In my own list, I rated this as a 10 purely because I really, really loved it. But being more realistic, I think that in general, this anime is more like an 8 out of 10.
I don't really understand the complaints about the romance. Yes, it's angsty at times, yes, it has some cliches. But this is literally a romance anime targeted at younger girls. If you have a problem with that, why would you watch it or rate it negatively?
Ok, so now that I have that out of the way, I guess I'll go more into the series itself. I watched the first season because someone recommended it to me. I wasn't aware of what it was about, or what shoujo even was. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of cleavage shots and other annoying things that typically occur in popular anime. It started out a little slow, but I love vampires, so I kept watching, and I'm glad I did.
The first season was pretty good, but nothing special. In my person opinion, the second one blows it out of the water. It is NOT confusing if you pay attention. The characters DO have development. I really question whether the people who made these complaints were fully watching the show or not. This definitely captures the feel of a gothic romance anime, but it also has a really good plot and other things to draw you in besides the romance.
The second season did have some things that I would have preferred they explained more about because it would have been interesting. However, there were no huge plot holes that I could see or anything they left really unexplained that was necessary to the show. Maybe I'm dumb, but I found myself genuinely surprised by some of the discoveries the characters made and the plot itself, in a good way. I didn't find it overly predictable at all.
While there is an antagonist, VKG is more about Yuki, the main character, discovering herself. It continues well from the first season and doesn't seem like a sloppy add-on like some second seasons do (cough cough Black Butler cough cough).
I'd talk about the art but it's the same as VK. Pretty, with some exaggerations (Yuki's eyes for example). It also has background characters that get extremely basic designs, like VK. Nothing new.
One thing I don't like is how few girls/women are in this show. Perhaps people watching shoujo don't like having women in it? I'm not sure. It just disappointed me that one of the main girls, Luca, is mostly seen as a super jealous/stereotypically catty girl who doesn't like Yuki because of a dude. And the other main girl is the main character. Any other girls don't get big parts at all. But like I said, it's shoujo, so maybe I'm just ignorant of how the genre usually is since I've never watched it before.
If you like romance but you also like a good mystery/action/supernatural/gothic anime, I definitely recommend you watch this. It's not perfect if I look at it objectively, but I absolutely loved it, and can't find anything else that comes close to being as fun to watch as VKG, or anything that gives me the same feeling when I watch it.
