The Goth Club

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).

Japanese Cover - Spot the difference

American cover

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.

Give it three more weeks and the manga series will be out to capture the Twihard otaku market

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!

At least she'll never go saggy... because she's a vampire... that doesn't age... *cough*

(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.

At least this one is covered and not likely to get you arrested for reading this article

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.

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What do you get when you cross a sleazy Spanish octopus with possible underworld connections with a sweet 16 year old girl who’s a former goat herder now living in the big city, but recently got kidnapped by people from Adelaide? (more…)

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Wow, even Buddhists are fucked up!

This is an actual donut chain!

Actually, in a way, I think that stands to reason. For a start, almost all of those statuettes that people think are meant to be Buddha… Here’s a fat happy guy with the huge droopy ears. Ok, I dig, he’s found inner happiness by giving up worldly desires. So how’d he get so rotund? Looks like someone still desires sugary treats, if you know what I’m saying.

But I digress… you just want your Sabbath morning cartoons, and I totally understand that. It’s just that this week’s is a Buddhist one… kinda. It’s called Birth, although in the early 90s was released by Harmony Gold as Planet Busters or World of the Talisman, depending which market you were in. It also had a dub that made it entirely suitable for kids, which was kind of not the point.

In the early 00s, ADV re-released it with a different dub, with some of the very fucked up original Japanese dialogue (including the rant by the now homosexual emo teen terracidal robot), but dropped a lot of the religious references… Go figure.

Either way, the clip you’re seeing here is the very last few moments, which are actually radically different from the rest of this pointless, yet entertaining romp, through many of the central tenants of Buddhism… with sexy arses an giant robots that shoot lasers from their face.

Hey, if you think this is disrespectful or something, you should see Legend of the Overfiend… also based on the central tenants of Buddhism… somehow…

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If you're not seeing these after 6 or so of these drinks, you've got a strong constitution.

It started out as just a “Pink Monoke“, but the number of Ens and Ohs just kept on growing the more of them I had.

So this is the last of the Ramune based drinks from Solstone. Some of you will be shouting hooray. Others who have actually gotten hooked on the delicious nature, and the creepy fact that they fluoresce, will has a sad. What makes it worse is that supplies of Ramune will still be limited for another month or so in Melbourne, at the time I post this, due to Manifest purchasing so much of the import stock last quarter.

So, technically speaking, this should have been called a Pink Mononoke, but there’s a delightful legal complication with that that I’d rather not get into… Instead, let’s get you into one of these. (more…)

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