Summary:
A young girl is sucking the blood out of a boy, and she ends up covered in blood. But then this girl wakes up from the dream and gets ready for school. Her name is Maaka Karin, a high school student, and she tells us that she’s always alone in the mornings despite being in a family of five. At school, she’s not feeling well so she sits out from gym class. During this time, a new transfer student, Usui Kenta, is introduced to the class. Karin’s heart starts beating heavily at the sight of him, and she faints. In the nurse’s office, she has to restrain herself from sucking on her friend Maki’s neck. She returns to class, only to see Kenta again, which causes another reaction in her. She runs out of class and spends the rest of the day outside. By evening, she’s at her limit and needs to suck on someone’s blood, and her prey ends up being a man in park. Kenta happens to be taking a shortcut home through the same park and sees her in that position, looking like she’s kissing him. Karin’s little sister Anju arrives to make her target forget what happened, and the two go home. Kenta sees the man Karin was up against get up and run off, oddly energetic. At home, we get introduced to Henry and Karera Marker, Karin’s parents, and we learn that Karin is in a vampire family living in Japan. In bed, Karin can’t to figure out why her body has such a reaction to Kenta. She sets off for school the next day and crashes right into him, knocking herself over and giving him a view of her pantsu. She runs off embarrassed and decides to try to avoid the transfer student. But it seems that at every turn she sees him and has to run away. He finally chases her after class to figure out what’s going on and ends up catching her on the stairwell. He tells her that he saw her that time in the park, and Karin’s chest starts thumping heavily again. Unable to contain it, she spurts blood everywhere. Karin then reveals her secret: she’s not a normal blood sucking vampire – instead, she produces blood. Kenta is shocked by the extent of her nosebleed.

ED Sequence

ED: 「もうひとつのバースディ」 by Fm.θ
No OP this episode, though you hear hints of it in the sponsors screens. I like the way the ED sounds, but it’s not really anything to call home about. The sequence shows static shots of Karin making a cake for Kenta.
I am very impressed by the production quality that JC Staff put into this show. When I originally saw the character designs and then the commercials, I had quite a few reservations about this show. The good news is that those worries were completely unnecessary. The episode begins in a very bright setting that suddenly turns blood red as Karin starts to bite the boy’s neck. It’s a very creepy atmosphere, especially since you see the trail of blood on her clothes afterwards. But then she wakes up and the entire mood changes as we’re introduced to Karin. Very very well done. And Yahagi Sayuri does a good job of bringing Karin to life.
There are a lot of differences from the manga: the episode technically covers three total chapters, but it only does the first chapter fully. For the second and third chapters, they pick out and show the various encounters Karin has with Kenta, but pretty much nothing else – meaning nothing about Karin’s job or her brother. They also added in the opening scene. As for actual changes, they slightly downplay the enjo kousai part of Kenta seeing Karin. It also feels like they made Kenta’s character less of the tough type, and more just like he doesn’t know what the heck is going on (but that’s only because Karin keeps running away from him). So I’m not entirely sure I like this type of Kenta.

And so now for the good news and the bad news. The bad news: there’s no way I can sustainably cover four series on Thursday, and Karin is unfortunately behind SHUFFLE! and Mai-Otome in importance. The good news: I’m split between doing this series and Paradise Kiss. The solution that makes everyone happy is to do both…but one of those will be moved to Friday or later, however the schedule ends up working out. It all depends on how much I like next week’s Karin vs. how much I like this/next week’s ParaKiss.

Closing Thought: I laughed when I saw that the preview didn’t actually show any scenes from next episode, instead only displaying two fanservicey shots of Karin.

19 Comments

  1. I heard a lil about the series and it sounds like a cute romance comedy with a twist to the concept of vampires. I can foresee a lot of ‘blood’ in the upcoming episodes but it should be really amusing.

    Rin
  2. cyw1988, its not a childhood promise story. The guy Karin’s biting in the first few caps is just some random person. However, this is a romantic comedy.

    Anyway, I’m really excited for this! I’ve been waiting soooooo long! YAY! can’t wait for the subs to come out!

    flou
  3. Very true, Karin injects blood instead of sucking it and the benefit is that it empowers the person to change in one form or another, in the case shown above it makes the man super energetic. This is of course temporary until the effects of Karins blood wares off. In the manga the effects are diferent depending on the person, the hint given is it makes the person what they want to be.

    I’m sure you’ll all get a kick out of the vampire twist they will through out later but I don’t want to give it away at this early stage.

    I really hope they stick close to the manga as posible, I would hate for this searies to turn out like another Mahou Sensei Negima adaptation… I really was overjoyed when I heard Karin was being done as an anime… I have high hopes for it.

    Neko
  4. Lol Omni, yeah, i understand how much shows that this day has :P. I already have Otome, Rozen, Shuffle and now adding in Karin to my Friday schedule.

    In anyways, take it easy, don’t burn yourself out :).

    Ok, overall, Karin’s first episode is OK to me. I would’ve liked it if they kept the enjoukousai stuff in, but I guess they’re targeting the younger audience as well and they don’t want them to be influenced I guess ^_^;;.

  5. Starts well. I think there’s still time for Kenta to talk about enjou kousai. Love Karin’s debuting seiyuu Yahagi Sayuri: a new star in the making? For me, the idea of dropping either this or ParaKiss in favor of Mai Otome or Shuffle is a complete travesty. Those are both Saturday-morning-cartoon junk, by comparison. But I do understand that they are, for whatever reason, more popular. Moving one of the two better series to Friday is a solution to thank you for.

    hashihime
  6. i dun think he is random… i think karin’s sis said something abt her sis being slow and all… hmm and there was talk in the manga abt the blood of the one you love taste the best or something like that??? hmmm… dunno abt that… hope i am not spoiling anything… oh well so far so good…

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