Vampire in the Garden

My relationship with vampires in anime (which, let's not kid ourselves, applies for the live-action variety as well) is quite stunted, with the classic rule of exceptions proven in the form of the marginally stirring Bakemonogatari or the cults-warming/lovingly sinning Hellsing. I have yet to see the iconic Shiki, though, so I'm leaving the final conclusion open despite this representative. Curiously, one of Vampire in the Garden's earliest episodes was the bloodsucking rodent-infested shōnen Seraph of the End, which in the studio's current portfolio has the flash of a Russian souvenir stand amidst the wonders of the world. Their comeback with a slightly more poetic tale about the reunion of an unremarkable human girl with a bored, humanistically-educated vampire noblewoman (strangely, her garden made it into the series' title on the basis of only 2 minutes of footage?) turned out even rougher than when these creatures get a full salvo of light cannon. The emotional basis of the story is downright disastrous: we're pointlessly made to sympathize with a run-of-the-mill girl who, after X years betrays her race, which is defending itself night after night from being massacred by vampires. Even though she lives in an industrial hell evocative of inhospitable Siberia, nonetheless she trades relative safety for escape into a frozen unknown that is anything but safe. And at the same time, we are expected to comprehend that the vampire queen, still living at an andante tempo in a preserved castle, is being easily enticed out of nowhere into a little war campaign, where she oddly decides to risk her neck for a random girl from the other side of the lines. The getting-to-know-you sequence that follows is the best, most believable, and most endearing part, but once we get back to the life of a sheep and a wolf under the same roof, it gets hard to reconcile/easy to, um, sink your teeth into what the promised land actually is or the awkward and perpetual "I'll save you so you can save me next time" nonsense, and things all promptly go down the toilet. This isn’t helped by the undeveloped side characters whose purposes in terms of the story are largely two-dimensional, or the immersion in raging idiocy like amateur CGI car wrecking or vampires carrying things/people in flight when their claws turn into wings. The ending is predictable and the message of the entire series fizzles out into a 404 error. The animation is unusually mediocre for Vampire in the Garden, and above all the simple character design did not appeal to me when compared to the detail of the surrounding world; the music, on the other hand, was surprisingly solid. That didn't smooth over my general disenchantment, and thus my relationship with vampires received a validation stamp in the "Another Edward" column. 2 stars (24/05/2022)

This show managed to convey a meaningful and quite interesting story over only five episodes. On the other hand, the initial introduction of Momo could have been much better. In addition, they could have made the middle of the season much better and shown more about how Momo and Fine's relationship developed. I think it would have probably contributed to creating a much stronger effect during the emotional finale because I would like to have felt a greater connection with them to relate to their story at the end. Likewise, they could have fleshed out the character of Momo's mother a bit more as they did with her uncle (so I could understand her more and not just think of her as a workaholic career woman). I enjoyed the narrative and its subject matter, setting, and general vibe, even though the pacing suffered because of the total running time of the five episodes. The standard of animation was inconsistent, which is quite surprising for a WIT Studio production, although the soundtrack is great. Overall, this is an enjoyable anime series, although it did not quite meet my expectations or probably have the impact the anime's creators intended. Although the opening and the ending were really very good, the middle is rather average, so this particular Vampire will not find more than 7/10 in my Garden. (17/05/2022)