Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 12 (Fin) – Bringing the World Together

Fallon manages to land the plane without killing anyone, and Dorothea deals with their vampy stowaway. Willard gains access to the airship’s bridge and brings the ship close enough to the ground so Yuliy can grab hold and board it. Yevgraf immediately becomes drunk with power and spends a lot of time smirking, laughing, and gloating about it.

Indeed, Yev proves just a few minutes into his “merging” with the Ark that he’s only in it for number one. Having gained the knowledge of the Ark, he believes vampires to be a weak and inferior race just like humans, and plans to purge both in his new world.

This naturally comes as a shock to his always enthusiastically loyal underling Tamara. But even more shocking to her is that Yuliy is the one who comes to her rescue against a Yevgraf who has changed a great deal in a very short time…and not for the better. Like myself, she did not see such an alliance coming!

Yuliy isn’t interested in killing vampires for the sake of killing vampires. He made a promise to his father to keep the Ark, and the pride of Sirius alive, and to prove him right about all of the races of the world being able to peacefully coexist. I mean, if the Ark doesn’t have the answers to such a future hidden somewhere within it, what good is it, really?

The Jirov brothers team up to fight this new “deformed final boss” version Yevgraf, who is little more than a monster now; all subtlety regarding his lamenting the end of his kind by some random disease utterly evaporated for the sake of a good-vs.-evil showdown.

Yev can heal super-fast, but eventually the power proves too much even for his body, and the regeneration slows and eventually stops altogether. This leaves him a far more vulnerable target for attacks by both Yuliy and Mikhail, who work together to finish him off.

Not soon thereafter, Misha succumbs to the disease and his wounds, but not before handing Yuliy the Ark he pulled out of Yev’s chest and telling him to keep living, this time with the Ark.

The airship crashes into the sea, and Willard washes up on the shore, but while he’s out, Yuliy reaches out to him, telling his second father he’s found a new way to live: by using the power of the Ark to help the world, as he believes those who bestowed it upon his predecessors intended.

Willard wakes up surrounded by the rest of V Company, Iba and Ryouko. A bit later Ryouko returns home and enrolls in college business classes, hoping to one day walk by Yuliy’s side once again. Willard & Co. receive word of the location of a couple matching Yuliy and Tamara’s description, and are ordered to capture them.

While their superiors now see Yuliy as an adversary to keep in check, nobody in V Company is against what he’s doing, which is why they intend to be the first to find him. When we leave Yuliy, he’s on a train, preparing to meet with vampire elders about reaching some kind of détente.

And that’ll do it for Sirius! I’ll admit it took me a while to get through it, but that wasn’t out of lack of enthusiasm. On the contrary, despite its lukewarm reception in the halls of MAL, I quite enjoyed P.A. Works’ foray into the vampire genre. It tweaked the blueprint with period and steampunk touches and a likable (if not particularly unique or deep) cast of characters.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 11 – The Wrong Hands

After leaving the realm where his father resides, the red pool is gone, and the Ark of Sirius is in Yuliy’s hands. It looks a lot like the sphere Willard acquired in Dogville, suggesting one of the two may be a fake or other means of defeating Yevgraf. Yev arrives right on schedule in his airship, and uses his blood pact with Mikhail to force him to retrieve the Ark from his brother.

Major Iba and Ryouko have followed Yuliy and Bishop and meet up just in time for Bishop to take Ryouko hostage and reveal he’s a vampire, something Yuliy already knew. However, the threat is short-lived, as Yuliy tells Bishop he always knew, and also knew that he and Bishop wanted the same thing: to defeat Yevgraf.

Where they differ is that Yuliy wants to keep the Ark around as the new “pride of the Sirius” while Bishop sought to destroy it so the vamps wouldn’t get it. They eventually agree to fight side-by-side towards that goal.

Yuliy and Bishop confront Misha and the twins, respectively, and with Misha basically programmed to attack Yuliy, it isn’t long before there’s a knife in Yuliy’s shoulder and the Ark is in Misha’s hands. As Tamara rushes the Ark to Yev, Bishop grabs Larissa and kills her.

After a struggle, Misha overcomes the blood pact, thanks to the blood of a diseased vampire he drank earlier. But he still doesn’t want Yuliy doing anything foolish; to let him do so would be to betray the promise he made to their mother. Yuliy, however, won’t allow any outcome where the Ark is destroyed or ends up in vampire hands.

