WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Mars Red Episode 3 ” His Dream,” now streaming on Funimation.
Mars Red is set in 1923 Japan, at the tail end of the Taisho era. The army has set up Code Zero, a special and secret vampire task force meant for intelligence missions, but whose special abilities might be just as useful on the battlefield. Episode 3 of Mars Red, “His Dream,” shows the internal conflict between the army’s high brass and their differing opinions on how to best deploy vampires, if at all.
Code Zero’s champion is General Nakajima; he was the one who saw the potential in recruiting the few vampires who had kept their wits after their infection, particularly if they already had military training (Yamagami and Kurusu,) battle experience (Suwa) or scientific knowledge applicable to warfare (Takeuchi.) Nakajima’s dream would be to develop Code Zero’s powers so that they would be able to lead and protect entire battalions, reducing the need for human soldiers and human deaths.
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General Nakajima abhors the loss of human life in war and expresses his distaste to any high-ranking officer not experienced enough to consider the true cost of battle. But it’s unclear whether his plan is as benevolent as it seems — for starters, he doesn’t seem to think vampires, even those under his command, worthy of any humane consideration beyond their usefulness.
Opposite Nakajima, there are the toys-before-boys materiel-obsessed generals. Depicted with the luxurious mustaches of true villains, they would prefer to invest Japan’s military resources in acquiring tanks and firepower and on recruiting as many human soldiers as possible to operate their new machines. They are obsessed not only with surpassing their foreign enemies — particularly England — but also the Japanese Navy. They also consider all vampires ineffective agents of war, because they can only be deployed at night, and even suggest dragging Code Zero out to the sunlight while they sleep as soon as they outlive their usefulness.
However, as horrible as Nakajima’s rivals are, they do make a good point: other nations (well, England) do not use vampires on the battlefield, because their abilities and limitations are much better suited to intelligence and espionage work. They also express their shock at how little progress Nakajima has made recruiting vampires for Code Zero, despite the rise in new infections and sightings. In ten years, he has only added four to his team, two of which arrived a few weeks before the show starts, while other nations with similar proportions of vampire-human populations have much larger task forces.
The reason for this lack of vampire agents is twofold. First, Nakajima is, at heart, a military man with a very clear agenda that revolves around military training. It makes sense that he would dismiss most of the sane, surviving infected if they didn’t possess any of the qualities that he was looking for. Secondly, Episode 3 makes it abundantly clear that most Japanese vampires live in a permanent state of fear.
Although the government is trying to make them register and enticing them with safe, regular nourishment, the reality is that a vampire’s neighbors would prefer to drag them out under the sun than to peacefully live next to them, which is not a great atmosphere to breed any kind of patriotism or willingness to work with the enforcers of such discriminatory laws.
The clearest example of this attitude is Takeuchi, the “immortal brains” of Code Zero, who barely complies with the rules and regulations that were imposed on him after his transformation. His main source of joy is experimentation and intellectual research, and he is happy to exploit any loopholes in those rules, because if “they” are not holding him to the same standards as a human, why should he grant “their” rules the same consideration?
Mars Red, based on the stage play by Fujisawa Bun-o, is written by Fujisaku Junischi (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex), directed by Fujisawa Bun-o and Hatano Kouhei, designed by Karakara Kemuri (Laughing Under the Clouds) and Takeuchi Yukari (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) and scored by Muranaka Toshiyuki.
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