Babanbabanban Vampire

This was SO funny to see hahaha
If you like Hisoka from Hunter x Hunter you are gonna laugh, I'm pretty sure of that xDD That said, if you don't enjoy a BL theme, even if it's in a light funny way, skip this.

I really liked the misunderstandings, that Ranmaru doesn't get a hint of what's going on around Rihito's friends and the light, simple but efficient comedy. Characters aren't deep, but they don't need to; they exists just for making you laugh with their -funny and silly- thoughts. If you are looking for a serious vampire story, this is not your thing either.

It's not a ... masterpiece, of course, but this anime is just for having fun. (And the cast is SUPERB)

Baban Baban Ban' Vampire — 'Tis so sweet to drink some virgin, young adult blood, but with a wait time so long...that it's best to experience some comedy firsthand.

Vampires. Love them or hate them, they're here to stay...and willingly sink their fangs into unsuspecting people thinking that they can be subtly thought of as normal human beings. But when these immortal nightly beings trample on everyday life to want to choose their specific targets and, even more, treat them like aged Wagyu beef and sink into a fine-dining experience, it becomes all the more ludicrous to think of such a plot where vampires can wait ... before their blood consumption is fresh, wholesale, and satisfying. This is what you get with mangaka Hiromasa Okujima's Baban Baban Ban Vampire, a show where bloodsucking is an exercise in patience (since patience is a virtue) and will only reap the vampire a big reward when this "rule" is respected. Oh...did I forget to mention that this is a BL a.k.a Boys' Love show?

Vampires, like the irritating cockroaches, can actually go toe-to-toe with how long the species has been around since its inception, but of course, the clear difference is that vampires need blood to survive, or otherwise they'll wither and die if not enough is pumped into them. And in Baban Baban Ban Vampire's story, that setting takes vampires going across the different Japanese eras, from the Bakumatsu era to the modern day, standing at a few hundred years old still looking for fresh blood to pounce on.

And this is certainly the rhetoric for the 450-year-old vampire of Mori Ranmaru, whose goal is to seek the "ultimate taste of the blood of an 18-year-old virgin." However, after wandering around in a previous era, Ranmaru found himself being a helpless person to once again wander around and look for a place to live. As luck would have it, the Tatsuno family chose to take him under their shelter, but of course, nothing is for free, and he has to help out and work in the family's Aoi Bathhouse alongside their only son, 15-year-old Rihito. Of course, with Ranmaru's policy of waiting to devour him until he turns 18, he decides to play along with the family's antics, even if he has to reveal his true vampiric self (that ironically Rihito's family doesn't take seriously).

As if that's not enough, both Ranmaru and Rihito are joined by more characters, which just makes the love polygon even worse (for what should be a straightforward relationship). What are the odds of creating such comedic banter that just only adds to the hilarious confusion much more? For one, you have the love interest of Aoi Shinozuka, whom Rihito falls in love with at first sight through the "running with bread in mouth" trope and is seen as a threat; then her brother Ken a.k.a Franken comes over as a protective older brother who supports his sister's relationship with Rihito (that is soon accompanied by vampire killer Umetaro Sakamoto, whom he has a hardcore yaoi for Ranmaru); not to mention that the group of gals under the leadership of Kaoru Yamada initially had the hots for Rihito but soon found out that she has a desire for Ranmaru instead. It's a love cycle that can be confusing to get your head around, but trust me, as more characters come up, the insanity of the supernatural comedy takes hold to chuckle some laughs.

You're not going to depend on production values to bring you through the show, as studio Gaina's animation is really just average and will fill you more with static PowerPoint-like slides, and opt for more quality if the scenario calls for it. But then again, this is what director-cum-scriptwriter Itsuro Kawasaki has to fend for; for much of his rather unremarkable career, the last notables have been key directorial and/or scriptwriting roles for Summer 2022's Kumichou Musume to Sewagakari a.k.a The Yakuza's Guide to Babysitting and last Winter's Oroka na Tenshi wa Akuma to Odoru a.k.a The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil.