Unfortunately, he’s powerless to stop the latter from happening, as Larissa gets the Ark to Yev, who promptly kills Bishop, then dickishly offers his immense gratitude to Yuliy for doing such a great job unsealing the Ark so he could take it. It really is a worst case scenario, as Yev orders his army to attack Yuliy, with Iba and Ryouko also in the crosshairs.

V Shipping comes to the rescue via airplane, and eventually deposit Willard on the airship with the “other Ark” in hand. But both he and Misha would seem to be too late; activated with Yuliy’s blood, he swallows the Ark whole and its power begins to surge within him, turning one eye gold.

Yev’s laughter suggests he’s absorbing an immense amount of information, and as we know, information is power. Will a Mikhail on his last legs and very mortal Willard be enough to delay whatever Yev has planned so Yuliy can arrive, unleash his Sirius powers, and use Ryouko’s katana to defeat the big bad? Only one episode left to find out.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 10 – Sirius Pride

Willard & Co. make good use of their Dogville Detour, locating some kind of magical item that Willard believes Yuliy will find useful once he’s found the Ark of Sirius, which is a Very Big Deal.

As his friends support him from afar, Yuliy and Bishop make quick work of Klarwein’s modified cyborg vampire soldiers. Turns out Yevgraf’s lack of confidence in Klarwein’s plans was justified!

While he may be dressed like a goofy cartoon villain and has a ridiculous (and awesome) airship to boot, Yevgraf is looking more and more like a more complex villain, someone who is backed into the corner.

He’s walking talking proof that maybe it’s better to have never become a immortal vampire than to become one and then, many centuries later, find out that hey, he’s not immortal after all!

Once past Klarwein (which again, wasn’t hard), Yuliy and Bishop enter the cavern where the Ark is believed to be sealed. Where Mikhail’s vampirism kept him from passing the barrier, Yuliy gets through.

There he bears witness to a very thorough flashback of the events that led to his father Alexei leaving one day and never returning. When Mikhail and Yuliy were attacked by a bear, Akasaka (the soldier, presently a hermit, who was seeking the Ark) saved them, and befriended Alexei.

Alexei wanted to reform the ways of his people in order to coexist better with humans like Akasaka, who were proof to him that they weren’t all bad (and hey, they’re not). But he could not escape his blood, which demands that someone of royal blood basically sacrifice their soul and corporeal freedom in order to seal and thus protect the Ark.

It’s heartbreaking to see what a vibrant and prosperous town Dogville was in its heyday, as well as seeing Yuliy and his family all alive and well and together. But it’s perhaps even more heartbreaking to find that his father is still conscious within the Ark itself, basically keeping it sealed with his soul.

Just as his father sought a new way for his people to live—a “new Sirius pride”—his son seeks a way to free his father; a new way to seal the Ark. That way might well be in Willard’s possession.

Alexei isn’t totally against Yuliy doing what he can, but not at the cost of his life, soul, or freedom. Even after everything that’s happened in the world since he was sealed away, he doesn’t see it as a burden; he sees it as vital to keeping the world peace.

The problem is, when it’s time for Yuliy to say goodbye to his father, a great pillar of light erupts from the once dark red pool in the chamber, alerting Yev and the twins in the airship that Yuliy has finally arrived there and done what he’d hoped he’d do. Yuliy’s intentions are noble, but now there are matters both more pressing…and more competent than Klarwein!

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 09 – The Look of Those Eyes

The vamp twins are tough customers, but Yuliy manages to get the upper hand on one of them…yet he sees a glimmer of fear in her eyes and hesitates for a split-second, allowing her to escape. Bishop arrives to force their retreat, but the fact remains: Yuliy isn’t just a Jaeger anymore. If he was, he would have surely dispatched her.

Yuliy and Bishop then encounter the hermit and former captain in the Imperial Army who was sent to look for the Ark, but doesn’t spill the beans about where it is. But they do think he knows. He also knew Yuliy’s dad Alexei, who may still be alive; but the hermit won’t surrender any more info. Bishop decides the best thing to do is head back into town and get a good meal before giving the old man another go.

