Vampire in the Garden

I’m an absolute sucker for vampire stories. Always have been, always will be. Shows like Vampire Knight and Hellsing were some of the earliest anime I can remember watching. There’s something just so captivating about a pasty, white, basement-dwelling, nocturnal, blood-sucker with good looks and even sharper teeth. Even when Tom Cruise starts walking the night, it still looks and sounds pretty cool. So, to me, it doesn’t matter if your vampire plot is tropey, boring or juvenile, I’ll still enjoy it if the main character has some aversion to garlic, crosses, sunlight, or some unholy combination of the three. Hell, I even started readingCall of the Night, which sucks, but satiates my desire for coffin-sleeping, bat-morphing, reflection-precluding, immortal, skinny white chicks. But what does any of that have to do with Vampire in the Garden? Well, there’s a garden, but there are vampires in it, so it already ticks the biggest vampire show check box without me even having to watch it. In all honesty, I completely forgot this show was coming out. I remember when it got announced, but in about 3 minutes, it had left my memory entirely for the foreseeable forever. Maybe Mal’s bell notifications actually do come in handy sometimes because, as you probably can guess, that’s what reminded me of its existence. Anyways, I was pretty excited for this show based on the involvement of one man—and if you’ve read the redundant parts of the previous review, you’ll know where this is going—that man being the centrepiece of the three gods: Mr Tetsuya Nishio. A man whose expert designs have—if you’re not some Boruto sycophant—recently re-invigorated themselves in the public conscience with Kamiyama’s Visions vignette and, if you were REALLY paying attention, Oshii’s Vlad Love. As you can probably tell by the way I’ve somehow segued into just praising Nishio without actually discussing the topic of this review, the man’s work means a lot to me, so his involvement with this project instantly piqued my interest. After all, character designers are inherently the most important part of an anime’s production, right? I mean, have you seen anything with Range Murata or Yoshitoshi Abe’s names slapped on the staff list? It might be presumptuous for me to say this, but aren’t the character designs the mode by which the script writer’s ideas are given life? Are the character designs not a visual representation of the lines upon lines of dialogue that allow the audience to graphically distinguish and connect with the cast, as superficial as that connection may be? The aesthetics and ‘look’ of a character is what immediately gives the audience an impression of what a show could be about. You can infer a lot from a good character design, and in my humble, humble opinion, Tetsuya Nishio is in the business of good character designs. For fucks sake, he took Kishimoto’s already brilliant design for Naruto and translated it into being one of the most instantly recognisable designs in animation history. Well, ok, Vampire in the Garden time now. At the very least, I can tell you that, just like Tom Cruise, it looks and sounds pretty cool. WIT did a fantastic job on this thing. Masakazu Miyake brought all the thunder (that's probably not the right word to describe background art) back from Mushoku Tensei, applying that same level of quality to an otherwise vastly different, and certainly more specific, setting. There’s a bunch of different ways to say something looks great, but I’m gonna settle for the one: it looks great. What more is there to say? However, from whatever score I've given this, you can probably tell I've got some itsy bitsy complaints here and there, like, for instance, why does the CG animate so bad? How do people sit through something like, I don’t know, The Sky Crawlers, for ease of comparison, and claim that CG ruined the film? Compared to TSC, this has gotta be some kind of joke. It looks like there was zero thought of realism or physics put into the way the CG vehicles move. Like, it’s forgivable, but it certainly takes me out of the action. It just seems so silly, especially because the texturing otherwise looks really cool. Plot-wise, it’s your standard vampire affair, nothing vastly out of the ordinary. Though, maybe something out of the ordinary would have helped it, because the plot was by far the weakest aspect of the film. I just found myself struggling to care about anything—all the emotion felt like it was carried on the back of Megumi Han’s brilliant performance as Momo, and if you've seen Momo's back, you'd know it's pretty small. The plot progression was just so filmic and predictable. It wasn’t till that handsome stud Kubo got some well-needed development that I found myself actively engaged, but by then, it was far too late, and the film had basically entered its final few scenes. Overall, Vampire in the Garden feels, looks and sounds like something I would have loved if I was eight or so years younger, with all its graphic violence, easy to follow story and frantic katana x vampire sakuga fights. My qualms pertaining to this film feel like a repeat of the last Netflix anime I watched: Orbital Children, and you can bet the cause is almost identical. For some fucking reason, Netflix chops its films up into stupid episodes instead of leaving them as a bigger, stupid movie, which is how it should be: stupid. Look, I’m just going to pretend it was Netflix’s fault because I wanted to like this movie a hell of a lot more than I did, but I just don’t have it in me to lie to you people ;) Similarly to how I bemoaned in my Orbital Children review, this really should have been an 11-13 episode series. It would have given suitable breathing room for the cast to develop relationships and flesh out motivations at a well-reasoned pace. Seeing that same potential squandered, in the same way, is just disheartening. Well, is that it? I think that’s all I wanted to say. To summarise, Vampire in the Garden was blessed with some of the best production values and talents of the 2020s but failed to keep the ball rolling after tripping and falling into the same direction-inhibiting pit-falls that its predecessors have yet to climb out of. I hesitate to say I’m disappointed since Orbital Children garnered the same sorta-middling response from me, so at some level, I was expecting something almost good but not quite engaging enough to deserve that accolade.

