Rosario + Vampire/Headscratchers

Issa in the anime

Somebody tell me, why the hell was Issa Shuzen made into the leader of the Three Dark Lords and the creator of Moka's rosary in the anime? I mean, I know Akasha hadn't been introduced in the manga yet, but why didn't the producers of the anime at least ask Ikeda who the third Dark Lord was?

• Honestly, the anime has so little resemblance to the original manga's plot that messing up that one more detail is trivial in perspective. They couldn't ask Ikeda for a spoiler, but the Three Dark Lords never actually came up in the anime's plot (or lack thereof) anyway, and that ending didn't really suck any more than the rest of the anime.
• Admittedly, it's very difficult for an anime to air one season, then wait 3–4 years before they have the material necessary for the second season, but this could have been averted had they split the manga's "season one" into two or three anime seasons. It actually had enough material that they might have been able to pull it off, had they been following the original plot. There was easily enough material in the Anti-Thesis arc for a second season, at least. However, to people who hadn't read the manga, it would have made for a shockingly dark and unnerving tone shift. The same could actually be said of the second season of the manga as a whole, actually. So basically, their only option aside from changing the anime on a fundamental level (and actually making it good) was to create a completely different story made entirely of filler, based extremely loosely on the first few chapters of season two and a couple of rehashed characters and stories from season one.

Kurumu's percieved Flanderization

I've seen all of Season 1 of the anime, and I plan to get the manga, and honestly, as someone who has yet to read the manga, why is Kurumu's anime persona considered an evil bitch compared to her manga counterpart? From what I've seen, her biggest asshole moments came in episode 2 of the anime, and afterwards, she gets along rather nicely with Moka and the other girls who want Tsukune.

In fact, it's Tsukune being a mutual concern that has solidified her friendship with the other girls, Moka especially. She would often help out in battle, and for the most part kept her jealous antics in trying to screw over Moka to either giving him Marshmallow Hell or trying to get him off to herself (and to be fair, all the other girls have their moments of trying the latter themselves).

By the end of the anime, she even has no problem with Moka turning Tsukune into a ghoul/vampire if it would mean saving his life and letting him stay in the school, despite the fact this would literally tie him to Moka via a blood pact.

With all the above, she seems fairly nice for an evil, ice cold bitch who wants to utterly screw over Moka, so why is her anime counterpart considered a flanderized parody of her manga counterpart?

• The anime itself is much more Flanderized than the manga counterpart since the anime evolved into a Fanservice-ridden comedy. To address your point, Kurumu in the manga is actually The Heart of the group. She genuinely cares about the other girls in the "harem" and is no where near as close to be superficial about her appearance.

P.S.- Yes, I understand she's even nicer to Moka and the other in the manga and quite supportive of them, and yes, I've been given to understand she's less flirty in the manga, but where did the perception I keep hearing about her being a selfish haremette come from?

• Look up chapter 17 of the Season 2 of the manga to see how different she is from the anime. In fact, the Above the Influence entry in the main page (which seems to have been added only yesterday) has the whole chapter explained (and unspoilered) word-for-word. She is head-over-heels for Tsukune, but she has a strong bond with each and every one of her friends. They matter to her as much as Tsukune does, unlike in the anime, where she's way more feisty - while she still tries to win him over without having to resort to her Succubus Charm, what she mostly does is bicker with the other girls because of Tsukune. My guess for her manga behavior is this: before she met Tsukune, she always had to use her wiles to get what she wants; after that, she noticed that she didn't need to do that anymore, as he defended her on his own free will. Okay, that explains why she fell for him. What I think is that this is the same for the girls too - Kurumu probably was a Libby before her change of heart, and thus, she had no real friends. Tsukune coming into her life made her open up to the friendship of Moka, Yukari, and later Mizore.

The Academy Police

How is it that The Academy Police "taught the Newspaper Club a lesson" in the previous year? At that time they had both Sun Otonashi who is considered the most powerful ayashi of the generation and Ginei Morioka [who, with help from Haiji, managed to take down an entire branch of Fairy Tale without even bothering to change into their monster forms. I find the Newspaper Club's loss highly improbable.

