Vlad Love

Vlad Love is Mamoru Oshii’s indulgent critique of the modern simp. Mitsugu Bamba is a harem protagonist taken straight out of your average 80’s slapstick romcom and unceremoniously inserted into the year of our Lord, 2021, but instead of having the standard selection of waifus to choose from, she only gets one. Fret not, though, because Mitsugu is the ultimate and final simp. Her waifu is an insatiable vampire, but Mitsugu conveniently has a fetish for giving blood, and even goes so far as to systematically cuck herself by creating a Blood Donation Club at her school to orchestrate a bloodletting pyramid scheme amongst the ... club’s members to satisfy the thirst of her new sugar baby, and you, the viewer, likely an otaku defined by your subservient love for Japanese cartoons, are obviously meant to see yourself in her folly. The dynamic between Mitsugu the simp and Mai, her gold-digging waifu, is a clear-cut metaphor for you and whatever product or service you find yourself a slave to in our consumerist society. As much as I hate to use the phraseology of anarkiddies, tankies, & progressives, Mai truly is the vampire of late-stage capitalism, & she will suck your blood dry as you happily expose your veins for her beautiful lips to find, just like the parasocial simps who jump at the opportunity to let the e-girl of their dreams empty their coffers for mere seconds of her superficial attention. Vlad Love is a truly biting piece of social commentary which pokes fun at the sheer shallowness of people like Mitsugu who would be even a tiny bit attracted to such an unpleasant woman with the worst personality in the history of existence just because she’s hot. Waifus are portrayed as intrinsically corrupt beings bankrupt of all virtue who will physically drain the vitality of you and everyone you know.

Oshii wasn't the only member of Vlad Love's creative staff to resurrect themselves from the grave to make this gem and have it animated it with such vibrant characters and such expressive designs, and everyone on board was clearly delighted to craft something so amusingly dated whilst simultaneously commenting on something so sharply modern. Since the project was produced in-house under Production IG, Oshii and director Junji Nishimura were allowed to do whatever the hell they wanted, so if you ever wished to see the shameless lovechild of every storied, if not previously retired veteran of the industry who spent the last decade resting on their laurels earned from proving their unmatched talent in the 90s and early 2000s who came back to the industry for the soul purpose of creating a passion project without the corporate oversight of a production committee telling them what they could and couldn’t do, then Vlad Love will be worth the watch for its artful individualism alone. It’s not a homage, it’s not an inspiration, and it’s not a parody. Vlad Love is good old fashioned, hyper personalized, aesthetically distinct, cleverly directed, strictly hand-drawn animation LOVE! And if obscure Japanese political references, military aircraft references, retro game references, obscure literary references, blatant jabs at Miyazaki, blatant jabs at Japanese society as a whole, 80’s style slapstick comedy, an utter disrespect for the fourth wall, and enough weird Japanese speech patterns to make subtitles fundamentally insufficient tools of translation isn’t enough to prove just how auteur this screenplay truly is, then take it from the staff. In an interview on the Vlad Love YouTube channel, one of the voice actresses said, “We tried understanding what it was all about, we really did...but we couldn't get it, so we just pretended to get it while doing our best.”

Oshii himself, on the other hand, said “It all started with the feeling of ‘Let’s show what would happen if you pissed off an old man’ while also making an anime that can serve as a strong medicine.” Personally, I want to believe Oshii made Mitsugu a girl because he wanted to give her a happy ending even though she still has all the typical flaws of his teenaged characters because he’s less angry with his younger self at this point in his life, and changing the gender of the character he’s projecting those same trappings onto just makes his ability to distinguish himself now from how he was then a little easier, even if said character is still emotionally delusional, selfish, willing to throw everything away for a vague dream just to momentarily escape the monotony of the present, etc. I bring this up because despite Vlad Love being consumable as a slapstick comedy—filled with esoteric references and boomer humor, but a normal comedy nonetheless—the obvious and incessant theming of Oshii works including this one always makes me want to overthink. That said, the dialogue in Vlad Love just flows so naturally and feels so much like improv, it all comes across as conversational and benign in a good way. Even Beautiful Dreamer, a comedy much in the same vein as Vlad Love, and Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai, a downright theatrical farce, beat you over the head with how smartly written and brilliantly directed they are, but Vlad Love doesn’t, at least not for the first half. It really just lets you sit back and appreciate the fact genuinely funny and interesting people don’t typically write anime and imbue it with so much of what they personally love. It’s all so idiosyncratic and innocently fun, with comedy, energy, personality, and style. Vlad Love is definitely one of those anime which will have to work hard to find its tiny audience, should it even exist, but once it does, it’ll have a healthy and well-deserved cult of personality hailing it as a classic for years to come.