Overall it was a pretty bland watch with good art and music and at times good animation but the story and characters were terrible. The only halfway decent character was the uncle and he didn't get any development until the end. They studio tried to put too many slow moving scenes along with too much material which ends up with a lot of stuff being crammed into a short runtime. The characters become unrelatable from this pacing as you don't really understand their actions. To put it in perspective it makes no sense that Momo the main character would leave with Fine and in notime at all have an us versus the world mentality when vampires had been her enemy her entire life. Granted she does not view them with hatred but she does have a bias against them as seen in her first interaction with Fine. I had some hopes for this anime at the start but even though it was only 5 episodes (and I always finish short anime since it's not that big a waste of my time) I was seriously about to drop it, but alas I stuck with it cause why not just finish it. You also get some strong yuri vibes if your into that, personally I don't care for it but if the story is good I'll watch it. So take it as you may and watch it if you want but it doesn't get my stamp of approval.

For only 5 episodes, This was Way more impactful than it had the right to be. I'll make it easy for you, the show is worth watching. The Best thing you can do to see if it's for you or not is watching the first episode, which is one of the best first episodes I have seen in a long time. It does get a little weaker around episode 3 and specially 4, but it picks itself back up for the final episode so I wasn't too bothered by it. Bottom of the line is, if you want to go in completely blind, do it. it's worth your time,but if you're still unsure, keep reading: ******************************************************************** the story is about a world were vampires and humans are at war while both sides are kind of both at fault and victims at the same time. Vampires think humans are the assholes who started it all, and vice versa. we follow two leads, a human, daughter of a big shot in the military, who ran away from home, and a vampire royalty who is dealing with her past. And most of the show is the journey of this unlikely duet living, surviving and running away together while being chased down by both humans and vampires. they're relationship is the main selling point of the show. you just can't help rooting for both of them. in fact all the characters are likable. no actually scrap that most of them are, and even the ones that have little to know screen time have enough depth to not be 1 dimensional. I even go as far as saying for a show that is only 5 episodes long the character writing is kind of impressive. but that isn't even close to being the most impressive thing about the show. The star here is easily the execution. I'm talking about the directing, pacing and music. they work flawlessly in a final product that I can only describe as cinematic. so much so that I thought the first episode was the most cinematic and masterfully directed episode of Anime I have seen since the made in abyss movie. which says a lot considering how made in abyss is visually stunning, and what I'm talking about is a god damn movie. And it's not just the visuals and direction, the music and it's placement is simply perfect. If I didn't know any better I would have guessed the music was done by the man himself Kevin Penkin. the style is very similar to his work, and that's a good thing, great even. All these elements mixed together had the result of dozens of goosebumps and me crying 2 different times during this 5 episodes. It's not too hard to make me cry, but again for 5 episodes, that's still impressive. Here's the thing, it's a simple story that is far from being the most original, and there isn't really anything ground breaking in that said story. I'm not going to pretend like it's a must watch masterpiece. it isn't... But it doesn't have to be. there are shows that aren't really flawed in any way, but they won't reach for the skies either. those shows almost always end up being some of the most enjoyable and wildly loved stories out there. I wouldn't say the show is good enough for you to go out of your way to watch it if it doesn't seem to be your cup of tea, but if you have any amount of interest, watch it. My final score is a 7.75/10 thanks for reading, and I hope you found this review to be helpful, at least to some degree. :D

While there are some decent upsides to this miniseries, it's ultimately brought down by core issues. First, the positive. The art in the show is very beautiful! While it's all winter-themed, I never got tired of looking at the snowy mountains and landscapes, nor the bright lights of civilization contrasting with the cold, stormy night. The music is also a treat to listen to! Both the soulful, melancholy tunes and the jovial European-inspired ones are quite enchanting to the ears! The world itself is quite unique and interesting as well. It had a lot of potential that was, unfortunately, not quite met. The story and writing itselfis sadly the weak point of this work. There were engaging concepts that could've been explored, but never came to be. The pacing is also a mess. Everything happens so fast, to the point where things like character development feel sudden and unconvincing. Motivations and actions are either sloppily explained, or not given any reason whatsoever. There is some enjoyment to be had here, mostly in the visual and auditory senses. But if you're hoping to be wowed by a charming, well-written tale, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.