Archive for the Guest Review Category


High-Rise Invasion on Netflix, Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

May 26th, 2021

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! Today’s review is a gift to me as much as to you. ^_^ I was thinking about watching this anime on Netflix when Christian said he had just watched it and needless to say, I was delighted to invite him to bring us all this review! Please welcome Chris back once again, and thank him for taking one for the team. ^_^ The floor is yours, Chris!

When I first read the description for High-Rise Invasion on Netflix (based on the manga Tenkuu Shinpan by Tsuina Miura and Takahiro Oba), I wrote it off as silly, violent edgelord fare, along the lines of what I thought those Purge movies must be like. Fortunately, I gave those movies a chance and found a suspenseful string of films that turn a critical eye on society, capitalism and marginalisation, with a cynical view of where America’s current darker impulses are leading it. Unfortunately, I also watched all 12 episodes of High-Rise Invasion.

Well, I say that, but I’m honestly of two minds about this show. The first time I watched it, I could practically hear the writers coming up with the plot: “Wouldn’t it be fuXXed if you got transported to this alternate realm where you have to go from high-rise to high-rise across rope bridges, and there’s brainwashed people in smiley-face masks trying to kill you by making it so you’ll throw yourself off the buildings, because that’s the only way down to the ground anyway, and if the masks get damaged then they have to kill themselves, and there’s all different ones so there’s like a butcher Mask, and a baseball player Mask, masked everything right, and there’s like a ton of blood whenever anyone dies, and it turns out this is all a way to create God, like how fuXXed would that be.” (dramatic pause while writer takes a long drag off a smoke to let these ideas sink in)

I mentioned to Erica that I watched it because I’d heard the main characters described as Yuri and wanted to find out for myself, and before I knew what happened I’d agreed to write a review for her. I hadn’t taken any notes the first time around, so I watched it all again and, while I’m not proud to admit this, I started to enjoy it.

To start with: is this a Yuri anime? Well, the high-school aged main character’s name is Yuri Honjo, so there’s that. Yuri quickly meets high-schooler Mayuko Nise, and unsuccessfully tries to stop her from stabbing an innocent man in the throat. After their little meet-cute, Mayuko becomes ride-or-die for Yuri, blushing and looking away whenever Yuri does something cool, gives her a compliment, hugs her, flashes her panties, bathes or changes in front of her, kisses her while she’s unconscious and struggling for her life, etc. You know, the same way we all secretly showed our feelings for that girl we liked back in high school; for her part, Yuri pretty much feels the same way about Mayuko.

Is this a Yuri romance? Definitely not. This is grindhouse action/suspense through and through, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be Yuri, of course, and whether it qualifies or not. depends on your own feelings. Mayuko blushes her heart out at Yuri constantly, but it never goes beyond hand-holding, even though they are intimately acquainted enough that Mayuko can recognize her crush by just a quick glimpse of her posterior (which actually happens more than once). Mayuko’s first love, however, is stabbing people in the throat. If there’s ever a second season we’ll see if she has to choose between her two devotions, but for now, we’ll see her face redden either from sweet emotion, or other peoples’ sweet, sweet neck blood. (And to be fair, this is a Shounen anime, which means that the straights don’t get any further than getting exaggeratedly flustered and denying any interest in each other.)

So what’s this all about again, anyway? Well, Yuri’s main goal is to find her brother, who’s also trapped here. Mayuko’s goal is to help Yuri find her brother (and, on a personal level, stab so many throats). Kuon Shinzaki has pink and blue hair, and an app on her phone that lets her use a giant building to shoot down other buildings; she wants to become God so she can bring peace to this realm. She also has a crush on Sniper Mask, an amnesiac, self-aware Mask whose goal is to recover his memories.

Aside from that, the show tends to abandon plot points, theories and objectives almost as soon as they’re thought up. Yuri rebelliously declares to Mayuko early on “I’m not going to kill any humans. I refuse to follow this world’s rules.” A minute later and she’s enthusiastically doing her best to shoot down a helicopter with just her handgun, and she’s unloaded a full clip into an assailant ten minutes later (before he commits suicide by biting off his own tongue, naturally.)

