Vampire in the Garden

During a winter long ago, near-immortal vampires began plaguing the world. As their population grew at an astounding rate, they promptly threw humanity off its place at the top of the food chain. Desperate to avoid extinction, the surviving humans concentrated in their last safe haven—a small city surrounded by an enormous wall. There, they have waged war against the vampires for many years.

In the midst of a particularly brutal attack by the vampires, a human soldier named Momo encounters Fiine, the queen of their enemies. After seeing her try to save Momo's best friend from a rampaging vampire, Momo follows Fiine back to her house. It is there Momo connects with Fiine over their love for music and desire to escape the fighting.

Pursuing that goal of escape, the two decide to journey toward a supposed paradise where humans and vampires coexist—despite being uncertain of its existence. However, Momo and Fiine are being targeted by both races, who they must first evade if they hope to reach their destination in one piece.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Fine Main

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Momo Main

Han, Megumi Japanese

Allegro Supporting

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Elisha Supporting

Ozawa, Ari Japanese

Arya Supporting

Nobara Supporting

Fukami, Rica Japanese

Kaede Supporting

Shouji, Umeka Japanese

Pamela Supporting

Tomioka, Misako Japanese

Kubo Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki Japanese

Mirena Supporting

Kakuma, Ai Japanese

Itou, Hitoshi Producer

Makihara, Ryoutarou Director, Script, Storyboard, Series Composition

Hata, Shouji Sound Director

Wakano, Tetsuya Episode Director

Reviews

May 16, 2022

KANLen09

Recommended

Humans and vampires, stories of folklores that bend and twist the mind in an never-ending sea of timeless fictional pieces of war. And Wit Studio's next venture into the Netflix anime catalogue with Vampire in the Garden, much to say that it was less hyped than the "Bubble" movie that came out last month (which honestly was very mid), I have to say that I felt awfully cathartic and incapacitated with feelings and emotions that are truly deserving of the NC16 rating that this has. And as much as the whole series felt depressing, it was very depressingly good to say the least.

Vampire in the ... Garden tells the story of 2 girls: the regular Momo Warm working in an industrial military city whose passion riles up from saving a young vampire whom has a music box of a tune that sounds its resonance, and that young vampire Fine whom other than being the queen of the vampires, desires a life led with humans to be loved, one that's once relived from her past memories, only to see it birth a war between mankind and vampires to the stage it was today. Both girls want out of their oppressive lifestyle and desire to find a paradise of their own where human and vampire can peacefully coexist, otherwise seen as betrayers of their own kind to find an "Eden" that doesn't exist. It's of no surprise to cast Megumi Han and Yuu Kobayashi as both Momo and Fine as the centerpiece of this series, and for all intensive purposes, their performances lend great aid to reflecting the series as a whole: the two outliers whom just want peace out of seclusion, fighting through every situation and not giving up on each other when the going gets tough, even at death's row.

Unsurprisingly, this is what I would expect of Wit Studio's production, this being produced by Wit Studio and Production I.G. co-founder-cum-producer Tetsuya Nakatake, director Ryoutarou Makihara (whom hasn't directed anything since Shisha no Teikoku, a movie released in 2015) with assistant Hiroyuki Tanaka (who used to help direct Attack on Titan when it was produced at Wit Studio), music director Yoshihiro Ike (of Takt Op. Destiny and Dororo fame) and Tetsuya Nishio in both character design and being the chief animation director. Speaking of the character design, there is one person whom looks almost like Jiraiya from Naruto, and that's because Tetsuya Nishio is the original character designer of the TV series, so you know that this man is a god amongst men. This series being mostly centered in around arctic and industrial areas, gives me a mix of Attack on Titan and Vinland Saga vibes, to which if you've ever watched those series, you'll know what I mean.

It's genuine that I say that after the somewhat failure of the movie Bubble, Vampire in the Garden is what I truly hope that ONA stories like this capped within 2 hours plus can become: an engaging story that does not feel too short nor too long, characters that we can be engaged with to tell their stories of circumstances and the much-needed resolution, a nice production and some good music. Everything must be balanced together, and this is what I got to truly experience a well-rounded original story that leaves me wanting for more.