In the process, he and Yuliy cross paths with Major Iba and Ryouko, who met on the train. Meanwhile, as the twins laugh and tease, Mikhail (whom they call Misha informally) sulks aboard Yevgraf’s airship. Having shown he can’t break the seal to the Ark, Yev is gunning for his little brother, who might have better luck.

Iba reveals his mission to Yuliy and Bishop, while Ryouko simply hangs around because…she feels like it? That’s good enough for me! You do you, girl. She even has a nice warm moment on a balcony with Yuliy, talking about what a father is, at least to her. When she describes it, Yuliy can’t help but think of how his brother tried to fulfill that role.

If it weren’t for Mikhail, Yuliy would be dead, and he knows it. And he’s still trying to protect Yuliy, as we see when Yev and the twins catch him trying to leave the airship, likely to warn his bro. The confrontation is interrupted when one of the twin’s slaves becomes violently ill, transforms into a beast, and has to be put down.

It’s another sign the vamps aren’t just looking for the Ark just because they’re evil and want to dominate mankind (though both those things are probably true); they’re fighting for their very survival.

Iba and Ryouko join Yuliy and Bishop on their second trip to the mountains, and this time Yuliy has more luck getting through to the old man, inadvertently channeling his father, with whom the captain was good friends. He provides a map to the Ark’s location and wishes him good luck.

Yuliy slips away with Bishop without coordinating with Iba, but Iba memorized the map in the short time he saw it (there’s a reason he’s a major at such a young age) and he and Ryouko won’t be far behind.

However, once the snow picks up and Yuliy and Bishop continue on foot, they come afoul of yet another familiar face: Klarwein, who seems to have up to a (dozen or more) of his experimental modified soldiers at his command—ones far less plodding than his first Frankensteiny attempt. Despite Yev’s lack of explicit blessing, Klarwein is still trying to come through for his beloved boss.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 08 – Aligned Interests, Allowed Journeys

It’s official: the vamps have total air superiority in this show. I guess it can pay to be immortal! Mikhail is whisked to Sakhalin by Klarwein (the mad scientist) in a floatplane that wouldn’t be out of place in Porco Rosso. Yevgraf’s splendid airship has already docked atop a mountain. Where are the Jaegers’ toys?

Mikhail learns this was the birthplace of the Ark of Sirius, and an ancient sanctuary built by the Sirius sanctuary is where his father brought the Ark to be safe. Yevgraf believes because Mikhail has noble Sirius blood, he’ll be able to break through the barrier his father created at the cost of his life.

However, it’s not that simple. Mikhail also has a blood pact with Yev (formed when he turned him when Dogville fell) that not only prevents him from fully penetrating the barrier, but also prevents him from attacking his master. And now we know for sure: Mikhail wants the Ark so he can kill Yev. Instead, Yev decides he’ll try to use Yuliy.

Despite being about as gracious and simpering a thrall as a master could want, Klarwein is utterly ignored by Yev in every instance where he’s in his presence. While I don’t see the mad scientist’s loyalty wavering, it’s worth keeping an eye on what other “research” he’ll cook up in isolation.

Willard informs his team of Yuliy’s solo departure, and Fallon, Dorothea and Phillip all want to help him if they can, even if he left without them specifically to keep them out of something that could get them killed. But these are Jaegers; they’ll decide how they’ll be killed, so Willard announces they’ll make “a stop” before heading to London.

And in case you were wondering, the show isn’t done with Ryouko just because the Jaegers are no longer staying at Baron Naoe’s. She books passage to London, leaving a loving note to her pops about her duty as next head of the family to further investigate the attack on their manor. The Baron is content to allow his daughter her journey, but he’s coming too.

Finally, as soon as Yuliy arrives in Sakhalin, he picks up a tail, but it fortunately turns out to be a fellow Jaeger in Bishop, who I’m guessing is American from his attire. Yuliy and Bishop both want Yevgraf dead and the Ark out of the hands of the vamps, so they decide to work together. The first step is meeting with a recluse in the mountains who has info on the Ark.

Bishop is a bit of a walking cautionary tale for Yuliy; his entire team of Jaegers, which was more like a family to him than his own blood, was wiped out, leaving only him. Yuliy can smell the blood on him, almost as if he were a vamp himself, something Bishop explains is something that simply happens if you hunt them long enough and enough of the people you care about are lost.

