Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu

On November 23, 1957, the whole world witnessed the Federal Republic of Zirnitra's monumental achievement of sending the first live animal—a dog—to outer space. Since then, the space race between the confederacy and its competitor, the United Kingdom of Arnack, has intensified; the two countries hope to one day send humans to the cosmos above.

As a dog's biology is inherently different from a human's anatomy, there is no way to perfectly identify the risks involving space travel and its effects on an individual's body without actually sending someone for observation. However, Zirnitra's government has a potential solution: to experiment on vampires, whose biological similarity to humans is too significant to ignore.

Despite being forcibly taken from her home in the mountains, vampire Irina Luminesk shows no resistance and is even willing to train as a test subject. Lev Leps, a former top candidate to become the first human cosmonaut, is designated to accompany Irina and act as her guide. Through their time together, Irina and Lev begin to develop a mutual love for outer space, bringing them closer together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Luminesk, Irina Main

Hayashibara, Megumi Japanese

Leps, Lev Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Simonyan, Anya Supporting

Kino, Hina Japanese

Harlova, Ludmila Supporting

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Natalia Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Plevitskaya, Rosa Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Korovin, Slava Supporting

Hashi, Takaya Japanese

Gergiev, Fyodor Supporting

Ogata, Kenichi Japanese

Rimsky, Zhores Supporting

Natsume, Kyouhei Japanese

Fellmann, Franz Supporting

Yamaya, Yoshitaka Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Maruyama, Hajime Producer

Kondou, Shuuhou Producer

Itou, Naoko Producer

Reviews

Apr 21, 2022

lamaraptor

Recommended

When I read the description of "vampires in space" I knew I had to watch this one. Something so wonderfully stupid just had to be entertaining. On some levels it was, but it really dropped the ball in the second half.

Let's look at our main characters first. Protagonist-kun wants to go to space, and that's where his character development begins and ends. But, and here's the twist, the vampire girl also wants to go to space. Stunning and brave. I really thought they'd be able to come up with more for these characters to do or some more personality traits beyond the bog standard rom-com ... couple is forced to spend time together doing something they both enjoy and we're somehow supposed to be surprised they fall in love. These cheesy setups are fine in isolation, I just would have liked too see something a little better suited to the ludicrous tone of space vampires. It's played so straight for something that should be so silly.

The ending is where it really lost me. They played up that blonde lady as being some sort of big bad the whole season and the old communist leader guy as being a communist, so you know... evil. When they have a sudden change of heart at the end about vampires and humans living together it seemed too jarring. These guys are clearly evil so what's their angle? Why would an evil communist regime suddenly be preaching open borders for vampire immigrants and racial equality for our new bloodsucking allies? Why would they want to dilute the gene pool of the nation's populous with such a volatile race of potentially violent heathens.

The more I thought about it the stranger I found it that the government wanted one of their star cosmonaut candidates to spend practically all of him time isolated and alone with a cute vampire girl around his age who shared his passion for space. They had to have known exactly what they were doing, essentially creating a breeding program for race-mixing with vampires by setting the wheels in motion for this romance to form. A government that views it's citizens and especially it's military as nothing more than objects, subjects to be used and then tossed away, would surely have no qualms about manipulating emotions in such a way. When viewed from this angle the show suddenly becomes an incredibly based indictment of real world communism and how quickly it turns to globalism, establishing itself as progressive while seeking to subvert society and mix races down to a single homogeneous and inferior kind with no culture and no history, and therefor no future. A mutt race that is neither human nor vampire, inheriting only the worst traits of each until there is nothing of value left all the while a secret elite ruling class maintaining it's own selective breeding to foster a false sense of superiority over the ones which they deem to control.

But, uh... where was I? Oh yeah the anime. All that is obvious head-cannon brought on by my jaded outlook on real world politics, I don't think the story had nearly that many interesting things to say, but coming up with that bit of fiction as I watched the final moments of this hot dumpster fire of an anime was far more entertaining than just going along with the boring ending they lined up. But the fact that I was able to view this art and extrapolate that silly story out of it maybe means that it's a secret masterpiece? I don't know, I'm going to go with my gut and say it's nothing special. 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by lamaraptor (373)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Dec 24, 2021

Mephistofele

Mixed Feelings

"The Vampire Cosmonaut" has a very high purpose from the moral point of view: a reflection on the importance of equality and the absurdity of the concept of race, creating a parallelism between people considered "inferior" and the vampire species, despised and segregated due to the negative propaganda they suffer from humanity. The purpose has been objectively achieved: during the show we see that our protagonist is abundantly denigrated, so much so that she is considered a simple object on which to experiment, and, subsequently, some merits are recognized, as in any story about episodes of racism. . From a human point of view, however, ... the story completely lacks those characteristics that are necessary for the transmission of ideals, such as empathy with the characters. In the next paragraphs, the reasons for my criticisms will be adequately explained.

