
    • Maybe the introduction of the twin's chevalier's semen brings with it some aspect of the queen's own genetic material, which causes the queen to stop producing antibodies against her sister's blood, since her body now recognizes it as no longer hostile.
      • Whatever antibodies the mother stops producing against her sister's blood are irrelevant in this case: whether or not Diva had Saya antibodies or not would not affect Saya herself, it would only affect Diva, and she died anyway. The mystery here is why Saya didn't die. So something in Diva's blood changed to make it less harmful to Saya. The idea is that Diva's babies, being part Saya via the father, could conceivably be affected by whatever is in Diva's blood that kills Saya and her Chevaliers (we'll call it Diva-venom for simplicity; I tend to think it's related to the Delta 67 agent, but that's just speculation). As such, to ensure the continuity of the species, upon conception her body stops producing Diva-venom, much like women's hormone levels change upon pregnancy. Since she's stopped producing Diva-venom, her blood is harmless to Saya just like it was to the babies. Saya's levels of Saya-venom remained high because she was never pregnant, and so her blood kills Diva, while Diva's blood can't kill her.

• Okay this is just a bit mind-boggling. You just happen to keep your science experiment in a high tower where anyone can find her and break down the door? I mean, yeah, it was hundreds of years ago... but a friggin' decaying TOWER, what is this a Grimm's tale? (yes, I get the whole imagery 'Diva the lost princess' thing). And you lock it with a simple lock with one freaking key??. Oh no, we could not possibly have a multiple lock system (or a reinforced door) for a potentially dangerous immortal psychopath. We'll just leave this easily accessible. And you just happen to think that it might be a good idea just to not tell your immortal foster-daughter that she should not go wandering near a decrepit set of ruins that she's eventually going to come across (she was probably going to find it within a couple of centuries anyway considering how bloody near it is to the main estate). I mean, seriously! I mean yeah Fridge Logic is one thing, but seriously??? They're supposed to be scientists studying unique and dangerous things and no one even thought this might present a problem? (Also, as an added thing, way to go letting your manipulative bastard of a protoge monopolize your sentient test subject... that couldn't go horribly wrong). It just bugs me a little. It also makes me want to hit Saya's dear benefactor with a very large brick. Possibly maybe drop something heavy onto him.
  • I suppose the tower was on Joel's property, and he may have had some general security to make sure nobody trespassed. More likely, that little detail is something neglected for the sake of the plot. As far as I can remember, Saya did not show any superhuman strength or speed while Joel was alive, and it's safe to assume that neither did Diva. At that point, Diva wasn't feeding freely on humans, therefore it is possible that she was as weak as Saya, who only got one glass of blood per day (there is a theory that says Diva is stronger because she feeds on humans directly). Therefore, she might not been able to break the lock of her cell. Or it could have been something psychological (maybe she tried to do that countless times as a child and failed, thus believing that it cannot be accomplished; it's how they tame baby elephants in the circus). How she changed from that brown blanket into that white dress (which she appears to possess even 200 years later!) and managed to drain every single guest at Joel's birthday party and still set the whole mansion on fire is a mystery. I always thought Joel regarded both twins more like curiosities than sentinent beings. To grow one specimen as a daughter, secretly treating her like a bug in a jar, hiding the truth of her nature to her and at the same time knowing that you've irrevocably destroyed the other's psyche is horrible. They weren't real scientists, they were just rich and bored. Both deserved what happened to them, and it's ironic how some characters, even Saya herself, fail to see what monster Joel really was.
  • Did Joel I have any plans as what to do with Saya and Diva after he was dead? The flashback episode shows he was quite aware that he was getting closer to the end of his life and that the two chiropterans would continue to live on once he was gone. We're aware that he didnt consider the girls as sentient beings but lab rats for him to observe and manipulate. Heading into Fridge Horror here, but I can believe that Joel I wouldnt have felt comfortable with the idea of two near invincible immortal bloodsucking monsters living free outside his control.Case in point, look at happened with Diva after she was released from her cage. Now I can imagine Joel I ordering a subordinate, notably Amshel to 'terminate' the experiment in the event of his death to keep his discovery a secret & prevent them from running loose & killing people. All Amshel would have to do was give each girl her sister's blood instead of the regular human blood for their intakes. Even Saya, the girl who he raised as a human probably wouldnt have been excempt considering she'd never left the estate until after that fateful Bloody Sunday so it doesnt look like Joel I planned on letting her go free & wanted to keep her there forever until it came time to end the experiment. SHIVERS. Thinking about it, its probably just as well for Saya that the first Joel was killed by Diva rather dying a natural death.
    • If you think about it in detail, the only interpretation that makes any sense was that Joel 1 was a Complete Monster who was going to end up killing both Diva and Saya anyway. But you'd think he would have kept a closer eye on them all the same, considering that by that point he knew they were immortal, and it was probably likely that they had other powers as well.
• The page picture shows hagi's finger clearly under the bandages as normal fingers. It bugs me.
  • Holy magical bandages, Batman!
• The "fifth base" theory for the mechanism of Chiropteran transformation is completely ridiculous for two reasons. First, there is already a fifth nitrogenous base commonly found in nucleic acid, and that base is uracil. Uracil is not usually found in DNA (it is a common building block of RNA, which is another part of cells), but it does get incorporated into DNA occasionally by mistake. Second, if the molecules being incorporated into human DNA are completely unknown, cells would not be able to read the DNA in order to do anything with it. Such cells would be more likely to die rather than morph into chiropteran cells.
  • The fifth base is unnecessarily and ridiculous, but for none of the reasons given. Scientists began engineering novel base pairs back in 2008, so a fifth base besides uracil is demonstrably possible. They're even accurately copied by polymerase.
  • Oddly enough, when the "fifth base" was discovered in the light novels (this is near the end of the second volume, "Chevalier") the narration stated, "...it looked similar to uracil, which appeared in RNA," (Ikehata, 252). It does still bug me, though, because the appearance of this uracil-like base in DNA where it wasn't previously present would require every cell's DNA to be broken down and rebuilt. I don't know enough to say that this isn't scientifically possible, but it seems unlikely to me.
  • It's just a plot device. Even if magical DNA existed, you still couldn't get around basic biology and physics. How would a giant Chiropteran fit inside a human's skin? How could they regenerate lost tissue without eating an equal amount of something like protein? How could they muster the energy to jump from rooftop to rooftop? Even a 100% efficient body would need to replenish its energy stores somehow. It almost made sense when they showed Saya eating giant meals all the time. But then you have everybody else who only drinks some blood on occasion.

