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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Thanks to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, we are all well aware that the lamest and most awkward time in your life can be made substantially more awesome by adding in vampires… and a British guy that can sing.

But what happens if you suddenly take out all the cool and raunch of a show like Buffy, and instead added in all the lameness of a highschool drama? What if you crossed True Blood and Degrassi: The Next Generation?

You’d get The Vampire Diaries.

Guess which ones of us are dead! I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Much like Twilight and True Blood, these are based off a series of books from an author no one had ever heard of until recently, and all seemed to come out with remarkable speed. I guess the big push for vampires at the moment is the same as in the mid 90s. They’re the in thing again, and it needs to be squeezed into teenagers, so their cash is squeezed out, before they go back to some other form of disaffection with life and stop buying black clothes and silly hairstyles. On the bright side, I suppose this current craze could possibly see a revival in goth clubs… On the down side, they might insist on bringing the sound tracks to these shows with them, which in this case would include a fair bit of terrible terrible emo music. Yes, I hate My Chemical Romance in no small degree.

Back to the show!

She's like the Goth version of Hannah Montana

The plot revolves around Elena, a girl who’s parents died the year previously, being sort of taken care of an aunt, whilst she takes care of her dope fiend brother. She’s having a hard time at school, as all high school drama protagonists do. It should be pointed out the Elena is played by Nina Dobrev, who is probably one of the better people for this role. Why? Because she’s been in other teen horror crap before, she was in Degrassi: The Next Generation, and hell, she even had a part as an extra in Repo the Genetic Opera… So yeah, I’ll give her, and the casting director, some credit in this. She’s also not a woeful actor, unlike many many teenagers.

Enter Stefan, one of the founders of their small town, who is now a vampire, and looks about as much a teenager as Luke Perry did as Dylan. He’s here to recapture his lost love from 150 years prior, because Elena, who is not only underage, but so much younger than him that it’s all kinds of wrong (Buffy was wrong too… Except for Willow. Her relationships were all kinds of right.), and his troublesome brother, Damon (nice and obvious name there).

http://tengossip.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/vampire-diaries4.jpg

Stefan’s a “good” vampire, because he doesn’t drink human blood. Suck it up, bucko. Literally. Male humans come with a convenient-for-vampires meat straw that they’re more than happy to have someone, anyone, suck on so that some kind of fluid is drained out. It’s what the female fandom are secretly wanting in the first place. Ladies out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ll admit to only having seen two episodes, but the show irritates me on a number of levels, and I’m not talking about how much they tried to get a guy that looked like “Edward” to cash in on the Stephanie Meyer / Twilight craze.

The show is simply not that well constructed.

For a start, plot devices ripped straight out of every other vampire series out there. The sunlight going ring from Buffy, so Stefan doesn’t burn up. The “I’m a good vampire now” shtick from numerous sources. The “She reminds me of a lost love” from Anne Rice. The highschool setting from Poppy Z Brite. It’s like it’s every good idea stolen and rolled in together.

The pacing is terrible. Admittedly, this is partially the fault of poor source material, but a good team of writers or director know how to pad scenes so that they can give better over all pacing to a show. True Blood is a fantastic example of how tacky source material can be redone to make a much better paced show.

The special effects are just annoying. One prime example: The mist. Ok, we get it, vampires like mist. But mist rises from the ground, it doesn’t billow in from the sides, and certainly not in great rolling gusts. Maybe it’s mystical mist! No, I still don’t buy it. It shouldn’t be hugging the ground like a thick blanket, but rather be a solid wall. I drive through mist on a regular basis when interstate tripping. It’s scary shit when it looms like a wall, and I only ever see it hug the ground in valleys. Also, crows… Seriously?

The soundtrack to this show is woeful. The non-diegetic music simply does not suit the scenes that they’re paired with, and it really does sound like they’re simply trying to slot tracks in so that later down the road they can sell an MTV approved sound track.

I think I’m going to have to write another article on heart throb vampires that don’t fucking sparkle…

In the meantime, here’s a clip from Vampire Diary (not Diaries). It’s done on a budget of almsot nothing, seems to have no script, yet still manages to not be so lame… No wait, it does.

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No, really!

