Hello. So I read your chapter review and I agree completely. Like you, I feel a sense of betrayal. Perhaps this is just my own opinion, but I feel betrayed that everything I believed in was just disregarded in one chapter. I cared for Zeki, I invested my time in them, I believed that VKM was their story. And now Hino has quite literally brushed them under the carpet? She really doesn't care about them and I feel a fool for having ever believed otherwise. And worse, she's redirecting to Kaname.
Oh, I agree with you whole-heartedly, my friend. Hino broke her sacred authorial covenant with us, the readers. (Perhaps she hasn’t broken her covenant with the pro-Kaname faction yet, but honestly I think she’ll be burning them too before the end.)
When she launched the first chapter of VKM, it was sold as “Zero’s story.” When she launched the VKM series itself, we were given the following images:
This is called “baiting.” She lured in Zero and Yuuki fans wanting some resolution for the pairing that got shafted at the end of the series using images showing them romantically happy together and mutually interested in each other. Zero and Yuuki fans flocked back to the series in order to find out about their pairing’s 1000 years of happiness…
Only to be hit over the head with Kaname moping, 50+ years of stagnation, a “platonic” restart on the heels of a bizarre confession about Kaname and a lukewarm confession to Zero, an abusive biting scene due to sexual frustration from the “platonic” restart, and now offscreen sex and a baby on the way with no resolution or explanation to justify the pairing’s struggles. If you consider the three images I’ve provided above, which were the promotional material for this new series, and then consider the 13 chapters we’ve received since the promotional material (discounting the original 4 special chapters), does what we’ve received even remotely live up to what is promised in the three images above? I personally don’t think it does. Have you seen Yuuki or Zero smile at each other like that in this story so far? I sure as hell haven’t.
I think there’s more than enough evidence at this point to indicate Hino baited the Zekis (and make no mistake, she’s baiting the Kaname fans too, just in a different way–after all, they’ve sat through 17 chapters of bullshit all in the hope of a “resurrection/reunion” which is based on one offhand comment in a chapter Hino hasn’t even returned to recently). We indeed were used for our money and the sacred covenant between author and audience was broken. This covenant is that we, the readers, will give our time and money to her, the creator, in order to be taken on a journey that expands our consciousness in some meaningful way–whether tragically or romantically or any other way doesn’t matter. What we have received in return for our dedication and devotion–and I include all the fans in this, not just the Zekis who are only the recent casualties–is an author who spits on us and jeers at our wish for meaning from this dungheap of a story.
It’s fine if Hino wanted to make VKM the story of Kaname and Yuuki’s romantic reunion–she shouldn’t have baited the Zeki fans in order to tell that story (if indeed that’s what she’s telling–I suspect she’s not telling any story at all and is just pulling shit out of her rear in order to keep the cashflow going until Lala gives her the boot again–hopefully soon). If she just wanted to make money off the series and not give any resolution, that’s fine too–she should have left it in the episodic format and just given us a bunch of meaningless fluff chapters to enjoy. Either of those options would have at least kept the covenant relatively intact with the majority of her audience, even if fans like myself would have been disappointed.
Ultimately, you have every right to feel betrayed and we all do ourselves a disservice by pretending this story is anything better than it is at this point. It’s fine to try to get any happiness you can out of the story at this point, but I hope everyone in the fandom–Kaname and Zero and neutral fans alike–knows that their time and their attention are more valuable than a washed-up mangaka taking advantage of their short lifespan and hard-earned cash to bait them and string them along for years and years. With VKM, Hino promised us a story and what she’s delivered has been one of the worst, most convoluted and morally reprehensible pieces of fiction I’ve ever had the displeasure to read. But the less said on that, the better.
TL;DR: Hino broke the reader/creator covenant and this is going to result in the end of her career, no matter which pairing “wins” (if you can consider Yuuki worth “winning” at this point).