Vampire Knight (2004) by Matsuri Hino takes place at Cross Academy and follows Yuki Cross, who attends the Day Class for humans, but is a Guardian for the Night Class of vampires (although this is a secret to the other Day Class students). Of course, there are vampires, and this is intrinsically gothic. Vampire Knight embraces the romantic yet dangerous allure of these creatures of death. It dives deep into forbidden love between vampire and human, humans who are riddled with resentment and guilt, and even love between siblings. All of the key characters (Yuki, Kaname, and Zero) carry deep emotional trauma, and the narrative doesn’t shy away from those inner demons, but rather exposes them and makes the characters face them. Zero, in particular, is the quintessential gothic anti-hero. He is tormented by his past, has a strange allure, and is obsessed with his desires to the point of violence. Each character is plagued by their ancestry, whether it's Yuki discovering her vampire origins and the incestual relationship between her parents (and her and her brother), or Kaname carrying the weight of being an ancient ancestor resurrected into a young man's body, each character carries with them an ancestral curse. Yuki is also a portrayal of the corruption of innocence. She shifts from a "normal" girl guarding against vampires to a princess of the vampire world, and her once pure love for Kaname (whom she did not know was her brother until her true identity was revealed) is twisted into an unnatural and tragic love. Zero, too, becomes trapped by blood as he becomes something he once hated: a vampire-hunter turned vampire. Thus, each of them must revisit their past that was never truly buried and live with the sins of their ancestors. 

As is a staple in more modern gothic fiction, Vampire Knight fixates on the decline of noble bloodlines, or in this case, pureblood vampires. They are powerful families rotting from within, clinging to their lost grandeur. They are a literally dying bloodline because Kaname and Yuki are the final true pureblood vampires. And each character is confined to their role. Only Yuki is able to transgress these boundaries by going from human to vampire. The academy itself is a façade. A peaceful school on the surface, yet hiding secrets underneath. This duality reflects the gothic fascination with dueling selves and the fear of what lies beneath the surface and façade of civility.