3 Episode Taste Test: Dance in the Vampire Bund

Step­ping back into Moon­phase ter­rit­ory while sim­ul­tan­eously rid­ing the resur­gent interest in vam­pires, SHAFT and dir­ector Akiy­uki Shinbo take on the adapt­a­tion of a manga infam­ous for its racy con­tent and viol­ent over­tures. The first three epis­odes of Dance in the Vam­pire Bund demon­strate little of the lat­ter and a lot of the former, spar­ing no expense in key­fram­ing the vacu­ous male lead slath­er­ing neon green liquid onto the dimin­ut­ive protagonist’s naked body. It’s uncom­fort­able for all the wrong reas­ons and coupled with the blind­ingly over-animated open­ing, the series pro­jects itself as yet another tire­some indul­gence by a stu­dio pro­du­cing more misses than hits as of late.

“anim­a­tion is […] wholly imbal­anced lav­ish­ing detail on the fre­quently dis­robed Mina and remain­ing unspec­tac­u­lar elsewhere”

Mina Tepes is a vam­pire of some repute who, after intro­du­cing her­self to Japan via the high-veracity medium of a late-night talk show, throws her­self at school­boy Akira before attend­ing the school itself. It tran­spires that she and Akira have a his­tory together and — what else — made a pinky-promise that des­pite his untimely memory loss, remains import­ant to the con­fus­ingly twee vam­pire prin­cess. When her life is threatened on the out­skirts of the under con­struc­tion vam­pire island, Akira comes to her res­cue and regains some of his frac­tured memor­ies, how­ever his ordeal is not over when a school coun­cil plot to evict Mina from their school turns into a com­pet­i­tion to detain the unwill­ing Akira.

The first epis­ode of the show is told entirely through a fake talk-show, replete with advert­ise­ments and spon­sor­ships, that so char­ac­ter­ise Japan­ese even­ing enter­tain­ment — it’s a brazen move and has echoes of the open­ing gam­bit by the emer­ging jug­ger­naut Suzu­miya Haruhi, and for the most part it works. The cli­max how­ever fits more with com­mon first epis­ode dis­ar­ray: a blurry orgy of the no doubt soon-to-be intro­duced cast and a glimpse at this series’ par­tic­u­lar breed of vam­pire powers. The first trio of epis­odes wisely stays away from an expos­it­ory list of weak­nesses these nos­fer­atu have, instead opt­ing for high­school hijinks that have all the con­tinu­ity of the cat epis­odes in Code Geass but twice as mediocre. For a series of only a repor­ted twelve epis­odes it spends the major­ity of its open­ing fore­tell­ing what is to come, with oblique portents of man­oeuv­ring organ­isa­tions and the ongo­ing con­struc­tion of the tit­u­lar bund.

The most press­ing issue with the series so far is that it offers noth­ing above or bey­ond the well estab­lished vampire-werewolf myth­o­logy — that jux­ta­pos­i­tion of spe­cies already over­used; the audi­ence already accepts that vam­pires are the frilly-collared aris­to­crats and were­wolves the volat­ile, brawny pro­let­ariat. No single aspect is innov­at­ive enough to war­rant the series exist­ing in the first place, any­one with even a passing famili­ar­ity with any other west­ern vam­pire incarn­a­tion — be that the ancient Bram Stoker’s Drac­ula, the old Inter­view with a Vam­pire, the recent Under­world or the cur­rently air­ing True Blood — will find little to engage with here. The trade­mark SHAFT/Shinbo bizar­re­ness is only evid­ent in the brief open­ing count­down and the epis­ode title screens; anim­a­tion is oth­er­wise wholly imbal­anced lav­ish­ing detail on the fre­quently dis­robed Mina and remain­ing unspec­tac­u­lar else­where. Com­mend­a­tions are due how­ever for avoid­ing the trap­pings of obnox­ious tiny females: Mina Tepes sits neatly between dom­in­eer­ing and sub­missive and, voiced by the vocally sub­lime Aoi Yuki, demon­strates enough frailty and con­cern to be intriguing if not yet entirely interesting.

The expect­a­tion that SHAFT would pro­duce another typ­ic­ally SHAFT series was high, espe­cially given the source mater­ial; what the stu­dio has done how­ever is pro­duce a bland and unin­spir­ing start. Its impact likely tain­ted by the over sat­ur­a­tion of vam­pire and super­nat­ural series cur­rently suf­fus­ing the West­ern ter­rit­or­ies, Dance in the Vam­pire Bund is an eas­ily watched and instantly for­get­table series. Its later epis­odes may provide more draw if it has dis­pensed with the intro­duc­tion of char­ac­ters and grows a tan­gible story how­ever only a loy­alty to the stu­dio, a vam­pire fix­a­tion or the unhealthy allure of young girls will dic­tate whether one’s interest lasts that long. ¶