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This anime might be about vampires, but I'm starting to think you people are the ones out for blood.
I found this item on a list of "lowest rated" anime, and quite honestly after watching it? Looking at its contemporaries in the year before and the year after? Y'all are just mean. Sure, it's mid, and let's count the ways:

Story: 5/10. A series of coincidences, god and the devil conspire to subject Dracula to the worst day(s?) of his life. A little disjointed but at no point did it really lose me. Felt somewhat like an episodic miniseries compressed into a film, mind, but that was ... not uncommon for the time. Overarching plot is your usual tragic vampire in love with a human fare, no real surprises there but also not necessarily handled poorly.

Characters: 5/10. Flat and one-note for the most part, Dracula the perpetually kicked dog gets the most characterization and development despite not really being protagonist or antagonist in his own film. I've seen better, but I've seen worse.

Art: 6/10. Dated now, but of its era and by golly not the worst of its era. Mid for sure, but for the quality of art and animation coming out at the time ('79-'80) it is no worse than its kin. Jerky, but there are other much more beloved things from this era that looked as bad or worse.

Sound: 6/10: A little repetitive, but serviceable. They knew the halloween vibe they were going for in the soundtrack and while it was a miss in some places it was a hit in others. Sound effects were on the lower end, but the music was fine to good.

Enjoyment: 6/10. Got some legit laughs out of me as Dracula's (un)life just kept getting worse. Beyond that, the film set out to tell a modern Dracula dark fantasy story and I guess it accomplished that.

Mean score: 5.6/10, rounded to nearest whole as 6/10.
I see people in the reviews here comparing it to The Room or Garzey's Wing. Take a step back and look at the year of this thing's release, and the adjacent years. You really think Mobile Suit Gundam "lets have characters just say the themes of our show explicitly out loud while animation errors punctuate every scene" is better than this? It isn't, don't kid yourself. This is just a mid anime movie from 1980, probably produced in 1979, and every element of it speaks to that. I wouldn't recommend people bother with watching it, but I won't ridicule it for the craftsmanship normal of its era.

I don't get what everyone else is saying, I just sat through every entry in the wider Steel Angel Kurumi franchise and this was the only entry that wasn't pure agony to consume. I won't be rating it *too* high, its art, narrative and characterization are still only just above average, but that is profoundly more than I can say for the other three anime in the brand and I cannot believe that this is regarded as the black sheep because of it. As such, I'll stick up for it, because it deserves at least that much.

If you *liked* the first season/original series of ... Steel Angel Kurumi, but *disliked* the second season/sequel series, THIS is the miniseries that will give you the things the second season/sequel series opted not to have. It has deeper character drama, better art and shot direction (which is a surprise for a three episode miniseries lasting less than an hour taking place in a single apartment), touches more on the weird metaphysics of the setting AND the characters *don't* feel like props.

Everyone else is speaking nonsense, this is the only Kurumi that I can pretend is actually *good*. My understanding is this reflects more of what the manga has to offer over the anime, so maybe I'm more inclined to check the manga out now, because the previous three anime had otherwise convinced me that maybe I was not interested but this is arguing to the contrary.

Bad, but nowhere near as bad as everyone gives it credit, I've definitely watched much much worse things.

It's very clumsy, has no character arcs, has way too much exposition, and 60% of the time the animation is sub par. That being said: the character concepts and motivations are uncommon and not particularly cliched, with mixtures of grey moralities at play that aren't exactly bland.

The setting is curious, attempting to use admittedly weak representations of various mythologies to build up what seems like a shinto fantasy story, only instead tell a surprise cosmic horror story.

Then there is the anomaly of the animation. As ... stated before, 60% of the time it's kinda shitty, but then about 40% of the time it'll surprise you with whole scenes of pretty damn fluid movement, shading and clever perspective, and at times actually getting interesting in a legitimately artistic way that it kinda had no reason doing besides to flex. I think one of the members of this OVA's animation team was much more skilled than the others, and I think you'll know when he's at the helm when you see it.

The atmosphere and tone are also pretty interesting, they did a pretty good job at playing with the idea of making this more of a horror/thriller, as others have stated, if you can get past the frequent exposition dumps.

Overall, this is probably objectively "bad" holistically as a piece of media, but it's also fascinating how much good snakes its way through the cracks of the surface, like garbage bits of it were some sort of metaphorical barrier holding back a genuinely good horror fantasy abomination of a story which we only get glimpses of beyond.

6/10, watch it as something to think about the work that went into this profoundly rough gem, but don't expect to enjoy it on its own. It's for us admirers of ugly ducklings.

Where did that last episode come from, amirite?

Some spoilerish territory in this review, but not enough to blow everything.

Ok, so what I think happened:
Not unlike Mezzo and A Kite, the writing/directing team had an idea. But, they knew they didn't have an idea that would sell to the masses, so they made a compromise. They put together the pitch for a crappy sci-fi show, made some cute titty-bouncing shitshow concept art, and sold that. Then, once they got the money, they spent like literally all but 10 cents on the final episode, making a nugget of the story they actually wanted to tell, and just ... slapped together the rest for the first two episodes to appease investors. It feels, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the last episode was the pilot they wanted to pitch, but couldn't.

Seriously, that was one of the most brutal, and best animated episodes of anime I've ever seen. Having watched the hot garbage first episode, and saw through the narrative tricks of the second, I can say the third is worth it. Beyond worth it.

The first 54 minutes of the series is just a ruse they made to get the money to make the rest of what is essentially a really interesting 27 minute pilot with movie-quality animation. You probably only need to watch the OP with its intro, then the last 5-7 minutes of episode 2 for all the context you need in the last episode, so I might recommend that over watching the first episode and a half as it was quite clear the first episode and a half wasn't the priority.

