WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Episode 8 of Mars Red, "Purgatory," now streaming on Funimation.
In Episode 8 of Mars Red, "Purgatory," General Nakajima's terrifying vampire squadron comes back with a vengeance after the Great Kanto Earthquake devastates Tokyo. These undead soldiers roll over the mass of newly infected citizens, smashing the heads of any vampire they deem hostile. Shutaro Kurusu, the newbie Code Zero vampire, tries to ask for their help in locating his comrades, but Nakajima's mutants completely ignore him -- at first, at least.
Later in the episode, Kurusu and the squadron come head to head again. Kurusu was trying to protect a small group of refugee vampires who were hiding in the Tokyo underground, and the massive vampire soldiers were hellbent on destroying them, following the orders of Rufus Glenn and General Nakajima. Kurusu was there just by chance to deliver food to the hidden vampires, but that was more than enough for Nakajima's squadron to attack -- and they would have won, if one of their own had not turned against the others.
Kurusu was badly outnumbered. He had explored and exploited his powers before -- speed, strength and wonderful reflexes that sprung from his S-Class infection, marking him as one of the most powerful vampires in Japan. However, Kurusu was still just one man, assisted by an elderly vampire, trapped in an underground cul-de-sac and facing a group of mutant vampires armed, armored and brainwashed. So it was nothing short of a miracle when the red eyes of one of the vampires turned purple and he started bashing in the heads of his comrades, turning the tide of the battle almost immediately and allowing Shutaro and the elderly vampire shop attendant to run away.
The previous episode, "The Letter," ended with Deffrott about to turn Maeda into a vampire. Maeda, who wore so many hats: Nakajima's right-hand man, Code Zero's strict but protective leader, Misaki's fiancé and Shutaro Kurusu's mentor. He was also one of the only people in Japan with good reasons to prevent the super vampire soldiers from killing Kurusu, as well as one of the only people who might have been able to infiltrate their numbers. So, could this rogue soldier be a freshly turned Maeda?
This seems unlikely for a few reasons. First, it looks like "Purgatory" is taking place at the same time as "The Letter," which would mean that Maeda was still very much human and slowly dying from being impaled in a metal beam, post-earthquake. Secondly, if this rogue soldier was Maeda, his face would have been revealed at the end of the episode -- it makes no sense that such a big character would make such a turn and that wouldn't become the focus of the scene. Finally, Rufus Glenn, a powerful vampire from Scotland with an astonishingly sharp sense of smell was the one directing the soldiers; he would have noticed Maeda if he was the one turning against his own men.
The same reasoning could apply to almost any other regular vampire from the show, which means that the more likely explanation is that one of Nakajima's soldiers -- one of Maeda's men -- chose to rebel against his mandate and preferred to kill his own comrades than to attack a nest of helpless and weakened vampires. Or, maybe he realized that he was being used as well as the other supersoldiers and that their new unlives would not mean glory or peace, but an eternity of constant war, and decided to put an end to their misery.
In any case, Rufus Glenn quickly punishes the rogue soldier, killing him on the spot by detaching his breathing tubes. However, this turn of events, as hopeful as it was for Shutaro and the overall plot poses more questions: Why would Glenn assume that the soldiers would never rebel against their programming? Particularly as vampires are considered sub-human, and even more so by Nakajima, any soldier who became one could hate himself a little. This could have been a fluke, or there may be others like him.
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