Racist pun in the title! Wooo! Afterall, this post is a review of a Japanese anime series about vampires (of the bajillions that already exist).

Dance in the Vampire Bund is somewhere between a political intrigue thriller and high school romance, with a touch of excessive supra-martial arts action thrown in. Of course, as with all anime, there’s the standard lolicon / ephebophile content by having panty shots and cleavage galore from school girls in ludicrously (although not innacurately) short school dresses. DitVB takes this a step further by following along on the standard Poppy Z Brite mantra of it’s ok for them to actually be hyper sexed up twelve year olds… so long as they’ve been dead a few centuries before hand.

Essentially, the narrative sees vampires coming out into the open in a way rather similar to that of True Blood. Crappy TV news show appearances.

From there the male lead, Akira Kaburagi, quickly finds his idealic highschool life and somewhat fuzzy memory of childhood (because amnesia is so amazingly common in Japanese teenagers) as the Vampire Queen, Mina Tepes (picture above) waltzes into his life to remind he that he’s been promised to her… oh, and he totally forgot he was a werewolf!

(Don’t worry, these aren’t plot spoilers, it’s all in the first book / two episodes)

The plot is actually rather well done. Unlike numerous other vampire based anime with teenage appearanced vampires, such as Rosario + Vampire or Karin, Mina actually is into her third century and actually acts somewhat like it, with the exception of her crush on Akira… and let’s face it, we all know plenty of adults that do amazingly dumb things if they think they’re about to get it on with a teenager *cough*

Which is why the consistent “titillation” of the audience with a scantily clad twelve year old body just makes no sense. Cheap panty shots are generally the domain of an anime or manga series that stretching for time and appeal to cover up it’s near total lack of depth or character development.

Whilst DitVB characters are somewhat archetypal, the plot line of vampires basically becoming the corner stone of a reviving economy and demanding economic and political concessions to secede from a sovereign nation and form their own (hence the “bund” in the title) are not. The political sub-plots are handled with sincerity and aplomb, easily quite mature in their content and the way that they are handled (assassinations, kidnappings, turnings, etc.) without resorting to cheap gimmickery. Likewise, the relationship management with other clans of monsters.

Sadly, the cheap gimmicks seem to be there to stay for the highschool romance story line. i.e. the must have learning to cook in home-eco class, LOL the vampire queen fails because vampires don’t eat food… Not only could that be seen coming a mile off, it was entirely unneccesary to the development of other plot lines which were far more engaging.

It’s almost as if the author, Tamaki Nozomu, wanted to write a serious vampire story for an adult audience, and was instructed by the publishers to ensure that there was content for teenagers as well to ensure it was a commercial success… which is doubly odd because it was initially published in a monthly magazine aimed at mature adult males. Actually, that’s probably why there’s so many of the lack-of-tit-illating shots.

Either way, it’s actually an engaging series, so queue it up, get some pizza, and prepare for a marathon screening session because this is a damn site better than any of the crap Stephanie Meyer churns out… I hear her next series is going to involve Angels… that sparkle.

For those of you that don’t want to wait for someone to license this title, but feel guilty about downloading content from Pirate Bay, there episodes are currently available for free on Funimation’s Dance in the Vampire Bund YouTube Channel.

You might also like to read:

1. Teenaged vampires DON’T suck… they’re just lame

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