This is some impressive stuff.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 25, 2022

MakkusuUnfilwin

Mixed Feelings

I’m an absolute sucker for vampire stories. Always have been, always will be. Shows like Vampire Knight and Hellsing were some of the earliest anime I can remember watching. There’s something just so captivating about a pasty, white, basement-dwelling, nocturnal, blood-sucker with good looks and even sharper teeth. Even when Tom Cruise starts walking the night, it still looks and sounds pretty cool. So, to me, it doesn’t matter if your vampire plot is tropey, boring or juvenile, I’ll still enjoy it if the main character has some aversion to garlic, crosses, sunlight, or some unholy combination of the three. Hell, I even started reading ... Call of the Night, which sucks, but satiates my desire for coffin-sleeping, bat-morphing, reflection-precluding, immortal, skinny white chicks. But what does any of that have to do with Vampire in the Garden? Well, there’s a garden, but there are vampires in it, so it already ticks the biggest vampire show check box without me even having to watch it.

In all honesty, I completely forgot this show was coming out. I remember when it got announced, but in about 3 minutes, it had left my memory entirely for the foreseeable forever. Maybe Mal’s bell notifications actually do come in handy sometimes because, as you probably can guess, that’s what reminded me of its existence. Anyways, I was pretty excited for this show based on the involvement of one man—and if you’ve read the redundant parts of the previous review, you’ll know where this is going—that man being the centrepiece of the three gods: Mr Tetsuya Nishio. A man whose expert designs have—if you’re not some Boruto sycophant—recently re-invigorated themselves in the public conscience with Kamiyama’s Visions vignette and, if you were REALLY paying attention, Oshii’s Vlad Love. As you can probably tell by the way I’ve somehow segued into just praising Nishio without actually discussing the topic of this review, the man’s work means a lot to me, so his involvement with this project instantly piqued my interest. After all, character designers are inherently the most important part of an anime’s production, right? I mean, have you seen anything with Range Murata or Yoshitoshi Abe’s names slapped on the staff list? It might be presumptuous for me to say this, but aren’t the character designs the mode by which the script writer’s ideas are given life? Are the character designs not a visual representation of the lines upon lines of dialogue that allow the audience to graphically distinguish and connect with the cast, as superficial as that connection may be? The aesthetics and ‘look’ of a character is what immediately gives the audience an impression of what a show could be about. You can infer a lot from a good character design, and in my humble, humble opinion, Tetsuya Nishio is in the business of good character designs. For fucks sake, he took Kishimoto’s already brilliant design for Naruto and translated it into being one of the most instantly recognisable designs in animation history.

Well, ok, Vampire in the Garden time now. At the very least, I can tell you that, just like Tom Cruise, it looks and sounds pretty cool. WIT did a fantastic job on this thing. Masakazu Miyake brought all the thunder (that's probably not the right word to describe background art) back from Mushoku Tensei, applying that same level of quality to an otherwise vastly different, and certainly more specific, setting. There’s a bunch of different ways to say something looks great, but I’m gonna settle for the one: it looks great. What more is there to say? However, from whatever score I've given this, you can probably tell I've got some itsy bitsy complaints here and there, like, for instance, why does the CG animate so bad? How do people sit through something like, I don’t know, The Sky Crawlers, for ease of comparison, and claim that CG ruined the film? Compared to TSC, this has gotta be some kind of joke. It looks like there was zero thought of realism or physics put into the way the CG vehicles move. Like, it’s forgivable, but it certainly takes me out of the action. It just seems so silly, especially because the texturing otherwise looks really cool.

