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Summary:
On the live talk show Astraea no Tenbin, the topic of the day is the existence of vampires after a series of attacks that have left distinctive bite marks on the victims. The panel set to discuss the matter includes – among others – a professor, a vampire mangaka, and an actor who plays a vampire, and most of them don’t believe that vampires exist. However, the producers of the show then reveal a report in which they found those supposedly responsible for stopping one of the attacks, and the report shows them meeting the supposed queen of the vampires, Vera. In fact, they’ve even brought her onto the set of the show along with the arm of the vampire whose attack her subordinates stopped. Despite all of this though, the panel still isn’t convinced, particularly not the professor.
It all comes to a head after Vera explains vampire society and badmouths the culprit by suggesting that he’s a lower-class vampire. She singles out the actor on the panel, and as it turns out, that actor is none other than the vampire in question. He quickly takes back his arm, attacks one of the girls on the panel, and then changes into his true form. After failing in his attack against Vera, he escapes to the rooftop, and the TV cameras follow. A young blonde girl who had been in the audience goes as well, and the other vampires refer to her as the princess. She personally faces the rogue vampire, and his ugly appearance causes her to comment on how a vampire’s true form reflects his heart. When he tries to strike at her, he’s stopped in his tracks, and the girl reveals that she’s Mina Tepes, the true ruler of all vampires. She’s able to order him to die, and he stabs himself and falls to his death. In the aftermath, Mina addresses the camera directly and points to a piece of land in the distance where she’s establishing the Vampire Bund.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「爪痕」 (Tsumeato) by hibiku
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼
There was no OP for this first episode, only an ED. It’s not a bad song, but it didn’t really stand out either, and it didn’t help that there wasn’t anything other than Mina in lingerie in the background.
Well this was definitely not what I was expecting in terms of a first episode – I even thought I was watching the wrong show for a moment in the beginning. But somehow I’m not too surprised since it’s SHAFT, and they’re not a studio that always does things by the book. In any case, I had both a positive and negative reaction to this. On one hand, this was set up like a little mystery episode, and it was a decently entertaining watch with fairly good production value (though it doesn’t really show until late in the episode). More importantly, it introduced the ideas of vampires and their society nicely, and we got to see Mina in action as well as several other familiar characters from the manga, some of whom I’m eager to hear more from because I like their voice actors. It’s also worth noting that Tamaki Nozomu, the original mangaka, appears as himself in this episode.
On the other hand, both the official website and DVD solicitations indicate that the series will be 12 episodes, and spending one of them on this stuff might not have been the best use of time. Some parts in the first half of the episode were a bit slow, and all the truly important tidbits to be gleaned here could have probably been distilled into a much shorter segment. Of course, it’s impossible to say right now what direction they’re taking the series and how close they’re going to be following the manga, so this all might be a moot point. I know I’m definitely going to keep watching for at least a few more episodes to see how the SHAFT team moves forward with this adaptation.
The characters and plot look pretty good. But for some reason I have a feeling that this show is gonna be somewhat confusing later on.
Ah, well, it’s fairly good. Let’s hope it gets better.
Now this one’s better…
Better than LvsB and C-B… ^^
Ive high expectations 4 this anime…hope it wont fail me like what Basquash did
@Click: Every serie whether it be anime, manga or a tv serie like the mentalist (more examples are possible but that is the first one to come to mind) will be confusing when you don’t pay attention since you either missed something or are thinking too much into things.
Yay!! First episode filler!! Let the wangst commence, as lolicon vampire fetishists far and wide bitch and moan about being forced to watch something fo free that doesn’t fit their every whim…
Seriously though, pretty dumb of Shaft. The original had a pretty good intro that covers a lot of what was accomplished here, that we’re still going to have to see most of if they hope to keep any semblance of the same plot…
*grabs some popcorn*
i wonder why Akira said that he think the existence of vampires not real
I think this is only introduction episode so i hope the real story starts in the next episode.
