Finally time for the Blue Queen!
When analyzing this character, it is important to remember that Diva was not born a monster, she was made into one. When Joel started his experiment, he decided one twin would be to seem human as a social experiment, while the other twin would used for as a much more violent experiments. It was just chance that Diva ended up in chains and Saya in corsets.
Neither series forgets this fact, and each shows parallels between the sisters behavior to emphasize this. In the Anime, Diva’s energetic personality has lulls of calm that matches Saya’s demeanor. Meanwhile, Manga-Diva’s personality is very close to Saya’s before she regained her memories.
The experiments broke Diva, but how the pieces fell changes for each series. Let’s start by looking at the manga. (She’s my favorite).
Manga-Diva
In the manga, Diva is like a child. She has a genuine innocence mixed with her corrupted world view. Her first kill (Hagi) was a temper tantrum fueled by jealousy over her sister getting a boyfriend. In some ways, she is very easily persuaded by others. Solomon convinces her to take part in the mating experiments, and Riku was able to quickly talk her out of it.
Despite Diva’s stunted development, she can’t really be considered blameless for her actions. Manga-Diva understood she and her sister were experiments long before Saya did. The abuse she suffered in the Zoo lead to Diva developing a hatred for humans. She made the decision that the world would a better place if it were just filled with only chiropterans. Diva understands that to achieve this plan she will cause the suffering of millions of people. So while here actions are understandable, they are not justifiable.
Speaking of which, the Diva in the manga is very goal-oriented. While she doesn’t personally work to make her plan succeed, her chevalier take actions to fulfill her goals. The experiments transforming people into chiropterans were done by Amshel (or it could’ve been M-Solomon) to make Diva happy. While it is doe behind her back, Charles was turned into an experiment lead to the creation of an army to combat the Red Shield. Solomon desire to find out how chiropterans reproduce also played into Diva’s plan; although, that research is left unfinished with the two of them butting heads. Diva’s downfall came when her chevalier started turning on her.
Anime-Diva
On the other hand, Anime-Diva is not childlike but childish, a small but important distinction. She does whatever she wants (which is usually killing people), and shows very little concern for the consequences. Her torturous imprisonment in the Zoo left her without a conscience and desire to call the shots.
Diva childish villainy is on full display in the fact that she doesn’t really care about how her actions affects others. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that she doesn’t understand why others care about what she does. A-Diva doesn’t understand why Saya wants to stop her because as far as Diva is concerned she did nothing wrong. Anime-Diva is very ignorantly self-destructive. She often makes decisions that go against her well being because she doesn’t understand that other people see her as a threat. In fact the series can be summarized as: Saya hunting Diva down as her Chevalier play keep-away while Diva tries to play with Saya despite the danger to herself.
Just like in the manga, Anime-Diva is very responsible for her actions. She enjoys hurting people. I wouldn’t go as far as calling her sadistic because, as I have said, Diva doesn’t understand people’s emotions. Everyone around her are her playthings, regardless if they are chiropteran or human. The problem is that she shows a clear bias when interacting with humans. She is much more likely to attack a human without listening to them, where as she will at least communicate with a chiropteran (before also attacking them).
In the anime, Diva doesn’t really have anything driving her actions. Her chevalier make all the decisions and plans. They amassed power and preformed experiments all for Diva’s sake but without her command. It’s clear that Amshel is the one calling the shots. Diva often just wants to have fun, usually roping her one of her chevalier into joining her to break the rules. That is until the timeskip, but that will be discussed next time.
P.S. Originally the plan was to talk about Diva and the rest of the ensemble cast that appeared in both series, but I realized that there isn’t much to say about the others. A lot of times the manga characters are the same people minus one trait (Kai being in love with Saya) or their role is so much smaller that there’s no way to tell how much has changed. So I’m just going to jump into the plot next time and point out any differences in characters when it comes up.
I Think Thinks 