Thursday 11 February 2010

Dance in the Vampire Bund - Episode 6

After finding himself and Yuki attacked by vampires last episode, it seems a little like Akira is perhaps losing patience a little with the vampire race as a whole - A train of thought exacerbated by the appearance of Meiren as this instalment begins.

Meiren's revelation that Mina Tepes' first meeting with Akira which reunited them and everything that transpired afterwards was carefully stage managed unsurprisingly shakes up our male protagonist somewhat, and things only get worse when he not only finds himself barred from seeing Mina to question her motives for himself, but also finds out about her plot regarding the kidnapping of the Prime Minister's grandson. Combine all of these points and it's safe to say that Akira's trust in his "princess" is beyond dented.


When he finds that there are still yet more vampires prowling the school, Akira finally gets to confront Mina, who hardly does a good job at assuaging Akira's concerns - A situation which sees Akira turning to an unlikely new ally in the school's student council, as he vows to help them rid the school of vampires. If this really even possible? Between Akira and the council members a plot is formed, but as you might expect things aren't quite as simple in reality as they are in the heads of a few bright high school students.

If I had to find one word to describe this sixth episode of Dance in the Vampire Bund, then the word would be "disjointed". While previous episodes have suffered a little from not moving things forward enough, this instalment seemed determined to pack so much in that it jumped all over the place without giving either the viewer or the story time to settle and establish itself properly. The whole thing felt almost like a Toyota with a brake failure, careering along with no opportunity for consideration - A real shame when you consider how much was revealed over the course of the episode.

Maybe it's just my attitude towards this series reflecting back upon me, but I can't help but think that the whole of this series thus far feels a little half-hearted - There's no real life or verve to it, leaving it depicting "a bunch of stuff that happens" rather than a story in the truest sense of the word. Even the depths and conflicts within Mina's character are getting rather short shrift when they should make for a rich vein of material, to the point where I'm struggling to find anything positive to say about Dance in the Vampire Bund at all. Am I just missing something?

6 comments:

Topspin said...

Hey, thanks for summarizing my thoughts about this series so succinctly. Now I don't have to think I'm the only one that thinks it's half-hearted, disjointed, etc. :)

I was pretty disappointed that they didn't at least try to make the students clever near the end. Talk about having no grasp of basic horror themes. I've seen Friday the 13th students that were more genre-savvy.

Anonymous said...

but i am enjoying so much vampire bund , speking honestly this season i am watching 7 new shows but of the 7 animes , the most intereting are durarara and vampire bund , they are the animes who i am enjoying more of this season and maybe i like the anime because since i read the manga of vampire bund before the anime i haved a soft spot for the history and the characters of vampire bund i like them , the only problem with the anime is one thing , the animation , but i understand we are in economic crisis and even anime compànies have problems with money , in special an studio like shaft who isn't very big , yes in this episode the characters only talking without movement , this was like a cd drama , but at least i enjoying the contenid and charaters if this anime

Hanners said...

Topspin, I laughed out loud at the ending to the episode you mentioned... Just how dumb could they be?!

Son Gohan said...

I didn't find this episode so packed full of content as you think. Basically only two things of note happened:
1. Akira learns of the Prime Minister's grandson's kidnapping and starts to distrust Mina.
2. The student council tries to rid the school of the vampires but they are ambushed.

This show is not the best of the bunch but it's still enjoyable (I speak as a non-manga reader). I like the fact that Mina is willing to dirty her hands for the good of the vampire race.

Anonymous said...

Well, I was watching this because it was so bad it was amusing at first. In the previous two episodes, it's improved from being amusingly bad to nothing special. I'll keep watching to see how the story plays out--and the occasional so bad it's amusing moment.

Xxccben said...

Maybe I was spoiled by being a fan of the Manga first, but I'd like to know what Shaft was smoking at this point. Apparently the author of the manga worked with Shaft to write the anime version of it, but it's not what it should be, at all. I'm not saying that it always has to follow the manga storyline, but come on - lets be honest. The animation is pretty, but the handling of the story and characters is pretty craptastic here. Pisses me off, hell rehashing the original story straight all the way through would have been better than this, even if some older fans would have found it boring.