By the time they arrive at the codger’s, he’s already being ambushed by vamps led by the twin sisters Larissa and Tamara, who have a flair for the theatric what with their sentence finishing and echoing laughter. But they can also handle themselves in combat. Once again Yuliy has to fight high-level vamps while keeping them from killing someone. Hopefully Bishop finds parking and lends him a hand fast!

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 07 – Time to Know Everything

The big showdown to determine if Yuliy can beat both Kershner and Mikhail and protect Phillip is suddenly cut short when tank shells explode outside. Major Iba has arrived, and he’s brought a sizable contingent of infantry and armor. It’s a great and triumphant realization of Iba’s decision to temporarily trust V Shipping and assist however he can.

Kershner’s ranks are routed, so he retreats, leaving Mikhail to finish Yuliy off, but Mikhail won’t kill him, any more than Yuliy will kill Mikhail. After all, before they parted, it was Mikhail who told him to “live”, and that directive supersedes Mikhail’s loyalty to Kershner. Maybe (brotherly) love can conquer all!

Kershner reaches the roof of the mansion to find Willard there waiting for him. Willard tries valiantly but he’s ultimately no match for the high-ranked vamp, and ends up at swordpoint when Yuliy arrives. Little does he know Kershner and Willard have a history.

Indeed, it was Willard, so obsessed with the Ark of Sirius, who helped “lift the veil” on its location, Yuliy’s hometown of Dogville. After Willard witnessed Yuliy use the power of the Sirius in the snowy forest, he saved him and set him on a life driven solely by revenge.

Willard fully expects Yuliy to want to kill him shortly after he kills Kershner (in a pretty awesome badass way, if you ask me), since he’s partly responsible for a lot of the terrible stuff that happened in his life.

But Yuliy doesn’t kill Willard. The ten years weren’t just about revenge for him. Willard may have been a cause of his despair, but he’s also the only reason he’s still alive, and lived as long as he has.

In the aftermath, V Company will reimburse the Naoes for the damage to the estate, while Willard tells Yuliy more about the Ark of Sirius: it’s a kind of font of extremely valuable information and technology; no wonder the vampires are after it.

It’s hinted when we check in on Kershner’s boss Yevgraf (who flies around in his sick airship, as you do) that while the vamps are certainly not happy about having to rely on the Ark, some kind of illness is killing them, and the Ark is their onl hope.

As for Iba, he gets a chewing out and his unit is disbanded, but he’s given a new and even more crucial task: find and retrieve the Ark of Sirius for Japan. Later, Iba pays a visit to Willard at the bar, and Willard tells him where to start looking for said Ark: Sakhalin.

Willard and the Jaegers of V Shipping, their Japanese mission complete, are ordered back to London on the double, for debriefing and to await their next mission. They all seem eager to return to HQ, particularly Phillip, who calls London home.

But Yuliy won’t be joining them. His mission to find and protect the Ark is no longer V Shipping’s, so they must part ways. He books passage on the next ship bound for Sakhalin alone, and sets off to do what only he can do.

This is no longer about avenging his family, his home, and his brother. It’s about fulfilling the duty that is his birthright, as well as his responsibility as last living Sirius…unless, of course his Dad’s still hanging in there somewhere…

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 06 – The Siege of Naoe Mansion

Having learned the Ark wasn’t even in the city the train was headed, Kershner declares the train-and-Frankenstein’s monster op a wash, and refocuses his efforts on eliminating the Jaegers who got in their way. Back at the Naoe household, V Company sits tight and awaits further orders.

Ryouko is scolded by her understandably protective father. He forbids her from ever touching another sword, but she won’t hear of it. If she’s to be a worthy successor, she needs to see more of the outside world and how it works; book studies won’t be enough.

After what he witnessed on the trian, Major Iba seeks out more intel from Willard’s bartender informant, but both of them are tailed by vamps in black coats, and when the bartender is alone, they strike. By the time Willard arrives for his regular visit and Mockingbird cocktail, he only has a few moments before his friend dies, handing him a note.