• Isn't she a pacifist, though, reluctant to fight? As for Gin and Haiji, maybe they had hostages or something.
  • When did Sun graduate? I got the impression she was two years older then Gin. If so, she wouldn't be around in that year.
    • Yep. She was the president of the Newspaper Club when Gin was her kouhai. She was a third-year; he was a first-year. She taught him all he knows (except peeping; that was self-learned, much to Sun's chagrin). By the way, the whole thing of Gin and Haiji thrashing the Fairy Tale office was not about them having hostages (though Haiji didn't know Sun wasn't there until Gin told him). It was more to get their point across as something like: don't fuck with Youkai Academy, or Youkai Academy will fuck with you.
• You forget The Academy Police leader is pretty powerful himself. And did won against Gin'ei in the manga (though it is implied Gin'ei could have avoided). Also, this was one or two years ago right? There could have been someone else powerful enough to take Haiji.
  • But remember, Haiji belongs to the Karate Club, not to the Newspaper Club. Thus, they wouldn't have had any business with him in their assault against the Newspaper Club. Also, he and Gin don't really get on with each other (if only on the outside) - note that, on the assault to the 7th Branch of Fairy Tale, Haiji said he only agreed to join Gin because of Sun - he does like her, but both for right and wrong reasons.
• While we're on this subject, what even happened to the Academy Police? I mean you think they'd make SOME effort to contain all the terrible disasters that befall the school even if they got taught a much needed lesson.
  • Possibly the defeat they suffered, plus the exposition of their power abuses, forced them to disband, or get a new leadership (note that one of the Academy Police's members, Deshiko Deshi, appears in the second season of the anime still wearing the Police uniform, but alluding to something that happened to the Police itself).
    • In the volume 5 extras, that are only avaiable if you buy the actual volume, it's revealed that Sun had retired from the Newspaper Club and was doing part-time jobs in the human world when the Newspaper Club was attacked, and that all of the members except Gin left after that.

How exactly are succubi an endangered species?

Their special power is seduction! How can something that specializes in magically forced mating be having problems with keeping its population up?

• I recall that the Anime (need to look at the manga version to check if its anime only) Handwaves this with a Explaination that, while they do specialize in, well, that, they only have one man out of all their boy toys they actually reproduce with. While they do get around alot, they only father children with a select man, which would make birth rates not as high as one would expect with all the "activity" they engage in.
• Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if succubi are rather less "endangered" than Kurumu lets on.
• Most of the girls mention their species having population difficulties. Snow woman have an enforced breeding program, and vampires were mentioned to have something similar in the past. There also the Headmaster's "paradise" where endangered magic beasts are kept for their own protection. I think it's likely that something happened that nearly wiped out the monster races.
  • Yeah, it's call "Humans killed so many of them there numbers are still low after hundreads of years"; something like this happens in real life. Anyway my guess is Succubi can choose if they become pregnant after sex or something and Kurumu was just being overly dramic
• A succubus' power is seduction. Which means that most any guy they get involved with is going to do it for reasons unrelated to love. My theory is that succubus can only get pregnant (or only wants to) from someone who loves them for real. If her power is always on at a low power, even if she finds herself attracted to a guy, it's likely that they are going to fall under their spell before any real relationship can start.
  • Actually, that make perfect sense, especially in the anime. Kurumu originally just wanted to screw Moka over, so she tried to seduce Tsukune for that purpose. When he successfully resisted her power, she wasn't just upset because he rejected her spell induced lust, she was also upset because she realized she found the one guy she would actually be able to get to the relationship stage with, so that's why she did a Heel Face Turn when Tsukune protected her from Moka: she wanted it to be true. And considering he has successfully resisted the thralls of other monsters who rely on similar preconditions for childbirth to work, the theory genuine love between both consenting parties as a requirement seems to pan out and strengthen the case for Kurumu that Tsukune is the man she could have a child with.
    • On her part, that is. Remember that Tsukune himself is not into Kurumu, and she knows it. Poor girl.
• All of this begets one question: who could have fathered Kurumu? All the family we've seen of her so far was her mother, and the only thing we know of her, relationship-wise, was that she and Tsurara (Mizore's mom) used to fight for a boy who, in the end, got on with another girl and, down the road, fathered Saizou. We've seen Mizore's father in the anime, but who did Ageha get on with to give birth to Kurumu?
  • It's stated in Kurumu's introduction about the fact that Succubi are said (by Moka herself) to seduce men and then HAVE SEX UNTIL THE MAN DIES. Perhaps Kurumu's father was just one of Ageha's slaves?

