Kaname Kuran is one of the main characters of Vampire Knight. A Pureblood Vampire, Kaname is a part of what is considered the vampire elite – “Level A” vampires whose bloodlines are undiluted by human blood. The official age listed for him at the beginning of the series is 18 (in human years). It has since been revealed that although that is his body’s current age, he is technically much older. Kaname supports the co-existence movement between vampires and humans and disapproves of the creation of ex-humans.
Current age: 19 (in human years)
Height: 184cm / 6′
Hair: Black
Eyes: Garnet
Vampire Level: Pureblood (Level A)
Vampire Abilities: Almighty
Some powers demonstrated thus far include the abilities to:
» Manipulate both inanimate and animate objects and the environment in various ways. (Psychokinesis / Telekinesis)
» Form objects and weapons from his blood.
» Compel obedience from most lower level vampires.
» Erase certain parts of people’s memories.
» Create forms of himself which can appear as or change into a cloud of bats or a large black wolf.
» He possesses highly enhanced strength, speed, vision, hearing and sense of smell.
Favorite Food: Whatever Yuki makes
Hobbies: Reading, chess, thinking about Yuki
Favorite Fashion: Haute couture (tailored by a purveyor to the Kuran family)
Taste in women: “A single-minded girl who keeps waiting for me in the snow”
Current Primary Residence: Kuran Manor
Romantic Interest: Yuki Kuran
Family: Adopted parents Haruka and Juri Kuran, deceased. Adopted younger sister Yuki Kuran. Adopted Uncle Rido Kuran, presumed deceased.
Known Friends or Associates: Hanabusa Aido, Akatsuki Kain, Ruka Souen, Takuma Ichijo, Senri Shiki, Rima Touya, Kaien Cross
Known Enemies: Sara Shirabuki, Rido Kuran, Shizuka Hio, Asato Ichijo, the Vampire Council of Elders
School Attended: Cross Academy
Class Affiliation: Night Class
Current Student Status: No longer attending
On his days off when in school he: Dealt with various work and sulked in bed on days when he could not see Yuki.
Good At: All subjects
Japanese Anime Voice Actor: Daisuke Kishio
English Anime Voice Actor: Ethan Murray
Kaname is extremely intelligent and a master chess player when it comes to maneuvering situations and people in order to achieve the results he desires. He does not hesitate to use people to achieve his ends although usually not maliciously. His willingness to use whatever means necessary includes using himself and he places his own happiness secondary to his goals. His chief motivation is generally to protect Yuki and to create a world in which she can live the kind of life she wants to live. The actions he feels he needs to take achieve that end are not always immediately clear or understandable to those around him. Kaname has been alone for a long time and appears to feel that the paths he chooses are ones he must walk alone for the protection of others. He has a tendency to not explain himself or his methods and that does not make it easy for people to be close to him although history to this point has proved that his plans usually work. He has been fighting to create a more peaceful world for a lot longer than most of his contemporaries other than Yuki are currently aware, but despite that and despite his outwardly regal manner, his actions often indicate that he has a low opinion of himself and his own worth as anything other than a means to an end.
All character histories reflect the manga-verse history rather than the anime-verse history on any points where the two conflict. Please note that they also contain major spoilers for current manga events.
Kaname is one of the first generation of Pureblood vampires who appeared on earth after a major global climate change in the long ago past of Vampire Knight’s version world history. He was apparently initially unaware that there were others like him. For a long time, he was the leader of a human village or province of unknown size. It seems he was something like a benefactor or feudal lord to them. He helped them prosper and gave them his blood as medicine, although they were unaware of that, or of his true nature. In secret, he took the blood he needed to survive from them via needles and syringes so as not to harm or turn them. He showed no signs of aging, and so eventually his secret was discovered and he was turned upon by the people he had always lived with and cast out.
He does not recall the name he was born with. He was first called “Kaname” by an as-yet unnamed woman who found him after he had been expelled from his village. Through that woman, he became involved with her in a campaign against other Purebloods who were abusing the power they posessed by creating vast armies of ex-humans to act as their slaves.
Kaname is the one who figured out how to create weapons that could kill vampires, what would later be known as anti-vampire or hunter weapons. In order enable their creation it was necessary for a pureblood to place their own heart into the molten metal from which the weapons would be forged. Kaname intended to do this himself, but his female companion beat him to it and sacrificed herself instead, right about the same time that Kaname was starting to realize that he had feelings for her.
From her sacrifice came the first generation of hunters who got their strength from her and the “mother metal” from which their weapons would be forged from then on. It was at this time that the Bloody Rose and the Artemis Scythe were forged. Kaname used both in the continuing campaign against the opposing purebloods.
Eventually, Kaname wearied of fighting and of living. He went into the hibernation without intending to ever wake up again. This slumber was interrupted thousands and thousands of years later when Rido Kuran sacrificed his baby nephew, also named Kaname, in order to wake his sleeping ancestor.
Badly desiccated by the passing ages, Kaname’s body was not ready to support such revival, even after attacking Rido. Rather than resort to attacking the next person to arrive (Haruka Kuran, in pursuit of Rido and his child), Kaname forced his body to revert to infancy, the only form which he could apparently support in his condition. He was discovered by Haruka Kuran, and subsequently adopted by Haruka and Juri Kuran while they mourned the death of their actual son. This information was kept from the rest of the world and it is not general knowledge that Kaname was a changeling.