The vamps aren’t gone, but Willard demonstrates he can handle himself in a fight against a couple of grunts. Every bullet finds a vital target and no movement is wasted, save, perhaps, unloading a couple more bullets than needed into a vamp’s head. But considering what they did to his friend, it’s understandable. Willard calls Dorothea, who musters the Jaegers for a battle.

They play things stealthy at first, hiding in the shadows while the vamps run into booby traps, but there are just so many goddamn monsters out there the skirmish quickly becomes a tense siege.

As the buildings of the household start to burn, Ryouko, who led her father and servants to the storeroom, prepares to head out and buy them more time to escape, decked out in her samurai best.

However, her father stops her—not because he doesn’t think she’ll be able to put up a fight, but because he wants to go to heaven being able to face Ryouko’s mother, something he can’t do if he lets her sacrifice herself to save his sorry old ass.

Speaking of old ass, Kershner is in the building with Mikhail by his side, just as Yuliy and Phillip finish up with their monsters. Rather than let his brother choke the life out of his fellow Jaeger, Yuliy slips away from Kershner long enough to knock Mikhail away.

Protecting Phillip while fighting Kershner and Mikhail sounds like crappy odds. I figure Yuliy’ll need one more friendly variable on his side of the equation.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 05 – The Train Job

Be it The Orient Express, Firefly, or FFVIII, you can rarely go wrong with train caper, and TSJ is no exception. The great mass and speed of the huge vehicle never fails to deliver not inconsiderable measure of energy, momentum, and gravity to whatever’s going on aboard it.

And there’s a lot going on aboard this train…and around it. First, Yuliy comes face-to-face with his long-thought-dead brother, whose current status as a vampire throws a big wrench into Yuliy’s life’s whole “Kill All Vampires” directive.

Then, the Hyakko Party decides to block the train’s path, forcing an emergency stop. They board the train and both the army and the Jaegers work separately towards the same goal: protecting the innocent passengers, among them Naoe Ryouko, whom Dorothea discovers and immediately diagnoses as having chased after her crush.

Ryouko denies having a crush; she’s just “interested” in Yuliy, the other Jaegers, and their very different way of life. The one place where they are similar is that they want to protect the weak…and have the means to do so. Only Ryouko only has “dojo” skills, and has yet to test them in a real-world situation.

Since this is a time when soldiers with rifles go up against revolutionaries with swords and arrows, martial arts are still a very useful skill to have.

The Hyakko Party raiders have some success against the soldiers and reach the car that contains the Frankenstein monster, whose operator lets their leader think it will do whatever he commands. The Hyakko leader is eventually relieved of his head after getting a little too close to the monster, and his cohorts scatter, making the train a runaway train.

Yuliy jumps off the train just long enough to rescue a little girl and reunite her with her parents, perhaps proving to Mikhail that he’s too “softhearted” to continue pursuing a quest for revenge (especially since he’s avenging his brother’s death…while his brother is still “alive”, albeit as a vamp).

After Fallon and Phillip board the train and decouple the passenger car, Ryouko takes a running leap to remain with them, not wanting to miss out on the action as long as she can assist. Yuliy jumps over everyone to get to the front of the train to try to stop it, but he’s blocked by the monster, who proves a tough customer even against a Jaeger.

Major Iba’s troops and the other Jaegers eventually come together, with the latter saving the former from one last bad guy with a gun, proving to the former that they aren’t the bad guys…just good guys taking a different path.

Ryouko almost instinctively ends up on the Jaeger path when she spots a vampire that’s still alive when no one else does, and remembers her kendo training. In a split second, she’s borrowed a soldier’s sword and eliminated the threat.

I’ll now just state for the record that I LOVE Ryouko and think she’s the coolest character on the show. What’s strange is that in her time on the train up to that point, I’d forgotten her swordsmanship, which makes her sneaky cool, not like the “ostentatious” cool of the Jaegers.

When Yuliy can only fight the monster to a stalemate, Mikhail steps in and finishes the job. I was a little confused as to his motives considering the monster was built at the behest of his master Kershner, but the fact it had gone completely out of control rendered it expendable…and Mikhail wastes no time expending it with some slick moves and a couple of well-placed grenades.