Various exposition-dumps throughout the show explain the different types of masks and how their programming bestows powers/constraints on the wearers. There is a consistent, if convoluted, logic to the masks, but the rapidly-shifting goals and theories the main characters have obfuscate this logic, making it feel inconsistent initially. Still, trying to puzzle out these mysteries helps hold the viewers’ interest in between gory fights with the Masks (or Angels, as the antagonists refer to themselves…Angels to some, Masks to others, I guess).

Trigger warnings? This show has geysers of blood, flying eyeballs, severed fingers and limbs, decapitations, and crazy amounts of stabbing and shooting. The violence in the show doesn’t bother me all that much because it’s expected for the genre, and even gleeful in its execution. There’s a ton of violence, but very little of it feels truly horrific; it’s all in good fun.

On a sexual note, however, Yuri is forced to strip at sword-point for a rogue cop (ACAB) in the first episode, but she’s managed to set his corpse on fire before things go much further. Happily, I don’t remember any further sexual threats to anyone after this.

Is this show dumb? Oh, it is so dumb. Yuri’s brother tells her over the phone that she should immediately murder her new friend Mayuko, because “In this world, there are no such things as allies.” (This very same brother is shown leading his own litter of new pals minutes later.) Sniper Mask’s main personality trait is smoking and looking cool in his stylish suit, and is so good at shooting guns that he can shoot a knife on the ground forcing the bullet to ricochet 90 degrees towards a target hiding around a corner. Yuri happily hands a firearm to a small child because he’s excited and would really like to see it. Mayuko’s shirt gets ripped open in the second episode, and until she replaces it with a slightly darker shirt in episode 11, she’s just walking around with her chest and bra completely exposed. Yuri never fixes the revealing rip in her skirt; characters change their priorities far more often than they change their clothes. Yuri can shoot ballistics out of the sky. Someone says the name of the show out loud. Characters gain new abilities as soon as the plot requires them, and the entire raison d’être is to simply show Masks looking creepy and cool in a wide variety of cosplay and violence. No, seriously; when it looks like one character is about to die, he at least comforts himself with how cool he’s going to look.

“Tasteless” is probably the best way to describe a show with this much blood, this many panty shots, suggestively-posed corpses, and a villain who calms himself by plunging his face into a Mask’s fully-clothed chest (she’s wearing one of those anime suits where the fabric acts like it’s painted on, you see).

I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to watch this show, and yet, depending where you find your bliss, I’ve also given you plenty of reasons to watch this show. If you’re in the mood for senseless, bloody violence and you’d like to see some ladies being badass and causing most of it for once, and you can dim your brain just to the point where you can buy in and enjoy the spectacle, then you might enjoy the bright, stylized, creepy bloodshed and mystery contained in these 12 episodes.

 

Ratings

Art – 6 There’s a very ‘basic’ quality, but it’s also stylized, and there’s no denying the care that went into animating the many sprays of blood.

Story – 6 There’s enough of a plot that it might keep your brain entertained by trying to puzzle out what’s going on, at least.

Character – 7 Nobody’s too complex, but it can be a joy watching Yuri flip her internal ‘cold as hell badass’ switch when she goes into action, ambidextrously shooting with both hands.

Yuri – 3 There’s a cute scene near the end where, separately, Mayuko and Kuon are each helping Yuri and Sniper Mask dress for battle, both wearing the same blushy, besotted grins as they think the world of their champions. Some viewers may need Yuri goggles to find any representation, but I don’t think you’ll need a very strong prescription.

Service – 8 Panty shots, bras, stripping, bathing, changing, anatomical impossibilities, and skinny-dipping into dream-states (my number refers to quantity, not quality). Conspicuously absent is a ton of boob-jiggle; I suspect the budget for that animation all went towards depicting the copious blood-letting instead.

 

Overall – 7 And I’m recommending this to nobody.

Erica here: /standing ovation/ Absolutely splendid review! You may have convinced me to watch it…after all, grindhouse violence, cute blushes and throat stabbing…it reminds me of my youth. /nostalgic sigh/  LOL

One point of order, The manga is released on Shueisha’s Manga Box app, and I’m inclined to think it’s Seinen, with that amount of blood.

Spectacular review, Chris!