Now a child both in body and mind, Kaname had no memory of his past and likely also believed himself to be Juri and Haruka’s son for a time. The glimpses of him that we see as a young child depict him as being genial and eager to try to make friends. At some point his memory began to return gradually in disorientating bits and flashes and he appears to have become more serious and quiet as time progressed.
Kaname became strongly attached to Juri and Haruka’s infant daughter Yuki almost as soon as she was born. She raised a protective feeling in him that he barely understood. We later learn that way back in the past, in his previous life during the wars, Kaname had sometimes seen visions of grown up Yuki.
Kaname appears to have regained most of his memory by the time he is around 8 years old. He is very serious and seems aware of the fact that his parents are not really his parents. He is devoted to little Yuki, who believes him to be her older brother. After a battle between Rido and Haruka Kuran leaves Haruka dead and Rido injured, Kaname shatters Rido into pieces, but is unable to truly kill him because of the control Rido has over Kaname since he is the one who awakened him. With Juri Kuran also dead, having sacrificed herself to seal Yuki and turn her into a human, young Kaname and Yuki escape into the snow. One of the Level E vampires that Rido had brought with during his onslaught finds and attacks Yuki. Kaname saves her, but Yuki has lost her memory and does not remember him anymore. She thinks this is their first meeting.
Kaname hides Yuki with Kaien Cross while he becomes the ward of Asato “Ichiu” Ichijo until he comes of age. He grows up in the Ichijo house, along with Takuma Ichijo, Asato’s grandson. He continues to visit Yuki in secret as often as he is able. Sometimes Cross makes up ridiculous stories about Yuki being in danger which never fail to bring Kaname running, although there is usually nothing happening except that Yuki is doing something cute. Takuma Ichijo often assists Kaname in sneaking away to see Yuki.
Several years later, Kaname assists Cross in the birth of Cross Academy’s groundbreaking co-existence movement wherein humans and vampires both live and study on the same campus – humans in the Day Class and vampires in the Night Class – although the human students are unaware of what the vampires are, or indeed even of the existence of such beings.
Kaname acts as the school’s “Queen Bee” for the vampire community. Because a pureblood is attending the Academy, it is prestigious for highly placed Noble Class vampires to also send their children to study there. It also allows Kaname to be closer to Yuki, although their interaction remains somewhat limited. Kaname is in a constant state of craving both for Yuki’s blood, and for her to remember him. One night when it almost overcomes him with a sleeping Yuki nearby, Ruka Souen (one of the aristocrat Night Class vampires) offers Kaname her blood and he takes it.
Kaname’s demeanor has become very cool, authoritative and commanding towards most people and his gentle, caring side generally only shows towards Yuki. He forms an antagonistic relationship with Zero Kiryu, a young hunter and one of the school guardians. Orphaned and turned ex-human by a renegade pureblood, Zero has a deep hatred for Kaname’s kind while Kaname is a little envious that Zero is able to be by Yuki’s side all the time, more especially after Zero begins drinking Yuki’s blood. Kaname does not interfere because it is ultimately necessary for his plans for Zero to become stronger. He intends for Zero to act as a shield for Yuki, especially when Rido ultimately reappears, as Kaname knows he will, since Kaname is incapable of killing Rido himself. Ultimately, Kaname goes so far as to give his own blood to Zero at one point to halt his slide towards becoming a Level E.
Shizuka Hio, the pureblood who killed Zero’s parents, comes to the Academy. She proves herself a possible threat to Yuki and Kaname maneuvers the situation so that he is able to kill her and drink her blood, absorbing her power. He leaves her mortally wounded but still alive so that Zero can have the rest of her blood to stabilize his vampiric transformation, although Zero doesn’t. When Zero is later blamed for her murder and sentenced to death by the Vampire Council of Elders, Kaname intervenes to keep the orders from being carried out.
Rido eventually returns by possessing the body of his son, Night Class student Senri Shiki. He attempts to maneuver things so that he can get Yuki’s blood to revive his real body. The seal binding Yuki is weakening, leading to nightmares and confusion. If she is awakened to her true nature through the means Rido is attempting, she would go insane. Ultimately, Kaname awakens her and restores her memories by biting her. The seal is broken and she returns to being a pureblood vampire.
To keep Rido from continuing to seek Yuki’s blood, Kaname himself gives him the blood necessary to revive him, hastening the inevitable confrontation to come. Rido in his own form, accompanied by an army of Level E’s, attacks the Academy. Kaname charges the Night Class with protecting the school and the human students from the attack while he goes to deal with the Vampire Council who intend to back Rido and condemn and execute the Night Class as the ones who instigated the trouble.
While Yuki and Zero fight Rido at the Academy, Kaname gathers up the Vampire Council and executes them. Kaname returns to the Academy after Rido has been defeated leading to a confrontation between he and Zero when he finds Zero pointing his anti-vampire weapon at Yuki. There is a breif stand-off during which Kaname loses one of his hands to Zero’s vine weapons and forms a deadly weapon from his own blood before Yuki comes between them to prevent a fight.
Kaname leaves the Academy with Yuki and they spend the next year together at the Kuran estate. The power void left by the Council’s removal creates an uneven state of affairs that leaves the job of controlling and setting policy for the vampire world temporarily in the hands of Kaname and some others. Stability is further threatened when Sara Shirabuki starts murdering other purebloods for their power and uses a hunter to help accomplish her ends.
Kaname reveals his true past and who he really is to Yuki. Although he wishes for nothing but to be with her, he seems to have decided that something he started long ago must now be completed if the world is ever to be the place he wishes it to be for her, no matter what it will cost…