STORY (6/10):
The story takes place within a communist-style dictatorial system, similar to the former USSR. We can therefore imagine the abuses that are made to keep power stable within this state: in addition to this the state is in strong contrast with the Kingdom of the United States, a state with a strong capitalist imprint, and both are involved in what we now consider the "space race". To advance with the progress, Zirnitra decides that an ordinary soldier, assisted by a young specialist, must train a vampire to secretly prepare for the first launch with an intelligent living being in space. Thus begins the vicissitudes of the show, letting us know the ambitions of the characters and the evil of hatred: however, unlike what we can expect, these are the only aspects within the story, as everything else is completely neglected and/or left to the viewer's imagination. With the continuation of the story, however, the theme of politics and its morality is developed, through intrigues hidden from all to the last and their unlikely consequences. Despite this, history proposes realistically, the difficulties and attempts that have been made by all those who, in reality, have contributed to this eternal enterprise.

CHARACTERS (5/10):
The big lack of this anime is the empathy with the characters. They, in addition to being flat, have an incomprehensible mentality, as if their actions were created for the sole purpose of continuing the plot, which follows a rigid order of cause and effect, and is not performed by their own choice if they had been real. The possible love affair, which could have been an immense mine of possibilities to create a minimum of interest in continuing this show, is practically abandoned to itself, to the point that it is left incomplete and almost completely hidden. However, some secondary characters can skillfully move the ranks of the story, maintaining a certain level of suspense until the last episode, in which different plots are revealed.

ANIMATIONS AND SOUNDS (6/10):
The drawings are well done and manage to convey a certain realism, even if the music is not particularly impactful.

OVERALL AND TO WHOM I RECOMMEND IT:
The anime was developed superficially from the point of view of the plot and the characters, despite the beauty of the historical background that is associated and the important themes discussed: I was quite disappointed with the final results, as can be seen in the length of this. review, which is synonymous with little interest. I don't feel like recommending it to anyone, but it might vaguely interest fans of the subject.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Mephistofele (4)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Dec 23, 2021

literaturenerd

Not Recommended

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut. Just the title lets you know this is going to be a weird one. I went in having absolutely no idea what to expect, but I was still somehow disappointed by this one. I’m going honest and upfront. This isn't very good.

Brought to you from the director of Cutey Honey Universe and a first-time writer, this is an alternate history version of the space race told through the perspective of the Soviet Union. Isn’t that literally just the plot of Royal Space Force? Gainax already did that shit in 1987 during the Cold War. Irina adds one new element to the ... formula by adding vampires. What do vampires have to do with space exploration? Absolutely nothing. However, Irina wants to preach a message about racism and does so in the most tone deaf, incompetent way possible.

When we first meet the vampire girl Irina, she is being used as a test subject by the Soviets. She has fangs and must sleep in a coffin, so you would think the portrayal of vampires will be somewhat traditional. Instead, we learn that vampires don’t have any magical powers. They don’t attack humans or drink blood. They’re just a hated and oppressed ethnic minority who happen to have fangs and sleep in coffins for no reason. During the Bubonic Plague, vampires were falsely blamed for poisoning wells and were hunted down in pogroms. After that, the vampires lived in isolated communities and over hundreds of years many racial myths and negative stereotypes were created about them. This is seriously the route the anime goes in! They basically just made the vampires a stand-in for Jews. It's not subtle about this at all.

We’re told that vampires are just a harmless minority early on, but the same researcher who tells us this still hates vampires for no reason and is completely ok with killing them in medical experiments. In the world of Irina, the leading Soviet officials and most of their scientists still believe medieval era myths about the vampires for some reason. Myths that any semi-educated person would have stopped believing centuries ago in a world where vampires are real. That would be like in our world if all the Soviet Union’s top scientists in 1960 believed that Jews have horns and that’s why they wear yarmulkes.

Despite showing the space race from the Soviet POV, this anime is Red Dawn levels of anti-Soviet. Every Soviet character besides “nice male MC harem lead” is an evil bastard. They want to use Irina as a guinea pig and make her the first person in space, then kill her and send an ethnic Russian into space. This is not only stupid, but incredibly tasteless and insulting to the first cosmonauts who risked their lives for human progress. Why would you shit on some of the greatest heroes in history?

The answer is simply to tell a monster girl story. Remember Monster Musume and how it tried to have this shoehorned anti-racism message? Only the MC is nice to the monster girls, while everyone else is ridiculously horrible to them. Elfen Lied is also kind of guilty of this admittedly. This would be fine in a purely fictional setting, but Irina goes out of its way to use real historical figures where only 1 letter in their name is changed and directly reference real historical tragedies like the Nedelin Disaster of 1960. It wants the audience to think this is basically a 1:1 retelling of the space race only Soviet minorities have been replaced with monster girls.