Plot-wise, it’s your standard vampire affair, nothing vastly out of the ordinary. Though, maybe something out of the ordinary would have helped it, because the plot was by far the weakest aspect of the film. I just found myself struggling to care about anything—all the emotion felt like it was carried on the back of Megumi Han’s brilliant performance as Momo, and if you've seen Momo's back, you'd know it's pretty small. The plot progression was just so filmic and predictable. It wasn’t till that handsome stud Kubo got some well-needed development that I found myself actively engaged, but by then, it was far too late, and the film had basically entered its final few scenes. Overall, Vampire in the Garden feels, looks and sounds like something I would have loved if I was eight or so years younger, with all its graphic violence, easy to follow story and frantic katana x vampire sakuga fights. My qualms pertaining to this film feel like a repeat of the last Netflix anime I watched: Orbital Children, and you can bet the cause is almost identical. For some fucking reason, Netflix chops its films up into stupid episodes instead of leaving them as a bigger, stupid movie, which is how it should be: stupid. Look, I’m just going to pretend it was Netflix’s fault because I wanted to like this movie a hell of a lot more than I did, but I just don’t have it in me to lie to you people ;) Similarly to how I bemoaned in my Orbital Children review, this really should have been an 11-13 episode series. It would have given suitable breathing room for the cast to develop relationships and flesh out motivations at a well-reasoned pace. Seeing that same potential squandered, in the same way, is just disheartening.

Well, is that it? I think that’s all I wanted to say. To summarise, Vampire in the Garden was blessed with some of the best production values and talents of the 2020s but failed to keep the ball rolling after tripping and falling into the same direction-inhibiting pit-falls that its predecessors have yet to climb out of. I hesitate to say I’m disappointed since Orbital Children garnered the same sorta-middling response from me, so at some level, I was expecting something almost good but not quite engaging enough to deserve that accolade.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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May 16, 2022

BilboSwaginz

Not Recommended

Overall it was a pretty bland watch with good art and music and at times good animation but the story and characters were terrible. The only halfway decent character was the uncle and he didn't get any development until the end. They studio tried to put too many slow moving scenes along with too much material which ends up with a lot of stuff being crammed into a short runtime. The characters become unrelatable from this pacing as you don't really understand their actions. To put it in perspective it makes no sense that Momo the main character would leave with Fine and in no ... time at all have an us versus the world mentality when vampires had been her enemy her entire life. Granted she does not view them with hatred but she does have a bias against them as seen in her first interaction with Fine.

I had some hopes for this anime at the start but even though it was only 5 episodes (and I always finish short anime since it's not that big a waste of my time) I was seriously about to drop it, but alas I stuck with it cause why not just finish it. You also get some strong yuri vibes if your into that, personally I don't care for it but if the story is good I'll watch it. So take it as you may and watch it if you want but it doesn't get my stamp of approval.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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'Vampire in the Garden' Reveals Additional Cast, First Promo, May 16 Premiere

The Netflix presentation at AnimeJapan 2022 revealed on Sunday three additional cast, first key visual (pictured), and first promotional video for the Vampire in the...read more

Mar 26, 2022 7:45 PM by DatRandomDude | Discuss (13 comments)

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The Netflix Festival Japan 2021 event unveiled the lead cast, additional staff, and a teaser visual (pictured above) for Wit Studio's Vampire in the Garden ori...read more

Nov 8, 2021 7:20 PM by Vindstot | Discuss (24 comments)

	Poll: Vampire in the Garden Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 ) KANLen09 - May 16, 2022	81 replies	by Niveen_Sleem »» Oct 31, 2024 3:22 PM
	Poll: Vampire in the Garden Episode 1 Discussion KANLen09 - May 16, 2022	38 replies	by Niveen_Sleem »» Oct 31, 2024 1:46 PM
	Did it live up to our expectations? SofiaBulga - Jul 7, 2022	18 replies	by bubba460z »» Mar 2, 2024 10:35 PM
	Poll: Vampire in the Garden Episode 4 Discussion KANLen09 - May 16, 2022	24 replies	by Pitchagon »» May 2, 2023 5:49 AM
	Poll: Vampire in the Garden Episode 2 Discussion KANLen09 - May 16, 2022	18 replies	by Ker0w0 »» Apr 30, 2023 5:19 PM