The trailer contain parts only the manga so i hope in the next episode the anime followed the manga.
real how will start next week 😉
Just read the summary, became intrigued… and confused
I SEE HELLSING VIBES IN THIS SHOW WHICH IS A GOOD START…DARK,GORY AND BLOODY NOT LIKE THE PREVIOUS VAMPIRE KNIGHT FAG…
This sure looks different than the manga’s itself which i own.
…Going to read the manga sometime soon. :Y
Another eternal loli like Eva-chan(Negima)?
ughh… the ED is so unimaginative.. well OK at least the show will not disappoint in the animation overall. stil….
bakabakashi – Vampire Knight is shoujo. What did you expect? For something that’s shoujo it’s got it’s fair share of blood and action. Perhaps that’s why it’s not a cup of tea and calling it a bundle of sticks is ridiculous. :O
*not your cup of tea
The less manga content here – the better.
Well this would be exelent if not lolicon
Who knew Wolfgang was an asian guy. I didn’t see that coming at all.
@hhh not because it contains loli it means an anime is considered as loli anime…
The manga is quite good and I was really looking forward to this series. Looks like they making a mess of this series right out of the starting gate. ** sigh **
must say the character designs arent my thing, but that just take getting use to…. looks like i will like this series, i dunno 🙂 am watching this tho 😀
i haven’t watched it yet but by the way this was narrated, this is quite different with the manga. i don’t think this filler would do the original good since mina isn’t usually fond of theatrics. she doesn’t appear on TV unless it’s some big event. i just hope that this is just an unnecessary intro filler with no relation with the succeeding episodes. damn what a letdown 🙁
This piece of shit sucks.
This blog is for faggots and underaged b&
Im dissapointed that Vera is a blonde, i want pink hair T.T
anyone know which group is subbing this show?
or does anyone have that link to the list of all the shows being subbed this season…
I felt like this was a waste of an episode, and my time, considering there are only 12 episodes for the whole series. SHAFT could have covered all of this in about 3-5 minutes of exposition, maybe less, and just gotten on with the story. (Memo to SHAFT: stop letting your “creativity” get in the way of telling a good story. It’s really annoying.)
If this were a preview episode, then I could see this possibly working… but it’s not. Ugh. -200 points.
So far, I’m just glad that a few series from the Fall are still going strong.
meh… I preferred the manga’s introduction much better
I still have high hopes though, since I love both the manga and Shaft.
Eh. I really thought I was watching the wrong show at first. The subs came out surprisingly fast and maybe by some chance I was being rickrolled or something. To be honest, I skipped parts of the beginning. Pretty boring.
@Prooof,
SFW subs. Im not sure if GG is still doing it.
Unusual first episode. I’ll wait till the real story starts to judge this by its cover, tho I like the loli. BTW, does anyone know what a “Bund” is? It sounds like a town or city-state from the context that Mina uses it in.
Lol that fake queens name is Bella Tooth? Might as well name that bishounen actor Edward lol! He should say that vampires sparkle under the sun as well.
12 epis and one is wasted on this? I demand a second season >D
the manga is too amazing, this ep is kind of slow in compare to the manga
I don’t know who at Shaft thought the way to start this anime that they ended up using was better then the manga? The person that made that decision should be taken out and shot. Either that or share whatever they were smoking with the rest of us that they thought it would be a better 1st episode then the manga. I thought the opening with Akira and Yuki was an excellent way to open the series.
Well I can always hope that future episodes will be better…
I was looking forward to Dance in the Vampire Bund the most this season.
But now I’m extremely dissappointed. They replaced the kick ass manga intro for this? SHAFT had better do something mindblowing quickly.
Dang it! Only 12 eps… I am sad because the manga is soo amazing and we are only getting 12 eps but it is understandable considering they have not made it far in the manga in the states but it is so amazing!
hahaha Mina used geass!!
