Anime Update for last two weeks

YuYuYu season 3 episode3 continues the saga of Mebuki-San, and it’s pretty good.  It was also amusing to see our usual Hero Club from an outside perspective.

Million Lives Isekai episode 20 was decent.

The third episode of The Detective Is Already Dead wasn’t as good as the first two.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 8 was good.

I checked out the first 3 episodes of Pokemon Evolutions, and they were pretty good.

The Saints Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 11 was neat.

And Slime Incarnation episode 44 was also fun.

The fourth episode of Pokemon Evolutions was nice.

Episode 4 of YuYuYu season 3 jumped around a bit.

Episode 21 of Million Lives Isekai was fine I guess.  I think I might be about ready to move this show to On Hold.

The Penultimate episode of SSSS.Dynazenon was pretty good.

Realist Hero episode 7 was interesting.

I’ve moved The Detective is Already Dead to On Hold.  Both of the first two episodes were great, but once I found out this is another one not consistently coming out every week, I decided episode 3 wasn’t compelling enough for me to keep up with it.

Well I watched Loups-Garous for the heck of it, and it was good.

Battle Game episode 9 was good, but the CGi animation for the big guy wasn’t pretty, it gave me flashbacks to the latter part of SpiderChan.

I’ve finished The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent and rated it as Very Good.

SlimeIncarnation episode 45 was pretty Dope.

Frankenstein is a lot older then Dracula

Because of their Iconic Universal Films both coming out in 1931, and then Hammer doing their versions close to each other, then the 90s 'put name of book Author in film title' versions (and as a Weeb I should add their Toei Anime TV movies).  We tend to think of their histories as being parallel.  But they weren't always.

In 1931 Dracula was in the grand scheme of things still a fairly new addition to popular culture.  The same age Harry Potter and Pokémon will be in 2031, and about the same age Late 80s stuff is now, or Star Wars a decade ago when the Disney buyout first happened.  There were people alive in 1931 who remembered when the original book came out, in fact Bela Lugosi himself was a teenager then but not in the right region to have likely read it that early.  Also Stoker's wife was still alive when it's sorta sequel was made.

For Frankenstein however, 1931 was the same year as the Centennial of the Novel's THIRD edition.  There is still less time separating us from the Universal Film then separated the Universal Film from the original novel's publication in 1818.  The Creature being popularly thought of as a tall green skinned flat headed monster with bolts in his neck has been the case for less then half his existence thus far.

This fact is technically well known, but I don't think we often process the implications of that, we think of the Universal Film as still close to the beginning of Frankenstein's cultural legacy, even though it's very much not.

Between the novel's 1st and 3rd edition was a Stage version in 1823 called Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein.  A lot of the pop culture Frankenstein mythology not in the book which many assume began with the 1931 film is actually already in that 1823 play, like the Creature being created in a Castle.  Mary Shelly's own comments on the play cite a memorable moment being the Doctor shouting "IT LIVES!!!!!".  The actor who played The Creature in that version passed away 20 years before Boris Karloff was born.

Ya know the not in the Book trope of Dr. Frankenstein having a Hunchbacked assistant named Igor?  Well Igor being the name originated with Ygor played by Bela Lugosi in 1939's Son of Frankenstein.  In the 1931 Universal film that character was named Fritz and played by Dwight Frye, and that was also his name in the 1823 stage play.  Fritz was the name of this character for longer then Igor has been, it was Fritz for over a century but one Bela Lugosi performance changed it forever.

An 1826 French Play by Charles Nodier called Le Monstre et le Magicien (The Monster and the Magician) is considered an unofficial adaptation of Frankenstein by the people at BlackCoatPress.  Frank Morlock wrote an English translation and they published it alongside Hugo's own Notre-Dame de Paris stage version (the same one Lindsay Ellis talked about) in a volume called Frankenstein Meets The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the title being justified by a thrown in original short story by Morlock himself.

But guess what, Frankenstein and his Creature had even already encountered a Vampire a decade before Dracula was published in the 1887 musical burlesque Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim.  This YT video features a song from it.

