Where would a Queen be with out her royal guard. While Diva liked a large group of boy toys to entertain her, Saya preferred a much smaller posse. Throughout the different stages of the story, these knight fill the roles of protector, lover, brother, father, and even enemy. Personally I feel that the manga gave the chevalier more unique and distinct personalities verse the anime’s more archetypical personalities.
Hagi
The differences between the two versions of Hagi is the difference between a straight face and a slight frown.
Anime-Hagi has a straight face. His thoughts are hidden behind a wall of stoicism. A lot of times the only indication of what’s going on in Hagi’s mind is his behavior. For example, he acts rash when he’s angry and jealous when rival suitors get close to Saya. Most of the time, Hagi is just there as a living embodiment of Saya’s lost past. A mystery that is just out of arms reach. Maybe that’s why A-Hagi shows so much more emotion in flashbacks. There is no mystery in the past, everything was understood.
Manga-Hagi was also stoic, but his frown made it so I could still read his face. There is a lot of emotions that can be read in a frown. Anger, confusion, determination, and a multitude of other emotions can be read into a frown. Maybe I’m just projecting a bit. Regardless of the reason, it felt like Hagi had so much personality. For example, Hagi doesn’t want to separate Saya for her family, even going as far urge her to put off regaining her memories so they won’t grow apart. Although he rearly speaks, M-Hagi is much more likely to speak his mind than A-Hagi. My favorite scene of Hagi is when he reminds Kai of his relationship with Saya as a show of jealousy over Kai’s closeness to her and annoyance at Kai acting like he’s the only one there who cares about her.
Another thing that distinguishes two Hagi-es is their relationship with Saya. Like I mentioned before, the manga cut a lot of the romantic connections between characters, but in both versions of the story Hagi is in love with Saya. A-Hagi is lead to believe that it’s unrequited for over 100 years, but has committed to serve her over confronting those feelings. Meanwhile M-Hagi and Saya have been a couple for quit some time before they leave the Zoo. M-Hagi is willing to let Saya live as Saya Otonashi with her family a little longer (in the manga the only thing Saya needs to remember her past is to drink more of Hagi’s blood), and actually encourages her to remain memory-less. When Saya doesn’t get her memories back, it seems as if Saya and Hagi are in the middle of an argument. It isn’t clear if this is an old fight, a new fight or a new iteration of an old fight, but it is clear that the fight against Diva has taken it’s tole on their relationship.
A notable difference between the Hagi-es is that M-Hagi has always been the same stoic person of few words ever since he was twelve; meanwhile, A-Hagi acts very differently depending on the time period and his age. As a child, A-Hagi was rebellious and bratty (to be fair he was bought by Joel so he had a reason to be unhappy). As an adult, Hagi became more calm. He had also become happy with his life because he had fallen in love with Saya. During the series, Hagi is distance because of his guilt over his actions that lead to the events in Vietnam and how he ran away from Saya. The version of A-Hagi that I find most interesting is Hagi in Russia.
During a flashback, Saya and Hagi are tracking Diva in Russia. Even thought their quest to stop Diva and the promise of what will come after weights heavy on their hearts, the interactions between Hagi and Saya are lighthearted and fun. It reminds me of their time together at the Zoo, but without the distance their differences in status gave them. It feels as if this is the version of Anime-Hagi that inspired how Manga-Hagi was written.
Riku
Personality wise, both Riku-es are very similar characters. Both are the cute younger brother character, thought how much younger is up for debate. (The anime never explicable states Riku’s name while the manga stated he is 14.) The most defining differences between the characters is that Manga-Riku is a little more trusting people, to to point of naivety, while A-Ruki is surprisingly the most mature out of his siblings, often calling Kai out on his immature behavior.
Functionally, A-Riku is very much a damsel-in-distress. For some unknown reason, he is affected by Diva’s song when other people aren’t. Diva becomes drawn to him and even attacks him, causing Saya to turn him into a chevalier. As a chevalier, A-Ruki is a very boring. All he does is loose the ability to eat and sleep without gaining any offensive abilities. Like the other chevalier, Riku gains the ability to get the rival queen, Diva, pregnant. Uh, speaking of which (trigger warning). This all culminates in Diva raping and murdering Riku. From this point, the entire series shifts into the second act. Anime-Riku is kind of a glorified plot-device , a well written plot-device, but plot-device none the less.