The teachers

Youkai academy is a school for teaching monsters The Masquerade. So, why do the teachers suck at it so much? Shouldn't they be using monsters good at fitting in with humans as teachers, rather than Catgirl-sensei and the psychopathic gorgon?

• The job of the teachers is to teach the same kind of subjects you'd find in a human school. Apparently, monsters are expected to already be able to look like humans. It's acting like them they're learning in their classes. As for the psychopathic gorgon (who seems to do a sufficient job of hiding her non-human appearance), she was keeping the "psychopathic" part hidden until that meddling human exposed her.
• Maybe those are the monsters who are good at acting human. Pretty much every monster we have seen has done a terrible job of hiding what they are, so the teachers at the school might really have been the best they can find.
• Nekonome-sensei's poor disguise was pointed out by one of the students. Who promptly had his face torn up by her claws. And perhaps monsters like Nekonome, who are incapable of disguising themselves well enough to go unnoticed in the human world, have nowhere else to go for employment. Adult monsters who are better at passing themselves off as human are living in the human world, passing themselves off as human.
  • I wouldn't look twice at Nekonome at any con. Or anywhere in Japan. Or New York. Or many, many other places. Ok, I lie, I'd look at her twice, and a lot more. Rrrowr.
• Returning to the starting point here, that's just generalizing through Nekonome-sensei. But if she can only hide her tail, she'll be doing rather fine, considering that her cat ears are enmeshed with her hair (thus, anyone who would look oddly at her would do so because of that "strange hairstyle" of hers). If she didn't have such an affinity for miniskirts, perhaps... (note, in the manga, that Ishigami-sensei wears a bandanna and uses braids in a convincingly enough way to hide her being a medusa).

Rosario + Vampire = ???

I knew I should've paid more attention in math class...

• Rosario + Vampire = Moka. Or maybe Tsukune.
• Warning: Implicit cast from Item to Monster.
• IIRC, the 'plus' is actually 'to', which I believe is the Japanese word for 'and'.
  • And you'd be right. It's Tsukune's involvement with Moka that sets the plot in motion, hence why she's more directly alluded to in the title. Moka is a vampire, and we first knew her in conjunction with her Power Limiter, a.k.a. the rosary.
  • Still, Rosary and Vampire qualifies as a Word Salad Title.
• Pfft, Rosario + Vampire = Coffee
  • Vampire + Rosario = Chocolate. Vampire - Rosario = Coffee.

Does Tsukune even still count as human?

Does he have constant access to a small portion of his power? Because Rosario+Vampire II seems to make it look that way. I know he's training but some of the stuff he does is just super-human.

• Human plus is the best guess. If you like analogies, liken him to Captain America (comics); Enhanced, but fundamentally still human.
  • You call THIS human!?
  • Considering that in Ultimate Marvel, Cap can go toe to toe with the freaking HULK and throw stuff around that weighs over a ton.....yeah, actually.

Moka's Memories

Why is it that when Tsukune and the others are in Moka's sealed memories, they see the fight between her mom and her sister Akua, even though Moka wasn't present until the end? How could she remember something she didn't see to begin with?

• Toho Fuuhai did it.
• Maybe she found out what had happened later by checking the security wards on the family castle, and either part of the "watch memories" spell rearranges memories into chronological order, or Moka was so focused on what she saw that she thinks of what she saw in terms of when it happened, rather than when she saw it.
  • my personal guess Modifyed from a vaguely related WMG of mine is that the rosary that Moka got from her mom acts has both a restraining bolt for her true powers AND a sort of magical data storage..thingy and they are able to see this because it recorded these events.
  • Or Outer Moka is actually Inner Moka's mother, with her memories sealed by the rosario. The personality fits, at least. This would explain why we're seeing both of their memories'.

Ginei

A (relatively) recent revelation about Ginei's character bugs me. He states that his own Sempei, Sun, set him straight. ...So why was he such a scumbag upon his first appearance? In fact, if he has feelings for his upperclassman, why was he even trying to get Moka? This makes absolutely no sense.