That of course brings us to how if you defined Dracula by more then just the name and consider him him an evolution of Lord Ruthven, he can be considered exactly as old as Frankenstein being born from the same legendary Ghost Story competition in 1817, and did get a lot more Stage versions in between.  For more on that subject I recommend the book Stage Blood: Vampires of the 19th-Century Stage by Roxana Stuart, and also the translations of French Ruthven productions published by BlackCoatPress, the plays translated by Frank Morlock and a Novel by Brian Stableford.

Halloween Anime Recommendations Redux

I figured I’m long overdue for an updating of my Anime Halloween Recommendations.  This one will mostly not be about ranking them besides that I will start with is my Number 1.  Instead I will divide it into sections.

I’ll try to always identify places where you can legally stream them, but some can’t be legally streamed anywhere and I feel it's risky to publicly name any unofficial sites on my public blog.  Note anything I say is on Crunchyroll should also be on VRV, but at this point VRV is no longer worth the extra money it costs. I think more of these are on HIDIVE than any other single site, fortunately HIDIVE has a fairly cheap monthly subscription, and they offer a 14 day Free trial.

My Absolute Number 1.

Is still Higurashi When They Cry.  But it has become necessary recently for me to qualify myself.  Start with the first season of the original 2006 Studio Deen Anime which you can watch on HIDIVE, sadly only that of the older Higurashi Anime was ever Dubbed.  Then watch Season 2 also on HIDIVE which is also called Kai.  

Then take a break, sit on that material knowing that for a long time that was the entire story besides some ambiguously canonical side stories.  

Then watch the Rei OVAs also on HIDIVE, then the Kira OVAs which aren’t.  

Then watch Umineko When They Cry which also isn’t legally streaming anywhere, most hardcore fans hate that Anime especially but I prefer it to the VN’s story.

Then take a longer break, and consider watching Gou and SOTSU which are Higurahsi When They Cry New on Hulu.  I find these to have worthwhile content but not nearly the masterpieces the original story was.  So please treat their canonicity as optional.  [August 2022 Update: Gao and Stosu are also on Crunchyroll now including an English Dub.  I hate that this has a Dub but not Kai or Rei.]

Part 2: Some Retro Recommendations.

I mean truly retro, like even most Millennials can't remember when they were brand new.

The Vampire Princess Miyu OVAs from the 80s which are on three Free streaming sites, TubiTV, RetroCrush and Midnightpulp.  It’s a four episode OVA originally but sometimes it’s streamed as two Volumes in which what is usually referred to as the second episode is part of Volume 1.  Also in this case only the Dub is streaming for some reason. [Update March 2023: it's gone from Tubi now but still on the other two.]

Vampire Hunter D, the original 1986 film which holds up better than it’s overhyped sequel.  HIDIVE streams this one both Subbed and the Sentai Dub, which is a good Dub.  But it seems that you will have to turn to Piracy or finding old VHS tapes if you want to experience the original Streamline Dub.

Kyoufu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein called in English The Monster Of Frankenstein or Frankensteins Monster, Horror Legend - Bizarre! Frankenstein.  This movie also isn’t legally streaming anywhere. I watched it on YouTube, however it might not be there anymore since it’s Toei and they've gotten more aggressive recently as PreCure and Sailor Moon focused YouTubers have learned.  It has a Dub that was actually recorded in the 80s, like one of the very oldest Dubs in existence.  I reviewed the movie on MAL a few years ago.

Part 3: Some Millennial era Stuff.

Nightwalker which is an Anime I talked about earlier in the Month. [Update: it's now on RetroCrush]

Hellsing, I only recommend the original, never Ultimate.  This one’s on Funimation.  [Update August 2022: Hellsing is on Cruncyhroll now.]

Witch Hunter Robin, which I’m personally very nostalgic for, but I don’t know how many others remember it.  It’s also on Funimation.  [Update March 2023: and now it's on Crunchyroll.]

Princess Resurrection is more Campy Halloween fun than ever actually scary, but I enjoyed it.  It’s another one on HIDIVE.