This is especially problematic since the CIA ran a propaganda campaign in the 1960s that the Soviets constantly went through cosmonauts like tissue paper and only achieved historic firsts because they cruelly threw away the lives of their explorers. To back this up, an Italian plant produced faked recordings of Soviet cosmonaut death screams that he somehow recorded off a ham radio. These were later found out to be forgeries. It is absolutely true that the Soviets rushed frantically to achieve their goals and covered up 2 high casualty events that were only discovered later, Nedelin being one of these. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets were not purely innocent. However, they didn't constantly go through cosmonauts, which would be highly impractical considering the time and resources required to train them. The Soviets also never put a self-destruct bomb into their landing capsule in order to prevent the Americans from discovering the easiest part of space exploration and kill their own guys in the process. They also didn't use fatal medical experiments on ethnic minorities. On the other hand, NASA was very confident about survival data such as the exact time humans can survive in zero pressure. That's because NASA had some pretty bad dudes working for them such as notorious war criminal Hubertus Strughold. A man whose best friend was executed at Nuremburg for doing the same experiments.

While the Soviet Union did a LOT of bad things during its history, the Soviet space program was one time they were actually the loveable underdogs. They used their own scientists unlike the US, who kissed some a-SS and made a deal with the devil in order to win. The Soviets started from behind and had a small fraction of the money and resources, but miraculously achieved some of the finest feats in the history of engineering. Yet, here we have an anime that wants to repeat propaganda from the Cold War, completely ignore all wrongdoing by NASA, and portray the Soviets as stupid, brutish monsters. All so it can tell a Monster Musume style love story. Fuck this anime.

When it isn't being clumsy and totally pointless propaganda, Irina does have some sweet moments. If you like Monster girl stories, the romance between Irina and Lev is serviceable. There are some sweet scenes here and there like Irina going ice skating where the anime is allowed to be kind of good. The show also makes a last-minute decision to reveal some of the Soviet scientists were good guys and have them rebel against the Kremlin. So, in the last episode, it decided to not character assassinate Sergei Korolev. The source novels aren't actually finished BTW, so this was an anime original ending. Whoever wrote the anime at least made a last-ditch effort and I'll give him credit for that. I even raised my rating by 1 based on the last episode alone.

Sadly, as a space exploration story, Irina really isn't very good. It's not even comparable to an anime like Royal Space Force or Space Brothers. Both of which are excellent. The monster girl romance detracts from the space focus and the series often veers either intentionally or through sheer ignorance into pretty hateful territory with its historical portrayal. As a monster girl story, it also doesn't work because it's weighed down by its need to tastelessly reference real life tragedies like the Nedelin launch failure that killed around 300 people. It's not quite as bad as when the writer of the Sonic comics tried to tell a 1:1 Holocaust parallel with overly sexualized echidnas, but it's pretty tasteless.

So, would I recommend Irina? I'm going to have to go with no. I thought the premise was unusual enough that it had some potential. I don't normally watch seasonals while they air, but Irina hooked me with its bonkers plot alone. As I've covered in this review, the execution leaves much to be desired. It's possible a lot of the problems present in this 12 episode anime aren't quite as bad in the LNs. I've not read them, so I can't say who is to blame for Irina's issues. Unfortunately, this rocket never quite achieves orbit.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by literaturenerd (384)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Hard Science

by CloacaMaxima

35 Entries · 87 Restacks

Anime about vampires

by lainnvx

13 Entries · 1 Restacks

Funimation Latin American Dubs (Part 2)

by saintseba

48 Entries · 1 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for November

Here are the North American anime, manga, and light novel releases* for November. Week 1: November 1 - 7 Anime Releases Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 2wei! (incl. S...read more

Nov 13, 2022 4:58 PM by Aiimee | Discuss (7 comments)

Fall 2021 Simulcast List [Update 12/26]

In this thread, you'll find a comprehensive list of anime acquired for simulcast release during the Fall 2021 season. Anime series licensed for home video relea...read more

Sep 24, 2021 5:12 PM by Snow | Discuss (109 comments)

	Poll: Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Oct 17, 2021	67 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Dec 18, 11:23 AM
	Poll: Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Oct 10, 2021	59 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Dec 17, 11:57 AM
	Poll: Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Hesmiyu - Oct 3, 2021	116 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Dec 17, 11:50 AM
	Poll: Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu Episode 8 Discussion Stark700 - Nov 21, 2021	42 replies	by Gvendoline »» Nov 1, 2:49 AM
	Poll: Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Koshi_Inaba - Dec 18, 2021	113 replies	by FullyCharged »» Sep 15, 7:08 PM