• That Saya never willingly drinks blood from her team just bugs me. At least at the last battle when she is falling down asleep, it would have made perfect sense for Kai to give her some, to keep her edge up. Surely Saya won't auto-make him a chevalier will she? It just bugs me.
  • I think it's more that she's humanized to such an extent that she doesn't like drinking blood, period. You can see in season three that she drinks Hagi's blood when she needs to heal, but once they're back with Red Shield in season four, she's back to getting IV transfusions.

• So what exactly was Karl doing to the black haired girls he was kidnapping? It's stated that they died of hemorrhaging...was he beating them to death? Drinking their blood? Raping them doesn't seem to be his style.
  • "hemorrhaging" is just a fancy word for "bleeding", so you can assume they died of blood loss. He fed on them until they died.

• I'm not sure if I missed something in the show... an explanation or two but.. was it ever explained what made Riku so special? As in... way before he even truly met Diva, Riku was able to hear a Chiropteran's roar the same way that Saya did, and he could hear Diva's singing like the Delta 67 children in Vietnam even though Kai didn't (hear Diva's own voice, I mean). The fact that Diva could even draw him to her so she could suck his blood happened because he was able to hear her singing from far away. Is there a particular reason for this? Or is it just... not important?
  • I remember them saying that sometimes kids can pick up on it, but they don't really state why. That's why Van wasn't too surprised to see him looking for the sound coming from the van like Mui (the girl with the missing leg) was. It seems he already knew about this. Overall it wasn't really that important, though.