
This may be SM but I am EXTREMELY uncomfortable with Tengoku just butting in and forcing Aoki into an SM relationship. I can't get behind these sorts of fantasies, especially when the Sub clearly has unresolved trauma. To me it's the equivalent of a man forcing himself on a rape victim so she can "get over" the trauma of being raped. It doesn't sit right with me AT ALL. Tengoku may "know" what Aoki secretly wants, but that doesn't give you any excuse to just go ahead and do it to them if they don't ask for it. These sorts of manga only serve to further paint BDSM as emotionally manipulative and borderline criminal.

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Okay I understand the timeline EXCEPT for Anubis's birth. So Anubis was born of Osiris and Nepthys's deal cuz Osiris secretly stole Seth's fertility and that reveal was made when Seth confronted Osiris. But when Osiris has Seth tied up and is explaining things, there is a panel that looks a lot like Anubis injured in the ..present? The whole Osiris v. Seth in chapters 41-44 is supposed to be a flashback for Seth, right?
The way the "flashback" is framed makes it seem like the Osiris v. Seth fight + rape happened in the past and the present at the same time because of that one panel of Anubis lying on a bed in the way Seth left him after accidentally attacking him. This is the only puzzle piece that doesn't make sense to me. Osiris's plan back then, from what I understand, was that he would take Anubis and break him down until his spirit remained and then implant that in Seth to make a pseudo-pregnancy because Osiris is crazy like that.
Am I misunderstanding that panel? Is that panel of Anubis in the flashback just of him innocently sleeping in bed, not of him injured like in the present? Any insights would be SUPER helpful cuz I'm hella confused about this one bit. (● ̄(エ) ̄●)

But I thought that Seth hurt Anubis in the present (during this contest with Horus). Seth in the present comes off as a man seemingly willing to sacrifice his son out of shame and grief over what he experienced at the hands of Osiris. This story is so confusing lol. I thought that this flashback between Seth and Osiris was a "what really happened with the Seth killing Osiris" myth that was summarized at the start of the comic, kickstarted because Sekhmet told Seth that Anubis was not his son ("Sekhmet whispered in Seth's ear, and he grew jealous and killed his brother"). It's like a piece of the timeline has been snipped from the present and implanted in the past. ...
Unless...Unless Anubis was injured previously in the past, and Seth did birth him per Osiris and as a product of rape Anubis is both loved and hated by Seth (loves him because he's his son, hates the fact that he was reborn through Osiris's violence and is still tied to Osiris's life force). That's the only explanation I have. It doesn't answer the injury that Anubis sustained that mirrors what happened to him in the present (his arm was cut off and his chest sprouted a sapling). Is this answered better in the non-Mature chapters? Hopefully. ┗( T﹏T )┛

Anubis' chest had a hole in two different moments in the story, the hole he has in present is because he killed himself once, and ended up in Duat, where the dead Osiris found him and managed to revive him by planting that seedling of the flower of life inside his chest.
This all happened long after Seth had already been raped and had killed Osiris, and after he had already started his own reign of terror: Anubis quarreled with Seth because of how cruel Seth was acting to humans, and then decided to kill himself after Seth got angry and walked away on him. In Duat, the dead Anubis was reunited with the dead Osiris, who played innocent and decieved Anubis, making him think he was giving him the flower of life to allow him to return to the world of the living merely out of kindness, when in fact that was just a scheme so the dead Osiris could use the flower as a connection with Anubis in order to be able to "possess" the body of the revived and once again alive, without Anubis' knowledge, all just so Osiris could have a way to come back to the world of the living for brief periods of time, and be able to mess with Seth, whenever he wants.
As for why Seth is still capable of hurting Anubis in spite of loving him so much, you need to take into account the fact that Seth has been pretty much traumatized and emotionally unstable ever since the night that everything happened, and that he's spent centuries thinking no one knew and that they wouldn't even believe him if he told. Not to mention, he actually did NOT want anyone to know because he didn't want to be seen as a fool or as damaged goods, he thought that if others knew they would think him dirty and polluted, damaged goods. Anyone who was tortured by all those horrible thoughts would end up traumatized into such an emotional mess that, without other people's help and some therapy, they'd end up miserable enough to keep making mistakes that they would later regret. Emotional suffering of that kind can make people make the worst decisions, the kind of decisions they would have never made had they not been abused the way they had.

I'm talking about how Seth never told anyone about the rape, not about how he never told anyone about Neftys cheating on him.
Seth telling people that Osiris had raped him would have been Seth's own decision and wouldn't have had anything to do with Neftys. Same as any rape victim has every right to or not tell people if they want.

Ikuro, Ranzo, and Sachiko all deserve better than this!
Ikuro has been preyed upon and groomed by his butler all his life and feels guilty for bringing Sachiko into this situation. Ranzo is mentally disabled and just wants to love his brother. Sachiko is appalled by the fucked up things going on in this family that she married into and how her husband and brother-in-law are being treated like pawns for sadistic men. It's also heart-breaking that this is set during a time when the mentally ill/disabled weren't thought of as anything more than burdens.
How much more well off would Ranzo be now if someone had treated him like a person instead of an animal from the start? The fact that Sachiko immediately wanted to teach him things and treat him like a person is so sweet. Ranzo deserves that!! (╥﹏╥) Hopefully Sachiko saves them both from the men who wish to destroy the objects of their obsession.
It feels like Matsuri Hino suddenly wants to expand the universe of this series and make it all alternative history, but we know next to nothing about the current factions and the political landscape on the human side of things. She probably thinks setting it 1000 years from now means she can create stuff as she likes, but then she threw out "Year 1120" as if we would have any idea what that meant. It implies that the original Vampire Knight did not exist in our timeline, which is a FIRST FOR ME GIVEN THAT I READ THE WHOLE STORY THINKING IT WAS SET IN MODERN-DAY JAPAN, but if that's the case then what exactly differentiates it from our universe other than the existence of vampires? WHERE does the story take place, then? And if it is in fact in our universe, 1) Why has literally nothing changed technology-wise in 1000 years, and 2) What event led to the calendar being reset so we're in the 1000s, not the 3000s?
She doesn't have all the pieces in place and yet she's moving forward with this second-generation story. She's world-building basic things like geopolitics when that should be the first thing you do. It would be like if Kishimoto wrote Naruto but didn't introduce the different countries until Boruto. Σ(  ̄□ ̄||)
totally agree with you, I think the memories series kinda exploded really. I think hino just wanted to give us some cute stories to lessen the pain of the actual end, but since vampire knight was and is still kinda popular... she had to continue? Like the first chapters where random moments of their life’s and such and suddenly... we’re getting a full new story itself OO
The story certainly takes place in some kind of Japan... Kaname made that joke about “Ren” and “Ai” being “Renai”, like obviously their names are Japanese and such but like for the characters to show awareness of their language, it think it’s sigh enough?? Sorry it’s so hard to explain ooph
The only technological change we’ve seen is that motorbike. Thinking about all the research Aido has done, the tech.progress should be much more advanced, also they know about “space” (the vampire lady who held that soiree said something about “escaping into space”)
Your comment really showed me some different ways to think about the world of vk tho... thanks for sharing your thoughts!