 




Dear Noman, Volume 1 – Guest Review by Luce

May 12th, 2021

Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we have a new Guest Reviewer, Luce, who is going to take us through a series I haven’t even had a chance to look at, so yay, I’m totally ready to learn something new. ^_^ Please give Luce you attention and consideration!

I’m Luce, long-time follower of this blog, and I own too many Yuri manga. Not that that’s much of a bad thing, though… I can be found as silverliningslurk on Tumblr, and farfetched #1235 on discord. Anyway, on with the review!

Mashiro is ostensibly a normal school girl—except she can see ghosts and spirits. After a terrifying encounter with one, she meets Bazu, a crow Noman (the name this series gives to anything not living) and Nelly, who both work for the Border Preservation Society. Due to an accidental bond (read: kiss) with the vitriolic Bazu, Mashiro ends up deciding to work with them to bring Nomans to peace and prevent them eating souls.

There are likely a good many series that deal with a supernaturally gifted human teaming up with a supernatural being to fight monsters, and I doubt this series will do anything new, per se. We have the initial monster, the one the new girl manages to talk around from violence, and the more obviously sentient one. I haven’t read too many of these, so it’s not a tired trope for me. It’s interesting enough, even if the grading system the Society uses for these monsters confuses me somewhat. I hope future volumes will shed some light on it.

What is probably slightly more novel is a canon lesbian. Well, at least one. It’s not the happiest of stories though, as she is a Noman… But it is possible it could take a turn for the better. Another character states that her death happened at least a few years ago, and says that things have ‘changed for the better’. Not that that helps her much, at the moment. This volume leaves that story on something of a cliffhanger, albeit a low stakes one, so we’ll have to find out in the next volume. As for being yuri between the main characters, it has potential. The only problem is the visual age gap. I say visual because Bazu, being a crow Noman, doesn’t have a stated age, and clearly didn’t age by human standards whilst alive, so it’s hard to tell. Her body is most definitely adult, while Mashiro says she is fourteen, and looks younger partly because she’s small, and partly because she’s drawn to look young. Age is a funny thing in manga anyway.

Quite a lot happens here, although the pacing didn’t feel rushed to me. I’m curious to see what happens with the lesbian noman, and with what I imagine to be foreshadowing, in that Mashiro frequently writes letters to her deceased older sister. I also want to see Bazu and Mashiro evolve and grow, regardless of whatever it will turn into a relationship or not. Bazu is pretty harsh and aggressive initially, although we see later than she has a good reason for her hatred. Mashiro is a little naive, and perhaps blunt, but she does genuinely care about Bazu, and wants to learn more about her. I’m intrigued to see the effect they have on each other.

All in all, for a series that looks like it could be quite light, it gets surprisingly dark, but it balances these quite well. I like it, and I’m looking forward to the second volume, slated to come out in English from Yen Press in June.

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Service – Bazu has, to borrow another character’s comment from a different series, ‘some mad cleavage’. It is, thankfully, not used in a servicey way, and there aren’t many lingering close ups. I’d say 3.
Yuri – there are kisses between women. They don’t mean a great lot emotionally… Until they do? We shall see. Canon lesbian puts it up to 5.

Overall – 7

Erica here: Sounds like it could be worth a read. Thank you very much for the fab review! This series reminds me a bit of Ghost Talker’s Daydream, with it’s tragic lesbians. ^_^;

You can find Dear Noman, Volume 1 on Amazon, Comixology/Kindle, RightStuf, Global Bookwalker and manga stores near you!





Battle Athletes OVA/TV Anime Complete Blu-Ray set, Guest Review by Eric P.

February 3rd, 2021

Happy Wednesday and welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! Today we welcome back our long-time friend and Guest Reviewer, Eric P. It’s always a pleasure to have him here and today he’s going to take a look at the new release of Battle Athletes Complete TV Series & OVA Blu-Ray! As always, please give him a warm welcome back. Take it away Eric!