Part 4: If you’re into Fate/ try some other Nasuverse Type Moon stuff.

Kara No Kyoukai, called Garden of Sinners in English, can now be streamed on Crunchyroll but it doesn’t have a Dub.  It’s from UFOtable who did the Fate/Zero Anime, the TV Anime of Unlimited Blade Works and the Heaven’s Feel movies so it looks as great as they do.  And Yuki Kajiura does the music which is always a treat.

Tsukihime has an older Anime from 2003 which does have a Dub but isn’t legally streaming anywhere.  Many hate that Anime, but I’m baffled by people who continue to dismiss it but defend Deen/Stay Night. I feel it holds up far better.  Because Tsukihime is more Horror Genre then Fate/ I feel it’s “cheaper” looking presentation suits it better then Deen/Stay Night, similar to Deen’s Higurashi stuff [Update too late: turns out Tsukihime is on HIDIVE as well and I didn't notice.]

Part 5: Zombie Anime

If you want an Anime Version of a George A Romero Zombie movie, I recommend School Live! on HIDIVE.

If you want something more like Zach Snyder’s Zombie movies I recommend HighSchool of The Dead also on HIDIVE. [Update: I also spotted this on Hulu today.]

If you want something outside the standard Zombie format altogether but that still feels appropriate for Halloween, Sankarea was a good show.  I could have sworn I stumbled upon it earlier this year on either Hulu or Netflix, but now it’s showing up only on Funimation.  [Update August 2022: This is on Crunchyroll now.]

Part 6: Something very Modern.

In/Spectre from last year was a very fun and thought provoking show.  It’s on HBOMax and I’m sure other sites too, but I want people to choose sites like HBOmax, Disney+, Netflix or Hulu over Anime specific sites when they can to encourage those sites to consider Anime worth investing in so more Anime can become more easily accessible.  [Update August 2022: and thanks to recent devleoptments I no longer want to encourage people to Sub to HBOmax, fortunately In/Spectre including the Dub is on Crunchyroll now.]

Ms. Vampire who lives in my neighborhood is a slice of life Anime with Yuri undertones about Vampires.  It’s on Crunchyroll and apparently it has a Dub now, I’m pretty sure it didn’t have a Simuldub and thus I had watched it Subbed.

Carmilla adaptation Pet Peeves

This can be viewed as a companion piece of sorts to Carmilla should be allowed to be a Bad Girl.  But here I shall talk about things that bug me in Carmilla adaptations that some may view as a bit more arbitrary but do regardless annoy me.  Some are not the complete deal breakers others are, the lower on the list the more tolerable it is, but it also depends just how well done everything else is.

Depictions of Carmilla can fit into two categories, ones that are in some way an adaptation of the original story however loosely.  And new stories featuring the same character, presented as perhaps in continuity with the original story, or a version of it.  The Pet Peeves I shall vent about here are all things that can be equally relevant to either.

Pet Peeve No. 0: Carmilla In Name Only.

I’m not properly numbering this one because all of them are often symptoms of it.  But it does annoy me when a story just uses the name Carmilla because she's the only female Public Domain Vampire with even close to the same name recognition as Dracula.  There are other more niche ones you can choose, a lot of them come from 19th Century French Literature.  Clairmonde  of La Morte Amoureuse by Theophile Gautier would be the most traditional for a Het Femme Fatale Vampire, the others I’m thinking of don’t have English translations that are PD so we have to turn to BlackCoatPress.  But if a female counterpart to Dracula is all you're going for just use the one in Dracula's Guest, or Dracula's Daughter, or make a Vampire out of a female historical figure comparable to Vlad Tepes like one who'll come up later in this post.

You could say Dracula is also subject to this, but he has so many more depictions in total that the In Name Only ones feel less offensive in their very existence.  But also all the major Dracula depictions, however many liberties they have, still feel like a take on Stoker’s character. The same can’t be said for Carmilla.

And no being a Lesbian isn't enough to make one more then in name only.  Being Lesbian itself isn't a character trait, it's how her attraction to women effects that story that makes it part of Carmilla's character.

