Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! I’m ecstatic to be welcoming back Guest Reviewer Megan who is once again here to talk to us about Mamoru Oshii’s “girl-meets-girl” anime. Please give her your best Okazu welcome. Take it away Megan!

Vlad Love, director Oshii Mamoru’s return to TV anime 40 years after Urusei, is now streaming in full on Crunchyroll. How did this bizarre passion project work out in the end? 

In the first review for episode 1, vampire girl Mai met blood-donation maniac girl Mitsugu, and we were also introduced to voluptuous school nurse Chihiro. In the next few episodes we’re introduced to Mai’s powers and an eclectic cast of characters interested in Mai, from cosplay club captain Kaoru who wants to dress Mai up, to killjoy student council president Jinko. The cast ends up forming a blood donation club and the rest of the series is episodic scenarios like a school play or a short film by Cinema club captain Maki. 

Vlad Love hits its stride when it combines this bunch of personalities with a suitably absurd scenario, and happily the show swings more often than it misses. The show may have been marketed as a slapstick comedy, but there’s other sorts of comedy beyond just that on offer here, from acerbic wit to non-sequitur Oshii references to obscure old films and much else besides. Some of my favourite moments were when the show toned down the zaniness more than I expected, like episode 7 which seemed relatively low-key by Vlad Love’s standards – until it was all recontextualised when you see the payoff – or in truth lack much of – in the short film itself. Episode 8, a joke that could have felt played out before it even got off the ground, is carried by Park Romi’s performance and Mizuno Uta’s wonderful classic shoujo-style art. 

Another highlight is episode 6’s Castlevania parody, which as a longtime gaming nerd and ‘vania fan already seemed designed for me, but still got a lot of things right up to the questionable mechanic of hearts powering sub-weapons. Oshii and co. evidently did some research, and while there isn’t exactly particularly deep cuts of vampire lore here, I couldn’t help but smile at moments like the reveal of Mitsugu’s dad’s identity. 

The show doesn’t win every time though. The first half of episode 4, for example, gets oddly uncomfortable as Mitsugu is kidnapped by an all-male ‘torture club’. Other sections, like most of episode 9, failed to land for me because, while I might have been sure a section was referencing some old Japanese or Western media or folklore or such, I didn’t actually know what the reference was to. This also isn’t a show interested in much in the way of character development – the supporting cast is essentially one-dimensional and the characters don’t change much over the course of the show. This isn’t as deep a flaw as it might otherwise be since the show is expressly a comedy, but some more development for the mains would have been welcome. 

Another instance of a lack of development is the show’s Yuri. As we saw in the first review, ep 1 was focused on establishing Mitsugu and Mai’s relationship, and ep 2 builds on this a bit further with a moonlight “night flight of love” for the girls. The next few episodes mainly focus on the other club members vying for Mai’s attention, and by this point we might share Mitsugu’s frustration that everyone else is monopolising Mai. There’s finally a bit of development in the next episode, 6, as Mitsugu and Mai share a quiet moment complete with piano and a sparkly background. Mitsugu tries to confess, but Jinko intervenes before she can actually get the word Suki out. There’s some moments here and there in the remaining episodes, like Mitsugu comparing the two of them to a married couple, but no real payoff in the finale, which was disappointing. Indeed, the show overall just sort of stops after Mai’s backstory is finally revealed rather than coming to much of a conclusion. 

On the technical side, Vlad Love doesn’t have the most impressive animation compared to some other Winter 2021 anime, but this doesn’t matter much since the art style and animation more or less always fits the comedy in the way it needs to. There’s some nice creative direction touches and of course Mizuno’s lovely art from time to time. The music is fitting too, with a mix of mysterious-sounding and intense tracks, and even some piano pieces for the sad backstories and a romantic moment or two. The vocal performances are also strong across the board – as mentioned, Park Romi steals the show here, but pretty much everyone sounds good, and I liked how several of the girls had quite mature-sounding voices. 

Overall, I had a good deal of fun in my time with Vlad Love. The show didn’t live up to its full potential, especially in how elements like the Yuri and character development ended up feeling rather undercooked, but it does deliver on a combo of retro-style anime comedy and… well, whatever random references Oshii wanted to put in there. As an anime fan for some years now it’s very rare to see an anime that feels quite as much of a passion project, designed without much care to current conventions or what a production committee would find marketable. For this reason as well as the show itself being a good time, despite the flaws I can recommend giving it a go if you don’t find the style of comedy a turnoff. 

Ratings:

Art – 8, not technically impressive but fits the comedy very well. 

Story/Characters – 7, episodic comedy so not much ‘plot’ to speak of, situations and characters are mostly fun, but a few setups that don’t work as well and cast remains quite one-dimensional

Service – 7, quite a bit (Chihiro’s character design is worth a few points alone) but mostly stays on the side of light-hearted rather than leery. 

Yuri – 4, it’s there but only in scattered moments beyond the first two episodes

Overall – 7 

As a bonus for reading to the end – here’s a mini-review of Vlad Love’s series guidebook! It’s quite a bulky volume (the Ikuhara anime guidebooks I own, for example, are usually under 200 pages), but the size is justified by its comprehensiveness – it has just about everything, from key visuals and character designs to key animation and storyboards, galleries of Mizuno’s art to staff interviews at the back. There’s not much particularly revelatory here, though I was amused to find the Chihiro shots covered up by “self censorship” were, in their original form, well… the book is a solid pickup for fans of the show or people interested in the animation process. 

You can find me here on Okazu’s comment section, and my twitter account @AnimeSocMegan. As always, thank you very much for reading and here’s ‘till next time! 

Erica here: Thank you again Megan! I can’t help but notice that the end of episode one was subtly changed in fact to lower the Yuri level, for the CR version. I don’t think he had the interest in going through with it, only to tease it a bit, like so many of the older directors used to.
In my opinion this series suffered from no clear idea at all, really. It was awfully like a story idea thought up over a few beers and then they got some money and had to do something. My feelings about the series are summarized in this movie clip. “He’s a genius.”
But I’ll give it this – I watched all of it. ^_^