Set in the far-off future of 4999, Battle Athletes centers on young Akari Kanzaki who follows in her legendary mother’s footsteps.To do this, she attends University Satellite to compete in various sports tournaments for the top title of Cosmic Beauty, meeting different people along the way and growing up as both an athlete and person. That is the basic story  for the 6-episode OVA, while the TV version, Battle Athletes Victory, included far more elements in order to fill out its 26-episode length. In the TV-length series, Akari’s journey starts with her training to be a contender for University Satellite, followed by the actual Cosmic Beauty competition.  Everything culminates with—Akari and the other athletes fighting to protect Earth from an alien invasion. Turns out Cosmic Beauty was a front in searching for the best athletes to help decide Earth’s fate by tournaments, like a bloodless version of Mortal Kombat.

If that last part sounded goofy, it is, but it still works in its strange way. The TV version is sillier in nature than the OVA, with the humor driving much of the plot (the big revelation of Akari’s mother in the third act still makes me chuckle—it is something neither the characters or the viewers could ever see coming). Some viewers may better appreciate the more focused storytelling of the OVA with its minimal episode count, along with its more solid characterization. Akari herself develops at the right pace for the protagonist she is supposed to be, whereas in the TV version she is more likely to test viewers’ patience. As a consequence of having multiple episodes to pad the time out with, Akari struggles that much longer to come into her own. The real reason she is deemed special by everyone around her is due to her mother’s blood, and it takes quite a lot in drawing out that greatness like she is some kind of prophesied hero—which, she actually is by the end.

At the beginning of Victory, the one most responsible in driving Akari to be her best is her tomboy friend/fellow athlete from Osaka named Ichino. There are indications of something stirring between them as we follow them, but it never fully blooms due to their mutual denial. By act two they are forced to part ways, and the University Satellite is where Akari meets her new teammate in both the OVA and TV, Lunar-Priestess-in-training Kris Christopher. In the OVA, Akari gradually develops feelings for her that she later finds impossible to deny. Kris however remains a sexually ambiguous enigma since everything she does, including her kiss with Akari in the end, all get explained away by her religious customs.Victory is different in that regard, for there is no subtext in Kris’s love-at-first-sight attraction toward Akari. Her relentlessly obsessive pursuit drives Akari to maintain a distance much of the time for comedic purposes, although later on Akari does come around to embracing her teammate; if not so far as reciprocate her feelings quite yet. Once all the athletes gather to fight for Earth, as you might guess, we get the Yuri love triangle/rivalry that seems inevitable—the inhibited Ichino and uninhibited Kris have it out, with Akari helplessly stuck in between. Just as inevitable, the triangle ends unresolved, since leaving it up to the viewers to decide who Akari would choose was apparently meant to be part of the appeal.

This Sci-Fi Sports Yuri Comedy series was one of my gateway titles into Anime while growing up in the 1990’s. Like most Anime fans, I have watched several others as the years went by with only so much time to revisit old favorites now and then—then Discotek came along to license-rescue and re-release the complete collection in one Blu-ray set to be discovered anew. Originally standard-format, this is not an HD transfer so the picture quality remains the same as the original Pioneer DVD’s. Regardless, we get to have everything on one single disc including the special features. There is one other highlight that Discotek deserves kudos on—always missing from the Pioneer release but now restored, is the epilogue montage through the final TV closing credits, showing where all the characters wind up after the story’s end.

Having watched this series for the first time in so long, much of it still holds up well enough entertainment-wise—while some of the elements did not hold up as much as I would have liked. When I was younger, I thought it was neat how Victory was made up of a diverse cast of multicultural characters, with one athlete representing a major nation. Now I can finally recognize the outdated culturally ignorant stereotypes attributed to these characters. Some stick out like sore thumbs more so than others, especially with the conniving Chinese athlete Ling-Pha and African athlete Tanya, whose hyper-animalist nature will no doubt rub plenty of viewers the wrong way (she is more sensitively depicted in the OVA). Also, even though this series takes place in the far future when humanity is at its most advanced, a clear sign of the 1990’s is when the surrounding characters still react to homosexuality like it is something strange and stunning (and use dated language like “swing that way”), although Kris never views her feelings as such.

Despite the warts that mark it as a product of its time, my appreciation for Battle Athletes has not lessened, now that we have a new version. It is still a classic with charm one can only find from the 1990’s—one has to take it for the light, fun entertainment it was meant to be without taking it too seriously. Especially for those wishing for a newer sports-themed Yuri story to happen in the near future, there exists the original such title as an option until then.