• Jerkass Facade and Characterization Marches On.
• Not to mention, 'better' is a pretty relative term. Chivalrous Pervert is definitely an improvement over Jerkass Blood Knight whose nickname was 'Rabid Dog'.
• Lunacy. No, seriously, his debut chapter mentions that the full moon makes him lose control, hence his psycho rapist behavior.

The School's Name

Seriously, Youkai High School? The 'ell, are they even trying to hide their school's identity?

• Given that it's located in a pocket dimension accessible only by the whims of the Bus Driver, its likely that they don't need to hide it that way, since without the Bus Driver letting someone in, they'll end up assuming its a prank or joke that doesn't exist.
• Hmm, good point there.
• Just check the Punny Name entry on the main page. I rest my case.
  • To clarify: the you part comes from taiyou, "sun", while the kai part means "sea". So, it's named Youkai without really meaning youkai.

The Oversexualization of The Anime

While the manga had it's share of fanservice, the anime takes the manga's level 4 or so fanservice and cranks it up to 11. I like fanservice and all, but I felt the amount they put in the anime overshadowed the (already trimmed from the manga) story.

• WAAAAAY seconded. I mean, I wouldn't have minded that (not that they are any tolerable, GAH!!) if the anime included the darker aspects as well, but nooooooo. Seriously, why? I'm hoping that they are intentionally not faithfully adapting manga because it might Overtook the Manga. Maybe if there are enough volumes, say, like 25 or 30, they might make a REAL adaptation, like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. That's my hope.

The recent chapter: 39

How the FUCK did the author think that the rape prank was funny? From Mizore of all people? Is the intention to make her and Mizore look like completely asses this chapter?

• YMMV to untold levels. I thought it was hilarious.
• Same here.
• I'm going to agree with the OP. I like Mizore's character and all, but she tries to rape Tsukune, despite being both a sexual asault victim and it being clearly established in the 10th volume that she would put Tsukune's feelings ahead of hers, and no one even gave a rat's ass. She didn't even see how any problem with trying to date rape Tsukune even after she nearly killed herself after being sexually assaulted the second time. Then she makes the person, who helped her cope with her second sexual assault believe; she was raped. Akihisa Ikeda is a pretty good writer, so why is this happening without even being handwaved? It would at least work if Mizore was supposed to have issues with her sexual assault is and was taking out her frustration on others, but it's just supposed to be a funny prank. WTF man?

The Masquerade and Humans Taking Over

Considering how powerful many monsters are, it makes you wonder how humanity took over the world to the point where the monsters have to live in hiding and blend in as humans. Especially since for most of that time period, humans would have been limited to melee weapons plus archery.

• They're probably just outnumbered. There are a lot of hints that the monster population is way lower than the human population.
  • Seconded. The humans would just Zerg Rush the Youkai with We Have Reserves.
  • And they have weaknesses. It's noted that vampires would be the most powerful of all monsters, but their weaknesses are common and well-known. It's a sort of Competitive Balance...but humans win the Superpower Lottery by not having any weaknesses (or strengths, technically, but it balances in their favor).
    • So we're like Mario in any multiplayer Nintendo game: the starter character who is easy to control and has no real drawbacks, but no super-skills.
  • Humans are also probably more quick-witted than most, if not all, monster species, judging from the fact that we're the ones who have invented everything and set their curriculum by our own academic standards and innovations- note that their curriculum is a copy of the Japanese standard, with no secret monster knowledge at all besides limited witchcraft, which is as much our knowledge as theirs. It probably helps that humans are way less ruled by instinct than monsters are- succubi and snow women are romantically driven to the point of being a liability in any hypothetical war scenario, half of 'em go into berserk rages when they try to fight, implying an abandonment of tactics and sneaky fighting, etc. Humans would- and would always have- won against monsters for the same reason that humans have always won against stronger, faster species with better built-in equipment IRL- we're smarter than them and have mastered the art of using tools to compensate for any situation.
  • Now factor in the possibility of rare but formidable human champions: Kung Fu + Ki; human magic users of diverse stripes; youkai exterminators; etc. Even of only a few of those classes exist in-universe, it's bad for the youkai. And remember what happened to wolves in the real world, where they became a problem, they were hunted to extinction.
    • After being enslaved and made into our loyal minions!
• Remember that Humans Are the Real Monsters, Humans Are Warriors, and our tendency to combine the two when it comes time to wage war. Yes, they have a few monsters capable of using lust techniques, or moving fast... but we have Tanks, nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, infrastructure, a planetwide communications network, guns... not to mention any number of biological or chemical weapons that we could pull out. And remember, monsters are by and large, scared of us because in the past we wiped them out in great numbers. We didn't have half the advantages previously listed even as far back as fifty years ago, much less the hundreds of years implied by the series. Plus, we just hit the seven billion mark. We have a lot of advantages over the various monster races.