Pet Peeve No. 1: Straight Washing Carmilla.

Given how much of Carmilla’s defining characteristics are tied to being a lover of Girls, any “Carmilla” who is completely Hetersoexual is obviously also an example of No. 0.  Perhaps you don’t even believe me that this has happened, but trust me it has, I no longer remember any titles to single them out, but they exist.  [Update: 2005's The Batman Vs Dracula made Carmilla the name of Dracula's wife, so that's one example.] 

The gray area is, can Carmilla swing both ways?  It can seem like Bi Erasure to say definitely No when the original Novella does imply she had a male lover during her human life, and suggesting her orientation changed as a symptom of being a Vampire would be very problematic.  However we don’t know that story from her POV, only how it’s told by a generations later kinsman of a person said to have been her lover.  Carmilla The Return is a Prose Novel I liked but some things are blurry in my memory of it right now, I think that Carmilla might have been a little Bi but only in Threesomes where another girl was present, but again I could be remembering it wrong, Lauren in the novel is definitely Bi.

Lust for A Vampire is the second film of Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy, and probably the one I like the most.  As a Carmilla film it does most of my Pet Peeves. But like how many say the 98 Godzilla would be a fine Kaiju movie if it weren’t presented as specifically Godzilla, this is one of the better Hammer Vampire movies.  The 98 Godzilla however perhaps wouldn't have been watched at all if it didn’t have the Godzilla name, this movie puts neither Carmilla or Karnstein in the title.  The informal name of the Trilogy is Karnstein not Carmilla, so why couldn’t it just star another vampire of the same house?  Yutte Stensdaard is one of my favorite On Screen Vampires of all time, she has exactly the vibes and look I would want a Bisexual Femme Fatale Vampiress to have.  She just shouldn’t have been called Carmilla.

Pet Peeve No. 2: Making Carmilla’s origin story that she committed Suicide.

I don’t know why this is so common.  The original Novella does supply an origin story and it’s not that.  There is some evidence that one of the old superstitions about Vampires is that they are sometimes products of Suicide (The Virgin Vampire is a 1825 pre-Carmilla example of a Vampiress with a Suicide origin story).  So it makes sense that there is some Vampire fiction exploring that, but I don’t get why it’s so common to make that specifically Carmilla's origin story?

Sometimes it’s not Carmilla herself who committed Suicide but Suicide is still made a theme of the story. .Even then I’d rather not have that heavy subject crammed into Carmilla.

Pet Peeve No. 3: Making her some epic Rival to Dracula.

So with my writing this in 2021 many may take this one as a stab at specifically Castlevania, and it partly is.  But it also kind of begins with Hammer.  And Castlevania’s Carmilla I firstly consider an In Name Only example.

The Vampire Lovers is by some metrics the most faithful adaptation of the book, the same kinds of metrics that give that title to Coppola’s film for Dracula, indeed it takes more from it's book then any of Hammer's Dracula or Frankenstein films.  However one thing that ruins it’s ability to feel like the Novella is that the Novella is a very intimate story, The Vampire Lovers wants to feel like an epic battle between good and evil.

However one thing the Hammer Karnstein saga couldn’t make up its mind on is if Carmilla is actually the most important Karnstein or just the one we happen to be following the most.  You see I’m fine with the idea of the Karnsteins as an Aristocratic Vampire House doing some Game of Thrones type stuff in a secret Vampire Underworld.  But Carmilla herself should be neither the progenitor or head of the family but rather someone more concerned with her own personal Sapphic conquests than any Vampire Politics.  Ideally she should be the Tyrion of the family.

I think this is one of the causes of Carmilla being conflated with Countess Elizabeth Bathory. I decided not to give that one it’s own number since I only know of it happening once, in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, but that once is enough to annoy me and cause me to fear discovering that it's been a trend I hadn't noticed.

Pet Peeve No. 4. Making Carmilla Blonde

Actually any hair color other than pitch black will bug me, but Blonde is what usually happens.  Also the person who should be Blonde is Laura.  You can call this my most superficially pedantic complaint, but the way these characters are described in the original story is vividly etched into my brain, it’s difficult to accept any deviation on that point.  That movies keep changing it, often swapping them completely, baffles me.