 

Ratings:

 

Art—OVA:7, TV: 6 (The OVA being Original Video Anime, of course the animation would have more to it than the more limited TV series with the latter’s still/recycled shots. Either one is very ‘90’s, but not in a bad way)

Story—OVA:6, TV: 7 (The OVA and TV versions both have their strengths and weaknesses the other does not have, making it a matter of preference. I just happen to get more out of Victory, with the additional character stories and its inclusion of Ichino)

Characters—7 (The characterization may be more solid in the OVA, but we get far more characters and get more time well spent with them in the TV version, so it rounds out either way)

Service—OVA:7, TV: 3 (Both versions have it, yet the OVA is comparably more voyeuristic. Even without the scenes of nskedness, the camera takes plenty of convenient shots of the female athletes in their uniforms and body positions—it helps even less that the OVA version’s headmaster character is depicted as a stereotypical “loveable”[??] lech toward the athletes)

Yuri—7 (I would be remiss not to give a quick mention to two other athletes, Lahrri and Mylandah, in which at least one of them closely fulfills the traditional EPL role. Victory reveals tidbits of their complicated rivalry/friendship, but you will not find the same thing in the OVA)

Discotek’s Release—9 (If I had just one complaint—both inside and outside the slipcase the cover features almost each major character, yet it somehow misses Kris everywhere, while Ling-Pha somehow always appears twice. What’s the dealio, Discotek?)

Overall—lucky number 7

 

Erica here: Thank you very much Eric for taking a look at this now-classic Yuri series for us! I’m glad you didn’t forget Mylandah and Lahrri. They will always be the reason I love this series. ^_^

 





Assault Lily: Bouquet, Guest Review By Day

January 27th, 2021

It’s my favorite day of the week – Guest Review Wednesday! And today we welcome back Day – it’s always a pleasure to have Day’s insight, so I hope you’ll give them a warm welcome back and settle in for today’s review. Take it away, Day!

In a world in which monsters known as Huge (yes, really) present an existential threat to humanity, teen girls known as “Lilies” are what stands between these monsters and the rest of humanity. Riri Hitotsuyanagi, a newly-minted Lily, is beginning her new life at an academy dedicated to training and housing Lilies. Riri has dreamt of being a Lily herself ever since she was saved by one, and has especially looked forward to academy life since it’s a chance to reunite with that very Lily, Yuyu Shirai. Riri is particularly interested in being able to form a “Schutzengel” pair with Yuyu, a big sister-little sister style relationship that allows for mentoring both on and off the battlefield. But Yuyu dashes her optimism somewhat, as she’s grown cold and stand-offish sometime in the interim.  

And so begins Assault Lily: Bouquet, a series that is attempting to adapt a line of Azone International dolls with weaponry and short biographies into a cohesive single cour anime series. And that I phrased it that way may give the key hint to how that plays out ultimately, as while I strongly enjoyed the first few episodes as being exactly my kind of garbage (albeit with entirely too much thigh-gazing), alas, it cannot maintain that garbage truck pace. Instead the garbage truck stalls, it catches fire, and the structure ultimately dissolves into goo that really wants to kick some tears loose from the audience. And it even lacks the grace to do so using the story the shows launches on! Sure, pink-haired genki girl tries to melt the icy exterior of an aloof dark-haired girl is old hat, but it’s at least something, and that Yuyu is haunted by either a ghost or a hallucination of the partner she may’ve killed should make for plenty of fodder. I did wonder what the show would be about after they neaten up this problem in the early going and the answer is – not much, although it does give us plenty of time watching the characters bathe. The show does manage to remember that Yuyu has some trauma issues toward the end, but by then it is simply too late; I am bored senseless.  
 
Not helping matters, the entire cast is a set of cookie-cutters. Some are certainly even more distinctly lacking in life than others, but even with the ones I like, I can’t deny that they’re well-worn variations on well-worn types. That the show sees fit to print the names of every character on-screen every time they first appear in an episode, no matter how regular a member of the cast the person is, leads me to think even the production crew knew no one was going to remember who half of them were.  
 