Listen to me right now:
Grit your teeth,
watch it now.
It barely has a beginning, over half of it is trash, and it sure as shit doesn't have an ending,
but it's, like, an hour and a half long.
You're not losing much, and the first 10 minutes of that last episode are fucking masterful for what they are.

I've never seen a film strawman both sides of its own argument before, so that's new. If you want to watch something that looks good and deals with the industry vs nature concept well, watch Princess Mononoke. If you want to waste something like an hour and a half presenting "nature good because reasons, industry bad because reasons", without ever finding out why or learning a good moral of coexistance between civilization and nature, feel free to sit down with this film. Honestly, its strictly binary outlook, and its wholly absent representation for why beyond caricaturing both sides as stubborn and unwilling to self-examine does ... the beautiful art and music in this film great injustice.
Skip this, go watch Princess Mononoke again, and download the OST for this, because that's the most good you'll get out of it.

While I will not spoil all the events of the series, I will state the concluding moral of the narrative, including slight reference to some particular events. So, if you want to hear that from the show rather than from here, I'd say end reading here. I have a beef, and I'm going to vent.

Story:
Betterman is a Sci-fi/Horror series set in the Gao-Gai-Gar setting taking place a few years after that series conclusion. From its roots in that franchise it retains the same level of varied and well designed but not well developed characters, heavily detailed but not well researched or internally consistent technobabble, and ... well engineered but quickly and jarringly switched tones and atmospheres. Where GGG explored physical and technological sci-fi concepts, BM similarly explores biological and transhuman concepts. What BM does not carry over from its preceding story, however, is an attitude that the exploration of these concepts is a good thing.
Where GGG played with the ideas of the awesome things people could do with technologies like AI, space travel and physics bending machines, BM will go at lengths, stumbling at every turn, to show you how only petty people will actively explore biological technologies that veer things off the "natural course". It ends in a moral that trying to use life sciences to do honest good is likely futile, and anyone who tries to explore such venues for any other reason is explicitly doing so for terrible reasons. At only one point, during the final fight, does it even suggest an idea contrary to this narrative, but this was but a one-time gimmick to defeat the final enemy. Whatever ideas that could have been developed with that instance, of working together to ensure that mankind can surpass the limits of its own hubris and slippery slopes of technology misuse while still embracing the technology, were quickly ignored for returning to its narrative of leaving life alone. Instead of showing the hope of what mankind could someday achieve by following through with exploring the sciences depicted as GGG did, it attempts to spin a tale of how altering the organism is inherently wrong, and to interfere with the natural order or improve yourself in any way will only bring catastrophe. It ends with a message that if you just give up trying to improve yourself, and just embrace being an unaltered cog in the natural process, you'll be happy, without very strong exploration into the contrary, despite GGG having a variety of transhumans or otherwise augmented individuals with no detriment to their character or antagonism to their existence. While GGG depicted bad people using technology for evil, they never once really depicted any technology itself as inherently evil, instead playing with the motivations behind the uses for or against good, and I think that's where my beef here lies. GGG had fun with its science, while BM antagonized it, and I don't really think that should ever be cool.

In reference to an earlier statement, the series completely ignores or omits things like the Evolders or cyborgs to promote its anti-transhuman narrative, despite the former being well known figures in the world at this time, and the latter being something not uncommon at this point in time, supposedly. These are not the only things BM seems to forget, and in fact references the preceding franchise so rarely that it almost appears as though the references they do make are there solely to remind you that they are supposedly related. If I am to be honest, it almost feels forced, like with the Cloverfield films that weren't originally supposed to be Cloverfield films, and I have to wonder if the references are there for the same reasons.

Beyond the less than savory moral about augmentive technology, the story is your standard "mosnter of the week with overarching mystery and light romantic subplot" story, with little if anything new to add. If you like those kinds of stories, you'll like this, but if you don't like those, you're going to get nothing out of this besides horror. Horror, I would like to comment, that it does well. While the motives and morals behind why some of the things depicted in the show are "horrific" do not sit well with me, the spookiness, tension and grotesque designs are often quite on point, so I guess that's fine.

Art:
Really solid art. Looks older than it is, but this does not actually detriment for its art quality. I've complained a lot, but I can't complain at the way it looks. That, and them monster fights where hella rad, despite the sour narrative context. Only negative is the use of still frames was sometimes a little too noticeable, but honestly everything looks pretty swell.

Sound:
Some audio was fine, some sound effects were cheesy, and some of the music was better than average. Very little to comment here.

Characters:
The characters were quite diverse, and very few really fit into any specific stereotypes, but beyond that damn near none of them got any development, and the main character was of almost as little use to the plot as Indie was for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The cast functions better as a showcase for interesting and rarely used character concepts to be applied elsewhere than it does as the driving force behind this show. The only really distracting thing in the characters was the implication that Betterman's fucking pangolin hair was something inherited, but by that point the character could in no way be taken seriously, so it only added to the humor value.

Enjoyment:
Was down for the horror, and the humor of each episode having a goddamn dinosaur come out of nearly nowhere to save everyone, but as soon as it tried to articulate a message, and struggle to explain why its anti-science angle was totally right, my enjoyment started to dip, and after the very end it had me sitting there with a very sour taste in my mouth, especially after having watched GGG immediately before it.
But hey, if you share its moral opinion I'm sure you'll have a blast. In that case, I'd also recommend Earth Girl Arjuna, for a similar story, despite a dramatically different selection of genres.