Thank you for reading.

*no spoilers ahead*

This will probably call for a slightly different format, as its quite a different show... So here we go.

What IS blood love? ... Comedy mostly, but beyond that, i'd say i have NO clue, which is a problem since there's a LOT there. Now, what's the good? Art quality and animations (minus ep 9 and 10). Music. Overall production quality seems pretty high, surprisingly high even... So then, why the relatively low score? For the first half of the show i'd say i don't know, because this kind of random, stupid, explosive comedy is right up my alley. But the second half makes ... it kind of worse and more clear...

Its somewhat niche, on TOP of this kind of humor not being for everyone. For example, you'll be quite indifferent and uninterested in quite a few sections unless you're a hardcore cinema nut, i for one definitely was, despite somewhat loving cinema and learning in cinema school a few years, still, didn't get quite a lot of the references and the point even include most of them to begin with.

Then there's the 'zetsubou barrier', which is what i call some jokes, references and concepts being completely ungraspable and unexplainable to someone outside Japan and to those that don't write it, speak it, and don't know the local culture, politics, pop culture and recent events, etc. Which is most of the world's audience really. Named obviously after the same anime that's so jam packed of this stuff that some subs have whole screens of text and explanation, which is still not near enough to get a lot of it!

So yeah, there's that. So already you have 2 niches and a Japan residency barrier pretty much whiteout which you're not gonna enjoy like a third of the show. Next is the fact there's next to no story, character development... Which doesn't has to be a bad thing in comedy... If said comedy doesn't take itself seriously and doesn't try tell a story. The problem with Vlad love is that despite not taking itself TOO seriously, it still does a little, and it DOES try to tell a story here and there.

Finally, there's the humor which despite usually being good is a little too rare, it also often doesn't take things FAR ENOUGH, which is the whole point of the random explosive comedy as far as i see it... Some of it is also hit and miss but it usually depends on the episode type which later on start taking a completely different approach each said given episode. Oh and since i'm on that, there's also the individual problem with episode 9 and 10 which are just pretty much two episodes that are mostly made of still pictures, and very few of them as well, trying to tell some crappy little story, which makes it more like a visual novel than an anime really, and rather boring too.

So overall, what's the verdict? I'd say 6.2-6.3/10... And despite that, i DO somewhat recommend it, mostly the first half, ESPECIALLY if you like "random explosive comedy" (as i call it), similar to the likes of paniponi dash, asobi asobase and zetsubou sensei, even more so if you're into cinema and know Japanese.

Hello everyone! And welcome to “Garbage of the Season [1]!” The series where I discuss the current season's trashy pile of unwatchable monstrosities so that mom can’t say I’m doing nothing with my life. But before I start, I’d suggest you smash that helpful button and click on notifications so that you won’t miss out on any of my upcoming reviews. So without further ado, roll the intro…

*Journey - Don’t Stop Believin starts playing*

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*End of intro*

Today’s garbage is the ever popular Vlad Love by the vastly known Mamoru Oshii. Who’s done with making pretentious movies and choses to go back to the old days of ... directing comedy shows. Sadly, the style of comedy in Vlad Love expired during the same era. It’s terribly out of date and even if it was modernized, still lacks a punch because it’s not executed with any finesse. Like haha, they talk about expositional dialogue. That’s breaking the fourth wall, fun! Or haha the doctor calls our protagonist Bamba for Bambam again for the fifth time...*laugh track*.

*Ad time*

This review is sponsored by Fallout 4. Because that is a fun reference. Hope you like reference humour, the show is full of them, and they are outdated just like pretty much anything else. Do you want to know what’s not outdated? The visuals...at times. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re sloppy with very little in between. It’s colorful and has style to it. But much substance to it there’s not. The two OP’s look phenomenal but the actual show pales in comparison visual-wise. Pales like a vampire. References are hilarious.

There aren’t many positives to note. Voice acting is solid, but the characters they’re playing are as rich as blank paper. Walking charactertures most of them, that are as flat as the jokes they deliver.

To summarize, I would describe the show the same way as moldy bread. Not fun to consume anymore. But that’s what I do. I consume trash, and this has been “Garbage of the Season” with me...GotS! Leave your thoughts about Vlad Love in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next review. Roll the outro…

*A video showing John Travolta doing squats starts playing*

The End...