The visuals are a bit more interesting than the story or the cast, but not in a positive way – there’s just some rather odd choices made with the visual presentation. Shaft is the studio, but outside of a few shots (including some in the primary ED), one would never guess so from how generic everything looks. The animation does kick into a higher-gear from time to time, but rather than doing so during battle scenes, its most often for moments where there is little reason to bother splashing out. Bafflingly, the show also insists on using CG for a tea-set the cast uses throughout the show, a distractingly bizarre move when it appears in scenes that are otherwise wholly 2D.  
 
People weren’t precisely wrong to smell Yuri fumes whiffing off of this one, but anyone searching for something substantive is going to come away disappointed; outside of suggestive shots in the ED, Yuri cred mostly hangs on the thin thread of intense gazes and intense friendships… and Kaede Johan Nouvel, who in a different show would be the evil psycho lesbian, but here is mostly played for jokes for her obsessive focus on Riri.  
 
Ratings:
 
Art – 5  
Story – 4
Character – 6  
Service – 5 (no full nudity but plenty of thighs, baths in crotch-emphasizing towels, and characters who enter scenes boobs-first)  
Yuri – 1
 
Overall – 4
 

I might actually be more upset over this not being good garbage than I end up feeling upset with shows that start out as Good before swerving off the road into crapsville! Good trash is hard to find! 

Erica here: Just a reminder to commenters – I know at least one of you has strong feelings about AL:B and so I remind you that if you liked this anime, you may feel free to express what you liked about it. We would be delighted to learn what you though made it good. But you may not be rude about this review or other comments, unless you are able to be very, very funny and rude. ^_^

Thank you Day for another insightful review. I agree, it is hard to find good garbage…and that this was not it. ^_^

 




Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ) Guest Review by Megan

December 23rd, 2020

Today is my favorite kind of day – we have a brand new Guest Reviewer here on Okazu! Many of you will have noticed that Megan has been a strong advocate for the newest “girl-meets-girl” vampire series on the block. Her persistence was impressive and I finally watched the first episode – and I didn’t dislike it. But it seemed like there was someone else who deserved to do this review more than me. ^_^ So, please give Megan a warn Okazu welcome!

Okazu readers – welcome to my guest review series for Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ)! My name is Megan, and I share my thoughts on Yuri and Japanese LGBT+ media on my twitter (@AnimeSocMegan). Let’s get on with the review because there’s a lot to talk about!

You can watch the first episode on Vlad Love’s official Youtube with English subtitles worldwide.

Oshii Mamoru is back with a slapstick Yuri vampire anime. That’s not a sentence anyone, including Oshii, quite expected a few years ago. But here we are, with Vlad Love’s premiere ending on an unmistakable mission statement: “And that’s how I became an unstoppable phlebotomist for Mai, my slightly peculiar girlfriend’s, sake”. 

Vlad Love’s premise is fairly simple. Mai, a vampire girl from Transylvania, runs away from home and washes up in Japan. In her search for blood she runs into Mitsugu, a girl crazy about donating blood but held back by her rare blood type. Mitsugu brings Mai back home, and the two form an arrangement of sorts – Mai gets Mitsugu’s blood, Mitsugu gets a live-in girlfriend. Mitsugu later sets up a school blood donation club with the help of school nurse Chihiro, which is how we’ll probably meet the supporting cast. 

Most reviews of anime wouldn’t include an overview of the show’s funding and production, but for Vlad Love it is worth mentioning. Instead of the “Production Committee” model used for a vast majority of anime, Vlad Love as a project has only a single investor: Ichigo Animation, a subsidiary of real estate and energy firm Ichigo Inc. This arrangement has given Oshii a great deal of creative freedom. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Vlad Love in its’ current form making it past a more standard anime production process. For better or for worse, Vlad Love is no more and no less than what Oshii and his handpicked team want it to be, and this alone lends it a uniqueness amid recent anime. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. This premiere, for all the zany slapstick trailers promise for the rest of the season, is relatively straightforward. (Vampire) girl meets (blood-donating maniac) girl, girl moves in with girl, girl sets up a blood donation club. It’s nothing remarkable, but the storytelling is efficient.  No scene takes longer than it needs to, no line of dialogue is out of place (other than the Oshii lore we’ll get to shortly, but that’s just part of the package deal). Without feeling weighed down by exposition, this first episode equips us with most of the information we need – about Mai’s backstory, both girls’ family situations, Mitsugu’s rare blood type, and more – before the introduction of the rest of the cast probably starts in the next episode. 

