Dance in the Vampire Bund - early impressions

Lately on Twitter, I've been noticing a good amount of people discussing Dance in the Vampire Bund.  I'm thinking it has something to do with the recent Blu-ray/DVD release.  I also read a handful of reviews in print/on the web for the series.  There were a lot of positive things to say about the series, but everyone also seemed to agree that the show has some 'uncomfortable' moments.  Even with that in mind, I decided to pick up the series and see what it's like.

First thing's first, there are definitely some uncomfortable moments in the show.  We're not talking about the violence kind of uncomfortable.  How this set got away with a TV MA rating is beyond me.  Let's just say that the main character is a vampire that's thousands of years old, but she happens to look like a 12 year old girl.  That's where the uncomfortable comes in.

Let's ignore that aspect of the anime and move onto the meat of the series.  The anime focuses in on the world of vampires, which end up confirming their existence to humans through a TV show.  This is done in order to hunt down a low-level vampire that is causing trouble, and that vampire ends up taking the bait.  While many question why these vampires wanted to confirm their existence here and now just to catch one troublemaker, we start to learn early on that the vampires have had a plan in the works for thousands of years.  Now was that time to kick things into gear.

I'm three episodes into the series, and I can say that it's definitely pretty interesting.  You get to learn more about the motives behind the vampire actions, as well as the different warring factions.  Obviously not all vampires are going to get along, so now that some details are out in the open, certain sects are going to set out to ruin the main bloodline's plans.  Throw in the fact that vampires have 'true forms' that let them shapeshift into creatures (giant lizards, spiders and more), and you lead into some pretty interesting action scenes.

I've heard that those that have read the manga don't really enjoy this anime adaptation.  Apparently it strays far from the manga series.  Since I haven't read the manga, I'm not bothered by this at all.  I'm thinking I would be if it were the other way around.  With that said, I'm going to continue on with the series and see where it takes me.  If it gets truly engaging as I watch on, perhaps I'll have to check out the manga to compare.

I'll have a full series review as soon as I finish up the collection.  That should come later this week.