Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for Episode 10 of Mars Red, "A Midsummer's Dream Gone By," now streaming on Funimation.
One of the most mysterious characters of Mars Red is Takeuchi, the pink-haired vampire scientist and the brains of what's left of Code Zero. Takeuchi, much more eccentric than his military-trained colleagues, was also much more blasé about their entire mission from the beginning, even as he came up with creative solutions and suggestions to solve any problems during the first half of the season. But in Episode 10, with Tokyo destroyed by an earthquake, a deadly "vaccine" turning thousands of people into vampires, and Nakajima's super-soldiers terrorizing the rest of the population, Takeuchi might have the key to saving the day -- or, in his case, the night.
The only semi-personal thing that Takeuchi had shared about himself was his transformation: he was a normal scientist doing research on a government lab when a concoction containing blood infected with the Ascra virus exploded, contaminating one of his eyes and turning him into an insta-vampire. He's the only member of Code Zero that wasn't bitten but transformed, and probably the first person to turn into a vampire by artificial means. He's also delighted to be immortal, appreciating the fact that he has an eternity to feed knowledge INto his immortal brain.
Takeuchi must have been an incredibly resourceful human because he knew that he should protect part of his research and keep it for posterity. In fact, he submerged an entire crate into the river filled with useful trinkets that Sowa retrieved for him. While some of these were prototypes of his stink bombs, the most precious object was a flask containing the first version of Ascra, the artificial blood used to create the vampire supersoldiers that Takeuchi was researching when he was transformed.
Takeuchi is as proud of his sample as of any of his inventions and glad to explain how Ascra works: it makes vampires extremely powerful, but also explosively flammable under the sun. While regular vampires can stay a couple of seconds under the sun's rays with only a sizzle, Ascra makes them burst into flame almost instantly.
None of this is apparently useful, unless Code Zero figures out a way to trap Nakajima's supersoldiers under the sun without burning themselves, but Takeuchi points out that they should be looking at the long-term implications of this formula. He's convinced that he could reverse-engineer Ascra to create a diluted serum that would turn the sun's rays into a beneficial aging factor, giving vampires the ability to age if they wanted to.
At first it may seem odd that vampires would want to age, the earthquake has changed the status quo in a major way. Typically, most vampires were way beyond their teens when they were turned, and most child vampires rarely survived for a long time. However, the mass-inoculation of the contaminated vaccine has upset this order, and Tokyo is now teeming with child vampires with a solid support net and no intention to die -- but also unsure if they'd like to remain children for long.
In fact, Sowa and Deffrott might benefit from this -- Sowa especially resents the fact that he was turned at fifteen, and Deffrott has spent his life hiding in theaters and relocating every few years to hide his age, depriving himself of any long-term connection. If Takeuchi's idea works, that would mean that vampires could have a mostly normal life.