This is probably old news by now, seeing as it filters down through the European newswires, to local stuff, and then I eventually write a post on it… but if you didn’t already hear about it, it’s horrifyingly funny.

http://www.mosnews.com/weird/2009/06/18/blackwidow/

She's a "black widow", get it?... except she's white, and probably never been married.

Moscow News, aka MosNews, is one of the few English language portals into Russian news before it’s filtered through the wires. The great thing about it is that it’s generally of the quality of some of the sleazier British tabloids… like The Sun or Weekly World News (with BatBoy!), replete with titlating photos for absolutely no reason that have almost nothing to do with the story (see inset), and bizarre stories that usually turn out to be fabricated.

Back to the story at hand: Turns out she’s a goth. She’s into horror movies, and collecting arachnids, and velvet clothing, and all that shit.

She’d cosy up to guys in bars and clubs, like most goth chicks do, although in a reversal of trends, buy them a drink… which she’d put clonidine in. Now, this makes my Spidey senses tingle (get it?). What goth is interested in buying drinks for men that they’re not already sleeping with!?! As a former bartender at Heresy, Carmilla’s, Cyberball, etc., I’m used to everyone trying to scam free drinks out of anyone else. No one buys a drink for someone unless they already know them. The one and only, singular, happenstance event I’ve ever seen someone at a goth club attempt to buy a drink for someone else that they didn’t know was a fairly commercial looking guy who didn’t get “the rules”, but did get a roll of the eyes when I attempted to give the drink to the target.

Free drugs on the other hand…

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Are you as sick of Twilight as I am?

Good. Then maybe we can get back to some real vampire stories, like the sort Poppy Z Br–

*kaTHUNK* … *TWANG!*

Sorry, that’s me hurting myself over beginning that suggestion. Let’s start over.

Are you as sick of vampires sparkling in the daylight as I am? Thanks to a half ok written set of books, and a really shitty movie (soon to have a sequel), Vampirism has basically been turned from the dark and brooding mystery it was when I was a lame teenage wannabe vampire goth thanks to Anne Rice, to basically being the next misunderstood minority now that it’s ok to be gay… And like movies about gay guys, they’re thin, pouty, and you really really want to sodomize them.

Notice the lack of sparkles?

Well, all is not lost. Thank the powers that be that the Europeans still now how to make good movies based of decently well written books, instead of turning them into steaming piles of crap.

Let The Right One In is one such book, and it’s been made into a remarkably good film.

The gist is that Oskar, a 12 year old ideal of Aryan perfection notices a new girl, Eli, move into his apartment building… And that he only ever sees her at night… and that she doesn’t need to wear heavy padded clothing in the middle of the night in the middle of winter in the middle of Sweden. Being the outcast at school that he is, he quickly befriends her

And then people in the town start to die mysteriously and they fall in love.

Where this deviates from most vampire films that don’t sparkle is that it is: a) a romantic drama; b) not about the vampire; and c) you’ll go to jail if you happen to have topless shots of the main characters on your computer, regardless of the fact that the film actually does do a couple nude scenes.

Now, I’m going to be honest and say I know dick about the Scandinavian film industry, but this really is a masterpiece.

The sets & costumes made it almost impossible to believe that this movie was not shot at some point in the 80s and simply digitally remastered. Terribly out of date clothes, tiny CRG TV sets, little government built apartments, awful haircuts all round. Simply impeccable set and costume design.

The score was very well rendered by one Johan Söderqvist (who I am now trying to find in the torrents). At all times it was appropriate to the scene and well blended instead of attempting to force the emotion of the moment on to you. So much so that you can’t even distinctly remember a catch. It’s just… pleasant.

The acting was rather impressive. In the film industry, you’re never meant to work with animals or children. Especially first timers. Yet Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson pull off some amazingly realistic performances. The awkwardness of a young child, and the even more awkwardness of a child that is now dead and cant’ even remember when it happened. The build the characters in a most believable way.

Honestly, my accolades shouldn’t be that surprising. The book and film have won over 50 awards combined, and not just crappy European ones. If you’re the sort of person that doesn’t really mind reading subtitles, this movie is well worth it.

Go see it before it finishes its runs at the art house cinemas.

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