Not bad, but not too interesting for me either. So far my opinions are neutral, since the first episode didn’t quite strike me. Honestly, I never liked vampires (yes that includes vampire knight and even the beloved Hellsing. *Don’t kill me*) I cannot say that those two anime were bad, I know they were epic, but I just don’t like vampires. So far, I have yet to find an interesting one. In the review, I heard that this one is similar to Sanzenin Nagi, which means I am looking forward to see what the next ep will be…
Um yeah I hope it gets more dark and serious.
The illustrations in the ED just scream SEKKAAAAIIIII DE ichiban no HIME SAMA!!
Didn’t really like SHAFT’s way of doing this first episode, the only think i liked was the last few minutes of this episode. I also noticed they’re doing the ending animation (if u could call it that) similarly to Bakemono, maybe they’ll have and animated potion later on ehh.
This was an unusual first episode to say the least. When I first saw it, I was wondering if I was watching the right show and what was actually going on because this is strange even for the vampire shows that I’ve seen. But I did like the end part and it was an okay episode. I’m gonna watch the next couple of episodes before I make any clear judgment about whether or not its good and whether I’ll watch the rest of the series.
I DONT WANNA READ THE MANGA. i THOUGHT THIS WAS AWESOME.
Well at least i wasn’t the only one who thought they were watching that wrong show.
Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see where this goes and how close it stays to the manga.
theburntshadow: I read the manga, and as far as I’m concerned the vampires are good for politics and perverted images, but the werewolves are the way to go for the asskicking. Got to admire miss Tepes for having over three thousand Werewolf Soldiers under her command. So that’s a big difference there already.
(There’s this one scene where mister bodyguard, the one who denied Vampires exist here, asks for clothes while trying to cover himself with his hands. It was completely adorable.)
Wtf was that….thought i was watching the wrong show for a while….
Another 12+ series huh? This is getting irritating, there are too many decent series getting condensed like this. As for the show in a show idea, can’t I like it too much. I nearly stopped watching Haruhi before I even started because the first ep was like that. To sum up, first ep wasn’t impressive but the characters and theme look good enough to have higher hopes for the second.
12 episodes would make really a poor adaption…guess it’s an half splitted show
I’m pretty sure that its just an introduction for the anime
it will be following the manga later *just like their pvs =.=;;
Well, look on the bright side: SHAFT just finished doing a two-season series with 12 episodes in each season. Maybe they’ll do the same here.
I thought it was a good episode. It managed to draw some suspense and anxiety considering it was a fake-out opening that we already knew of from the promotional material.
While the production quality was fine, I felt the directing was a bit off during the action towards the end of the episode. It didn’t really feel as fast or exciting as it should have been. SHAFT’s usual quick cuts and angle shifts would have been more appropriate here than they are in a lot of other places. I wonder why they didn’t put them in.
did anyone else laugh when the one vampire with the huge tits stand up and her tits started fucking bouncing all over the place? seriously, that was ridiculous.
I’m still intrigued as to where the show will go though.
this was good and bad at the same time, reason being it didn’t feel like an opening episode, it felt like a episode that happens at least 3-5 episodes into the story. good it was interesting in its own way. Bad? I was board for the 1st half of the show and actually paused it to check out Baka To Test Shoukanjuu, then paused it again later to watch old episodes of naruto, which i don’t do unless there is nothing better to do. As a Final i just hope that the show doesn’t consist of only episodes like this, or it will be one of the few that i have ever dropped before the end.
Just checked the trailer (had to search for it at YT, the original video got blocked by the owners, yes, the one their website links to…) and it had scenes of the church part and the doppelganger, so it looks like quite a bit will be in there.
Meh, I don’t understand why they couldn’t have just stuck to the manga source material for the opening episode. It would have been less confusing and boring, and allowed the viewers to jump right into the politics of the vampire world without resorting to this cheap Interview With The Vampire shtick. I’m not too optimistic about the whole weird direction this series is taking, and the music was just blah and uninspiring. I mean, generic J-pop in a dark blood and gore series? At least throw in some gothic music, y’know.
After watching this a second time, its kinda funny how similar it is to the first episode of Bakemonogatari. It has no OP, has a misleading intro for the series, and the ED shows the main female character in a sexual pose.