The episode and staff interviews establish Mitsugu and Mai’s relationship as the anime’s focal point. Mitsugu’s attraction to Mai is portrayed at this point as based on her beautiful appearance. As Mai’s voice actor commented, Mai flirts with Mitsugu to get access to her blood, but Mai’s feelings probably don’t go deeper than that yet. The task for the next episodes is to develop their bond beyond blood-sucker and blood-donor. 

Vlad Love probably won’t win awards anytime soon for pushing forward lesbian representation in anime, but there’s still some things worth praising here. Mitsugu seems more confident than many Yuri protagonists in her attraction, especially physical attraction, to women. An awkward nude scene is such an old trope Evangelion parodied it, but Mitsugu is completely into it. Another refreshing moment is Chihiro’s line about Mitsugu’s “first girlfriend”. This line isn’t a punchline, or really met with any reaction at all. 

On that note, one question going forward is the influences on the Yuri. The premise of a strange, magical or alien girl moving in with a run-of-the-mill protagonist is almost as old as anime in its’ modern form, and the series that arguably did more than any other to popularise this trope is Urusei Yatsura (1981)… the first 106 episodes of which were directed by none other than Oshii Mamoru himself. From the premiere, this sort of perennially popular shounen romance represented by Urusei seems to be a more obvious source of inspiration than tropes the Yuri genre has developed in the decades since. Oshii has said he doesn’t watch modern anime, so I’ll be keeping an eye on whether the show overtly draws from other Yuri works, or continues to tread its own path going forward. 

A slapstick show could be said to live and die on its animation, and even if the show’s slapstick side hasn’t completely taken off yet, Vlad Love is delivering pretty well on this front. The art looks a bit rough around the edges by modern standards, though this may be an intentional retro choice, but this is made up by the great work on expressions – I was never left wondering what any character was thinking – and the pleasing sense of physicality. The show hasn’t exactly shown off its sakuga chops just yet, but with reports of a solid lineup of animators to come, it looks like we’ve got more to look forward to. 

Before we wrap up, let’s go over the Oshii references in the premiere. The opening scene gestures heavily towards the likes of Jin-Roh. This scene and the OP feature a blond-haired doll tied to a girl back in Transylvania, possibly Mai’s sister or childhood friend, and the visuals imply a tragedy in Mai’s past greater than she’s currently letting on. One of the more inexplicable lines, about Fallout 4, is also an Oshii reference – he’s a big fan of the game. Another strange tangent, about Social Democratic Lower House speaker “Otaka-san”, was the nickname of Japan’s highest ever ranking female politician, Doi Takako. 

Vlad Love‘s first episode didn’t show its full hand yet. The show’s apparently signature slapstick is only getting off the ground, we haven’t met most of the cast, and our two female leads’ romance has just started. Still, the early signs are pointing in a positive direction. For fans of Yuri as well as oldschool slapstick or Oshii’s other anime, I invite you to join the ride with what is shaping up to be 2021’s most unique Yuri anime. 

Ratings:

Story – 8, unremarkable yet but well told

Art – 7, expressive and fun if a little rough 

Yuri – 5, early days but the intent is there 

Service – 7 by TV anime standards, Chihiro when she strips off doesn’t leave a huge amount to the imagination. 

Overall – 8 

Thank you for reading the review! I would also like to thank all my twitter mutuals and followers who’ve given me their support, and of course Erica, for giving me a spot to share my enthusiasm here on Okazu. This guest review series will continue after the show’s airing begins at a currently unconfirmed date. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading your comments! 

Erica here: Thank you, Megan. Your enthusiasm motivated me to watch episode 1. The highly detailed backgrounds, the fanservice and the comedy felt so much like Oshii’s Urusei Yatsura, with that pervasive “what fever dream am I watching?” sense that I associate with UY Beautiful Dreamer. (Which admittedly, I saw at 2AM while working 7 days a week at 3 different jobs, one of them a Renaiassance Faire., so life was actually pretty surreal. ^_^) We look forward to watching this along with you!