The train ends up jumping the end of the line and derailing, but all parties involved are okay. Yuliy has one last moment with Mikhail, who decides to give his little brother more time to consider what he should do next. Heck, he even charges his little brother with killing him should he become something like the monster he just destroyed. They can’t be both brothers and enemies, according to Mikhail; it has to be one or the other.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 04 – Brains, Trains, and Automobiles

Kershner sends an envoy to cut the Hyakko Party off from Alma Company’s funding, but Hyakko’s leader doesn’t like that, and kills the messenger. Williard takes the measure of the Alma company, a front that looks on the surface like any respectable downtown business office. While on the lift he’s gently prodded for info by Major Iba, but doesn’t give away much.

Iba is spotted by his old academy mentor and new chief of weapons development, Maj. Gen. Kakizaki, who is glad he got Iba into intelligence, considering how much his student already knows. Willard convenes with his subordinates in V Shipping and determines that the vampires and Hyakko had a falling out, but the vamps must’ve managed to collect all the “parts” they needed.

Both Major Iba and Willard know where to go next: Shizuoka, where a weapons “exercise” will be taking place. A restless Yuliy volunteers to take the trip, but Dorothea accompanies him to keep him in check and on mission. After having a formal Japanese meal with Minister Naoe and Ryouko, she learns of their trip and decides to tail Yuliy, too intrigued to heed his warning for her to keep her distance.

Meanwhile in Shizuoka, Gen. Kakizaki witnesses in horror as the Frankenstein-type monster the Alma Company commissioned eliminates an entire battalion of soldiers with grim efficiency. As Yuliy, Dorothea, and Ryouko board the Shizuoka-bound train, the Hyakko Party raids Alma Co.’s headquarters and slaughters everyone in the office, believing them to be vampires even though they’re only humans.

Yuliy suddenly smells blood, and when the train stops, he switches to the one going in the opposite direction, as Dorothea—and a Ryouko determined to have lunch with them—both follow him. Major Iba also transfers from one train to the other, believing Kakizaki to be aboard. Kershner and his Dr. Frankenstein-y mad scientist subordinate are also aboard, along with the monster.

Finally, when Dorothea goes off to count passengers, Yuliy ends up encountering his brother Mikhail once more. Practically everybody is on this damn train! That means there’s sure to be some fireworks in short order; woe betide Ryouko or any other civilian caught in the fray.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 03 – Just Live

As Ryouko’s classmates mistake her frustrated sigh for a lovesick one (though her blushing suggests they’re on to something), Yuliy’s unexpected encounter with his now-vampirized brother Mikhail brings all of his memories of him roaring back, starting with the good times when the two would hunt in the wintry forests of their home—which I imagine to be somewhere in eastern Russia; possibly Sakhalin.

After a good meal with the villagers, the elder laments that the Sirius Arc is no more, but a confident young Yuliy vows to protect it, only for his big speech, like his first kill, to be foiled by a sneeze (he’s sensitive to cold). That’s where the good times end; Yuliy wakes up in the night to find vampires raiding the village. Their mother is killed, but not before making both her sons promise to run away and live. Only one brother can obey; Mikhail sacrifices himself to Yuliy can slip away.

In the present, while reminiscing on all this, Yuliy’s fellow Jaegers try in vain to cheer him up, but the fact is, now that he knows his brother is alive, he can feel his resolve to kill all vampires wavering, as he still loves Mikhail and doesn’t want to kill him, even if he’s a vampire now. His frustration bubbles over when he remembers summoning the power of Sirius to save himself from a pursuing vampire, just when a determined Ryouko tries to confront him.

She isn’t scared of him—or at least talks a good game; we see her trembling slightly—but Yuliy doesn’t want any new friends, because it will mean more people he can lose or who might suffer because of their association with him or their proximity to his powers (Ryouko likely is willing to befriending him, and in any case it’s her choice to make).

Dr. Willard was the one who found him half-dead in the cold, and offered water so he won’t die, Yuliy says if it means he can see his mother and brother again, he wants to die. Willard’s words that follow—fine, die, if that’s what you think your loved ones want—have guided Yuliy ever since.