Hybrid Monsters

My question is this: both succubi and yuki-onna are implied to be able to reproduce their own kind from other races, and since both Kurumu and Mizore fell for Tsukune before they knew what he was, with the intent of repopulating their respective races, this indicates that they'd get a pure succubus/yuki-onna no matter what kind of monster Tsukune might have been. Not to mention that Mizore's fiance was definitely not a yuki-onna (otoko?). If that's the case, then how are there hybrid monsters?

• Granted, as single-gender species (assuming incubi are treated as a different race from succubi), they might be more the exception than the rule, and vampires have been mentioned to have concerns about purity...
  • One possible explanation might be genetics. So you have a Yuki-onna have children with, say, an ogre, and the child is undoubtedly a Yuki-onna, she might have a feature or two of ogreish descent- nothing major, but enough to say what the father was. These little scrap elements could wait around in the genetic code until they're passed down to a child which manifests both traits, similar to a genetic disorder. Sometimes, a few generations will go by before it pops up, but those who carry the genes will be "At Risk," for their children or grandchildren to have it.

How are vampires still alive?

It has been established that water is one of the biggest weaknesses that vampires have. All you need is a squirt gun and you can lay down some hurt on the bloodsuckers. And that's fine... if there were only a few of them around, or they were an artificial race or something, or they were fairly new on the scene. But they've been around for a long, long time. How could a creature that shows a near kryptonite-like weakness to water survive and be considered "An S-Class Monster" on a planet that's about seventy percent covered in the stuff? How would they live long enough to breed? Or better question, how did they evolve this trait, and how did they survive in the ages before living indoors? All you need is one good rainstorm and the vampire is in a lot of trouble. It's the same problem as in the movie Signs.

• • No, the problem with Signs was that the aliens decided hand to hand combat was the best way to fight humanity, despite being no stronger than ordinary humans and having access to far more advanced technology. As for vampires, I assume they don't live in the ocean or go outside when its raining. And if anyone actually did throw water at them, they most likely just moved out of the way. Problem solved.
    • Agreed about the vampires. As for Signs, that was justified by the explanation that using overwhelming technological advantage against a race that has nuclear weapons is not a good idea if you want anything left worth inhabiting. By fighting hand-to-hand, they gave the humans the belief they had a fighting chance, whereas vaporizing cities with energy weapons triggers the response "launch the entire nuclear arsenal at them." Even if they win that war, they still have to deal with the fallout and potentially a nuclear winter.

How did Inner!Moka manage to defeat the Mermaids in a swimming pool if a few sprinklers made her virtually useless?

Seriously, if a few sprinklers does this to Moka, then why the hell didn't a freaking swimming pool not outright kill her?

• Purity of water is closely related to how much it hurts her. Presumably, the addition of chlorine to the swimming pool water but not the sprinkler water makes that much of a difference in reducing how much it affects her.

Vampires and Fairy Tale

Considering that vampires love human blood more than breathing, shouldn't they be campaigning for the preservation of the human race? Granted, they shouldn't have to be just overly in love with them either but it's just weird that a vampire would be the head of Fairy Tale. And I don't care what the author said, Alucard shouldn't count as a vampire, he's damn near a xenomorph.

The Doppelganger

I was re-reading the second part of the manga, and then I found something that struck me as really odd. When the doppelganger absorbs the powers of Kurumu/Moka, he got their full powers, regardless of limiters or none. Yet, when he absorbed Tsukune's powers, he didn't gain any of his ghoul powers. I'm sorry, but what?

• I actually found this to make sense. Remember, Tsukune is, first and foremost, human. To turn into a ghoul or even use his vampire blood requires conscious (or subconscious) thought. So when the doppelganger turned into Tsukune, he turned into his real form, a human. If he had reason to believe that Tsukune had vampire blood in him, he might have been able to access his ghoul power. Scary thought.