Music is also fine, but fairly forgettable by all accounts. That said, Blue Encount's OP song feels a lot like it belongs in some other show and not this one, though it's decent and nothing noteworthy. On the other hand, Botchi Boromaru's ED is great (except the scrolling backgrounds), which is fine...I guess?

I think that the misconception of Baban Baban Ban Vampire being a BL show does kind of limit the target audience to just the yaoi fanatics. But still, while the show COULD do without the BL tag, it's still ultimately a show in said genre, and it's quite evident all over the place, despite being disregarded as so.

It's a comedy show that has hits and misses, and is not great by any means, but is it at least worth your time? I'd say that depends on how you see the show as it is: a half-yaoi and mostly comedic anime.

Let’s talk about queerbaiting.

Queerbaiting is when an audience is led to believe a work of fiction will feature prominent LGBT characters, and/or center LGBT story arcs, when in actuality those elements are barely there, or even implied rather than actually included. It’s a term i am very reluctant to use. I’ve heard some others in the LGBT community advocate for straightbaiting, in which straight people are led to believe a story will be about them until it’s revealed at the end that nope, it was queer all along! I’ve seen this done a few times, and i can’t say i’m a fan. The problem with ... straightbaiting is that it feels like queerbaiting right up until the last moment; i’m not convinced that final relief is worth the emotional strain that the earlier parts of the story cause.

With that in mind, let’s talk about Babanbabanban Vampire.

The main character of this series is indeed a gay vampire, and it appears to be marketed as a BL story, but it’s very hard to trust. It feels, rather than a gay story, more like the gay vampire is a plot device to get a straight couple together. The manga runs in a magazine that isn’t known for telling queer stories, and given the context of the anime thus far, available chapters of the manga, and the magazine carrying the story make even the pun of interpreting BL as “Bloody Love” concerning. Even if you overlook the elements that could be interpreted as straightbaiting, the vampire Ranmaru’s relationship with human boy Rihito is incredibly disturbing. Ranmaru’s favorite type of blood to drink is that of 18-year-old male virgins, and the story revolves around him living with Rihito’s family and attempting to preserve Rihito’s virginity until he reaches the age of 18, when Ranmaru will then drink his blood. It plays very strongly into the current queerphobic dogwhistle of “members of the LGBT community being pedophiles grooming children.” The way Babanbabanban Vampire seems to be promoting this belief is incredibly harmful and insidious. The art is excellent, but even the best art doesn’t make up for bad writing. I’m honestly not even sure who this is targeted to; homophobes will avoid it due to the purported BL element, and the LGBT community will be put off by the apparent queerbaiting and homophobic dogwhistles. Straight women who fetishize gay men, maybe…?

Even at its best, Babanbabanban Vampire seems to be focusing on the wrong elements of its story. The fact that Ranmaru is based on a historical figure, and the frequent references he makes to his relationships with other famous historical figures, are incredibly intriguing. I’d have preferred for it to be about Ranmaru’s (historically factual!) relationship with Oda Nobunaga, who perhaps surprisingly does not fit Ranmaru’s preferred type – when Nobunaga died, he was 48 years old the way we in the modern world measure ages, 50 the way he would have measured his own age, and hardly a virgin. He had a whole lot of kids, only one of whom was adopted. And yet he’s the one Ranmaru thinks of when asked about past loves. Ranmaru’s later escapades with the Bakumatsu-era revolutionary Sakamoto Ryouma are also more interesting than his current relationship with Rihito.

I hope i’m wrong. I hope that Babanbabanban Vampire is indeed straightbaiting rather than queerbaiting, and the elements that seem homophobic are resolved in a comfortable way. But i can’t trust it. I’ve been burned too many times before, and i cannot recommend this series to my fellows in the LGBT communities or allies.