Surprisingly cheerful for a horror vampire series.
A departure from the previous entries, now I will review a horror vampire anime with a very misleading title called Karin.
Basically, this anime is about Maaka Karin, a high school-going super strong vampire than is not afraid of sunlight (take that Alucard). Not only that, she doesn’t have any need to suck blood, and she bite people just to give FREE blood transfusions. If she can’t find a victim, she will conveniently spill excess blood all around her while glaring at other people to clean up her mess. Even her family of normal vampires with normal strength and afraid of sunlight are truly afraid of her.
This continues until she meets a human who volunteered that Karin should bite him so that she will stop spilling blood all around ever again……
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Story:-
The above synopsis should make everything clear, with the majority of 24 episodes was filled with the main character Karin antagonizing whether she should just bite that pitiful volunteer human instead of making him ‘bento’, or working with him at the same restaurant while avoiding a vampire hunter that have killed 10000 vampires in their class.
Her indecisiveness was repeated in many episodes, with one causing her to bite that human’s mother instead, and also the vampire hunter himself in another episode but never the volunteer human himself. This caused Karin’s older brother and younger sister to be stressed out, and they have to go out of their home to find stressed/jealous women at the city, doing what vampires should do.
Basically, you just went along the episodes to find out whether she will bite the volunteer human, and the result will be revealed at the last episode after an ‘excellent’ build-up in the previous episodes. If you are an extreme horror anime fans like me, you will certainly find this anime refreshing, with the strongest vampire in the history of Japanese anime.
As I don’t read the manga which is the base of this anime, I can’t comment whether it has fillers or not.
Character design:-
Character design has mixed results. The main protagonist Maaka Karin was beautifully designed; with pretty face, big breasts, nice haircut, big breasts, voluptuous body, big breasts, nice legs and big breasts. But the character design of that pitiful volunteer human can do with slightly more effort. I think the designers want to portray that human as average, but I think you can make ugly humans that are better looking than that volunteer human.
Considering that others has decent character designs, I wonder what holds the character designer back. Speaking about that, the strongest ever vampire in anime history is a little bit on the short side too.
Voice acting:-
Just like Yuyu Hakusho, nothing really to shout about. Except maybe for that vampire hunter (Kouki Miyata) and the volunteer human (Katsuyuki Konishi).
Music:-
The OP theme titled scarlet is excellent. I even have it on my iPod. And to get into my iPod, a certain degree of excellence has to be reached. Meanwhile, the ED theme and OST are forgettable.
Animation/direction:-
Well, great use of bright colors despite this being a horror anime. Very refreshing indeed. Can do with more bouncing breasts of Maaka’s though. Directing is great, with some great focus on her bouncing breasts in action. Such things always scored high points with me.
Conclusion:-
Will be 10 out of 10 if not for that volunteer human character design and also below average OST and ED theme. Thus I will award 9 out of 10 to this series.
