Dance in the Vampire Bund #01 — Come On Down!

January 6th, 2010

 

You’re the next contestant of "Who Wants to Be A Vampire?"

First Episode Disclaimer:

LO SHALL YOU LOOK UPON MY OPINION AND DESPAIR, FOR IT IS THE ONE TRUE OPINION IN THE LANDS.

Fifth episode of the day. Don’t ya love premiere weeks?

Impressions:

Well… this went off in an unexpected direction. The entire first episode was an ‘episode’ of a Japanese gameshow debating about whether vampires exist. Considering the premise… and TITLE, that made the whole episode feel juuuuust a tad trivial and insignificant for the first 17 minutes of the show. It picked up a lot when one of the ‘contestants’ went all lizardpire, ate a girl, and then wrecked the place, but that should have come two or three minutes in… not 75% through the episode. Things were made even worse by them ‘cutting off’ the broadcast of the episode when interesting things finally got under way. This leads into kind of a weird juxtaposition. I rather enjoyed the last five minutes of the show, and was bored to tears by the other 17. The first chunk went nowhere, did it slowly, and was poorly made, while the latter chunk was action packed, done in a wholly different style, and was actually entertaining.

Shinbo actually seems like he’s laying low for this one, which is a blessing in my book. He’s still doing his usual minor tricks, like shaking the camera and blurring the focus for added DRAMA, but at least he’s not throwing up random images or photographs because their artists got tired of working. Unfortunately, the show is also to Shaft’s relatively recent low production until closer to the end. The art’s mostly pretty good, but there are a lot of really ugly still shots, especially of the show’s crowd. There was also pretty much no motion whatsoever for the initial chunk, so it’s not like there was a ton to animate to begin with for the lion’s share of the episode.

I think it’s got potential, but the whole gameshow thing was a pretty poor way to start the show. If Shaft sticks to the latter segment, then I think this will turn out well, but I’m not sure how it’ll end up if you average the quality of the two disparate parts. Since it airs some 8 hours away from every other show, I’ll probably give it another week or two to see how it’ll develop, but I really don’t feel like I’ve got a particularly strong opinion on this one yet. Fifteen minutes in and I was ready to write it off, but the last five minutes were enough to make me want to give it another look. Take that as you see fit.

No OP this week, ED was just a single boring still.

Posted in Anime | 25 Comments »

25 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • cutemi2 says:

    remembering Umineko….

  • Anonymous says:

    What happened to my gratuitous violent Hellsing-clone ?!

  • Chris says:

    lol boring anime

  • Chris says:

    btw, what the fuck is wrong with japan? always this little girls acting like a 40 year old woman..

    • Nanaya says:

      Ahahahah… Going by the manga’s plot, you have NO idea how much of an understatement that is. The ‘like’ and ’40’ part, I mean.

  • Haesslich says:

    Oh good, I don’t have to wait two weeks to wonder if they’ve fucked up the adaptation – they did it in the first 15 minutes of the show already by going in an anime-original direction. And an awful Japanese gameshow at that.

  • MumMum says:

    @Haesslich

    Amen.

  • Mania Lyssa says:

    I can’t believe they messed up this madly. They pretty much fucked themselves since the fanbase to this series are now gonna expect the whole thing to go different route now.

    Jesus… at least wait til the second episode to fool people.

  • chounokoe says:

    It’s interesting how my opinion of the episode was exactly the other way around, thinking “Hey, maybe it could be cool if the vampires don’t go all out ‘battle brawl’ on Tokyo and…then the last 5 minutes came along and it became pretty much Blood+ for a more fetish-oriented audience….

  • Anon999 says:

    Tsh, Vampire movies have sucked back then (no pun intended), so why should this anime be any different?

    • Haesslich says:

      Anon999: That’s like saying that because it involves vampires, that Dracula by Bram Stoker sucks as it’s just like any other vampire story involving sparkly vampires.

      The whole point was the manga had a different depiction of them, combined with some uncomfortable fanservice… and then SHAFT went ahead and drank the damned LSD-spiked Kool-Aid and took the original premise and stuffed it in a trash compactor in favor of a whole 15 minutes of RANDOM shit which didn’t appear in the original source. That sort of thing works with Hidamari Sketch and SZS: it doesn’t work well with this.

    • Aroduc says:

      All in the execution. Hellsing is not Vampire Knight is not Moon Phase.

  • Yue says:

    This places Alucard firmly, from Hellsing Ultimate, the most bad~ass vampire in the whole animated universe that Dante from Devil May can’t kill.

  • ratattack says:

    the manga sucks anyways. Hopefully Shaft can improve on that crap, which shouldn’t be hard, not that this first episode looks any good.

  • Lollerman says:

    First off, the manga kicked ass, so I don’t want to hear it. Secondly, are they really just going to do an anime adaptation without even so much as a glance at the source? Dear god, why?

  • ark noir says:

    anime produced by Shaft are usualy about Shaft animation and placards rather than original content

  • Anonymous says:

    Well, at least DEEN can’t possibly mess Unlimited Blade Works up as badly as Shaft messed this up.

  • jpmeyer says:

    I do not see any dancing in these caps, much less dancing in vampire butts.

  • Bah says:

    Goddammit, why can’t Shaft try and stick to the source. The hell am I watching?

  • zwei says:

    ok i’ll just treat this episode as an opening, added anime content. Cant wait for the 2nd epi.
    Btw, that girls name is Bella Tooth! lol BELLA Swan? xD
    Its certainly vampire fever alright.
    They should’ve made that bishounen actors name Edward lol

  • Curio says:

    Heh, is it just me, or do the screenshots look like they’re straight out of the Phoenix Wright court room?

  • Lero says:

    :…Didn’t like the episode it was so wrong.

    http://blog.seiha.org/images2/bund1/bund1_52.jpg
    Touma!!?