He may still not know how he should keep living; only that he knows it’s what his family would want, so he can’t give up. But with Kershner, Mikhail by his side, preparing to field some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster, just living—and keeping those around him alive—is only going to get tougher.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 02 – Above the Skies

After two days of healing, Yuliy wakes up in the home of Dr. Harada, and makes fast friends with his daughter Saki. However, the nature of the doctor’s work doesn’t just keep him away from Saki, it also makes him a target for the elitist-killing Hyakko Gang…as well as the vampires. Both Willard of the Jaegers and Major Iba with the military separately attempt to connect the dots.

As Phillip keeps an eye on Yuliy as he finished healing up, Ryouko insists on paying Yuliy a visit. Clearly she was more intrigued than insulted by Yuliy’s aloofness and remark about rotting roots. Yuliy seems to be a bit of a green thumb, as he helps Saki set up some tomato plants—once believed to be poisonous due to their color.

As the doctor has worked day and night on his project—an artificial heart for Saki, who must have the same condition that claimed her mother’s life—his assistant sells out to the vamps, specifically a “re-built” Agatha who know has a sword for a leg.

That night Agatha puts that new leg sword to work attacking Dr. Harada’s home, and neither Yuliy and Phillip can protect him and Saki in the ensuing fray. The doc is bitten and becomes Agatha’s thrall, and Phillip stuggles to keep Saki safe while Yuliy and Agatha take their fight outside.

While not as action-packed as the opening episode, I appreciated how more time was used fleshing out characters, and the action we do get is of high enough quality to make up for its late appearance in this ep, whether its the close-quarters of the inside fight or the more free-flowing combat outside—not far from where Ryouko has just arrived at the house.

Agatha doesn’t quit deriding Yuliy’s very existence as a filthy “Sirius”, suggesting like in much of the rest of vampire-themed media, vamps consider werewolves a lower rung of creature…at best. 

Filth or not, Yuliy is able to turn the tables of Aggy, shattering her leg blad and running her through with his segmented staff, the blade of which also goes straight through Dr. Harada’s throat just as he’s about to kill Saki, who instead is simply horribly traumatized as both her dad and Agatha crumble to dust.

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s an explosion on the other side of the house—probably the Hyakko Gang—and one more challenger who faces off against Yuliy on the rooftop. Yuliy calls this fellow brother, so he’s another Sirius (this is backed up in the new ED); but it’s clear they’re no longer on the same side.

As with other genres in which the eclectic P.A. Works has dabbled, the studio has delivered another solid and competently-produced entry that may not deliver much in the way of originality, but does check a lot of boxes I appreciate, from the vampire milieu to noir, mystery, history, and steampunk, with multiple factions, all with their own agendas.

That said, I’m still not finding Yuliy himself particularly compelling as a lead; the arrival of his brother could either raise or lower that opinion.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 01 (First Impressions) – The Roots are Beginning to Rot

What season would be complete without a vampire-hunting anime? Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger (TSJ) aims to scratch that itch, and does a reasonable job establishing its 1930s Tokyo setting and the conflict between vampires and the crack team of “Jaegers” who hunt them hither and thither. It also begins with a bang, as a swanky party that turns bloody when the vampires turn on their dancing partners is crashed by the Jaegers, who dust every vamp there but fail to score any big-league players.

Fast-forward—or rewind? Not sure about the timeline here—the Jaegers arrive in Tokyo at the behest of the Baron Naoe, Minister of Home Affairs. There’s a serial killer in the city—an escaped felon—and he wants the Jaegers to take care of it. The team’s aloof, inscrutable ace Yuliy meets the baron’s daughter, but his only remark on her beloved garden is that everything is getting too much water and fertilizer; the roots are starting to rot (he’s got a very good nose, like a dog).

From the look of it, Tokyo itself could be seen as getting too much water and fertilizer. It’s grown large and fat, and is ripe for attacks from the true enemy, vampires using the felon to throw the cops off their trail. Yuliy’s nose knows, however, and he quickly finds the she-vamp responsible for a patrolman’s murder: Agatha, who we saw was an adviser to Kershner, a big shot among vamps.

A thrilling chase on foot and by old-fashioned car ensues, ending with Yuliy unleashing his special powers to duel Agatha on a bridge, but one of her allies shoots him in mid-air, ending the pursuit. Obviously, Yuliy will be fine, and the hunt is far from over. TSJ’s opening salvo went hard on action and exposition, but was very thin on characterization. The Jaegers are a stylish group, but learning more about their origins and motivations will have to come later.