M-Riku has a much more compelling character arc because on simple reason. He has agency. Although he is also given the damsel treatment, but Riku chooses to become befriend his captor and gains his freedom as a result (albeit the friendship was facilitated by miscommunication, but it still counts). Riku chooses to protect to protect Charles, which caused Riku to get injured and turned into a chevalier. M-Riku gets kidnapped again, but he continues to make choices during his captivity that lead to his survival. He even has a, dare I say, cute interaction with his would-be killer Diva. In that moment he is able to deter her from hurting him. Regardless of his revolving to of captivity, Riku has always been able to his own decisions along the way.
Karl/Charles
Oh, thank god finally the character has two different names in each series. Kind of. (I’ll get to that soon enough.) Also, this is the first character where they so different that they are essentially two completely different characters.
You would be able to tell which version of the story someone was talking about from just a brief description this character. The anime you have Karl. He is a tall, early twenty-year-old man who is implied to be of Asian descent. The manga has Carl/Charles. Charles is a tiny, young boy who looks slightly younger than 14 year old Riku.
Personally, I think Karl is a super boring character. His whole personality is he’s crazy obsessed with Saya. That’s it. He does have a somewhat interesting backstory. He was used as an experiment by Amshel and that Diva regretting his is the main reason for his Saya fixation. Unfortunately this doesn’t go anywhere. His story enviably ends with Saya finally killing him because he doesn’t respect boundaries.
Charles is a much more three dimensional character than Karl. Where Karl is treated like an uncontrollable force off nature by Diva’s chevalier, Charles is a caged animal. Charles was seemingly Diva’s favorite chevalier, but after his actions lead to the disaster that was Vietnam, the other chevalier remove remove his rank as one of them, his real name Carl, and begin to experiment on him. (Also, it is implied that Diva isn’t aware of any of this.) As a result of the rejection of his brothers, Charles becomes very lonely and this contributes to how Riku so easily befriended him. Charles gains redemption through his friendship with Riku right before his tragic death.
You can feel the kind of thought process that went behind each version’s character arc. Karl was like a concept that had a characters arc somewhere down the line, while Charles feels like his entire character was planned out from beginning to end.
Diva’s Knights
In the manga, Diva’s other chevalier aren’t fleshed out enough to get their own sections, so I just gonna give quick rundowns.
A-Amshel commands Diva’s chevalier where M-Amshel was just her first. M-Amshel is much more unhinged compared to the cool, calculated scientist who is A-Amshel. While it can be debated exactly what the extent A-Amshel was attached to Diva, M-Amshel was very clearly crazy in love with her.
En the transition from anime to manga, Solomon got a more drastic chanes. He goes from a romantic rule breaker in the anime to a cold scientist in the manga. M-Solomon gives no indication of being in love with Saya while it is the core of A-Solomon’s character. M-Solomon seems to be only motivated by the scientific discoveries that could be discovered about chiropterans.
James is very much a non-characters in the manga. The only scene I remember of him is one where I’m pretty sure Diva kills him in a fit of childish rage, or was that Nathan. Either way he doesn’t make much of an impression. Anime-James was a much better character. He had a whole character arc where he gets injured and gets new body parts, but Diva rejects him like a child who rejects a broken toy. The anime could have handled his story better, but if you weren’t romantically linked to someone, you tended to get sidelined.
Nathan, in the anime, was a mystery of a character who knew more than anyone about the chiropterans. Although he is loyal to Diva, he has no real grievance with Saya. Manga-Nathan a literal backstabber, who betrays Diva and gets cut down by Saya because of it.
(I cant help, but notice that of Diva’s chevalier, the ones that are minorities are the characters who got sidelined in the manga. Hopefully it’s just my imagination, but it is unfortunate if it were an intended action.)
And that’s all the chevalier (minus Rasputin, but he was in one episode, so he doesn’t count). Next time, we’ll talk about our main antagonist, Diva!
I Think Thinks 