Übel Blatt – 01

I now know why Übel Blatt is getting an anime six years after it ended, anyway. And it’s the most obvious reason, a sequel manga. Not that the first one wasn’t pretty popular – it was. And it ran for 15 years. But normally one might assume the ship had sailed on an anime, perhaps because some of the content depicted in the manga is extremely edgy. With a sequel to its name there’s something for this adaptation to promote, so its existence makes a lot more sense.

As to the content, well – I guess we’ll see but you have to think that’s going to be seriously toned down. Übel Blatt has been called a poor man’s Berserk but from what I can tell, it’s just as violent but a lot more depraved. The focus of the story is a kind named Köinzell (my umlaut shortcut has never gotten such a workout), with big ears and a love for the moon. He seems to be some sort of elf-wolf hybrid, and he’s a handful and a half in a fight. Which comes in handy when the corrupt warrior monks who run the city he’s trying to sneak out of attack him and a young girl Köinzell names Peepi (much to her annoyance).

There’s also a warrior named Wied who helps (with a bribe) the kids escape when they’re about to be executed and an underground tavern owner named Elsaria who acts tough but falls to pieces under duress. And, like seemingly every adult woman in this series, finds Köinzell sexually irresistible. This all plays out against a backdrop of a long-standing feud between seven “heroes” and four “traitors”, in which Köinzell seems to have some sort of personal interest.

Frankly this premiere plays as pretty standard seinen blood-and-boobs fantasy, and the production values (it’s a co-production between Satelight and something called Staple) are pretty minimal. But by reputation the manga does have a pretty good story, so I’ll probably give Übel Blatt a a couple of episodes to make its case.

Babanbabanban Vampire – 01

Babanbabanban Vampire is edgy in a very different way than Übel Blatt. As a show from Gaina, the zombie studio that shuffled on after the ugly demise of Gainax, you’d expect pretty crap production values – but while certainly nothing special, they’re actually not terrible. Content-wise it’s pretty out there though – a vampire desperate to preserve the virginity of a 15 year-old he lives with so he can feast on his pure blood when the boy turns 18.

I sort of had a vibe this one might be better than it sounds, and I think it’s fair to say it is. A lot of this premiere was pretty amusing actually, and Namikawa Daisuke is having a lot of fun with the titular vampire (Ranmaru). He works at a bathhouse, where the boy in question, Rihito (Kobayashi Yuusuke is quite good here as well) is the 4th-generation owner-san and about to enter high school. He took pity on Ran-chan when he showed up sunstroked and dying ten years earlier, and the vamp has had his sights set on that pure blood ever since. But only when it’s ripe (Namikawa characters do love to use that word about boys in creepy contexts).

The problem comes when Rihito falls in love with a girl he literally runs into (doing the toast trope at the time) on the way to school. He goes to Ranmaru for advice, and a lot of the humor here is mined from Ran-chan’s efforts to nip the budding romance in the bud. This premiere satirizes tropes quite a bit, and as it’s BL there are no shortage of them. But it doesn’t restrict itself to BL tropes either seriously or satirically – it’s generally all-around cheeky and kind of clever. I liked all the characters (including the dad and grandpa) and the vibe is that the girl (Aoi) may have more to her than meets the eye. On the whole it’s a fun and silly show with an edgy premise, and that can certainly work.