Yes, that's right, the old transfer student cliché has come to pass once again, with Mina joining Akira's class at the school much to the shock of all and sundry - In particular, the school's student council, who protest long and loud about this development. However, what they don't know is that Mina actually owns, and indeed founded, the school within which they stand, which rather makes any of their points somewhat moot. Despite this, Mina still offers a deal with the council, agreeing to leave the school if they can manage to capture Akira during the course of the afternoon' a bet which sends the whole school into a frenzy trying to find and catch him.
Of course, the first thing I thought of at this moment was "didn't Code Geass do this sort of thing a couple of times?", and sadly Code Geass' takes on this kind of romp around the school were more amusing and downright fun than this rather stale affair which really lacked any kind of excitement. Thankfully there were at least some new plot points to mull over, from the appearance of what seems to be another vampire within the school, some suggestions as to Akira's relationship with Yuki prior to his memory loss, and some wider glimpses of Mina's plans for the vampires moving forward. It's perhaps the last of these points which might well make or break this series - At the moment Dance in the Vampire Bund feels like a bit of a jumbled mess with no coherent structure to hold it together; it's almost crying out for some major plot points to be revealed to glue things together somewhat, and whatever plans the vampires have in store is the obvious candidate for that. I'm still hoping that this kind of shift in focus will turn this series into something special, and right now it really needs it - When an episode of anime leaves you counting the things you've seen done better in other series before, then it clearly needs an injection of something fresh above and beyond SHAFT's animation tricks alone.
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