As far as movies go I think only Meg Tilly in the 80s Nightmare Classics TV movie looks right.  Though if we count films that are not Carmilla in name but clearly modeled after her, then Ernessa in The Moth Diaries has a great Carmilla look.

Pet Peeve No. 5: Carmilla being harmed by The Sun.

The concept of the Sun being Fatal to Vampires was born out of a misunderstanding of what happened at the end of the 1922 film Nosferatu.  Bram Stoker’s Novel provides some prior precedent for the Sun having some kind of effect, but Stoker’s Dracula definitely has no trouble walking around freely in it.  No pre-Stoker vampire has even that, when they’re Nocturnal it’s because of a positive relationship to the Moon not a negative one with the Sun.

This is one of the few things Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy got right.  Even once they drifted far from being even remotely connected to the original Novella, Karnstein Vampires remained unaffected by Sunlight.

In this case modern adaptations retconning in the Sunlight weakness like they do for all Pre-Dracula Vampires doesn’t bug me as much as people analyzing the original story wanting to retrofit it in.  Their argument seems to be based on LeFanu’s oft memed overuse of the word “Languid”, they seem to think the Sun is what’s making her Languid.

There are perhaps two reasons to describe a Vampire as “Languid”.  Number one, in normal humans it’s a pretty natural side effect of staying up all night getting what little sleep you do get during the day.  And then there is how The New Testament refers to physical death as being asleep, so there is a natural logic then to depicting the Undead as seeming like they should be sleeping right now but can’t. Remember the name of the original anthology Carmilla was apart of was a paraphrase of Paul.

One of the most memorable quotes of the Novel to me is Laura saying “the sunlight did not diminish her beauty”.

That’s not the only traditional Vampire weakness people try to retcon into the story. Her reaction to the Funeral procession is taken as evidence of standard vampiric aversion to religious relics and symbols.  However elsewhere she herself bought Laura a trinket said to repel Vampires, it obviously didn’t repel her.  There are potentially two things going on with the funeral scene.  One, the dead girl is one of her victims, and maybe this is a hint at Carmilla’s conscience.  Second the scene also reflects Carmilla's classism, she’s expressing her Argath level disdain for peasants.

P.S.

There used to be on YouTube this independently made dramatization of the opening scene of Carmilla that I really liked, it’s tone was perfect.  But now I can’t find it.  It could be just too buried under all the newer post viral Webseries Carmilla content, but I even tried using Google to look for specifically older stuff.

December 2021 Update: I found that dramatization on YouTube of the opening scene I was having trouble finding, turns out it was buried in my favorites.  It's called Carmilla (first 3 minutes).

https://youtu.be/9yIcyAq2DHw?list=FL75vHmAjjxxgZ61xHMmWNMg

Anime Gaiden, upping The Halloween

I finished Princess Resurrection and it was fun.  Another Anime I recommend for Halloween season is last year's In/Spectre which you can watch Dubbed on HBOmax.

I decided to watch the Live Action Japanese movie Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl.  It was weird but entertaining. I should warn you however that there are Ganguro girls, and in live action they are not pleasant to look at.  It’s amusing to me how by 2009 the sympathetic Vampire trend had reached the point where they made a Dracula vs Frankenstein movie where the Frankenstein Monster was the villain.  

SSSS.Dynazenon episode 10 used a very common trope, but did something I wasn’t expecting with it.

I’m Standing on a Million Lives episode 19 (or 7 of season 2) was interesting.  The new girl I’m pretty sure is voiced by Wendee Lee.  I thought she was semi-retired and so was quite surprised to hear her in a seasonal Isekai that gets no actual respect.  Her character’s also a Lesbian, no subtext she just outright said it.  That’s exactly what people like Erica Freidman have been wanting more of.  So that’s pretty exciting.

We also learned that for once more than just people from Japan are getting Isekied to this world. Apparently the MC has been speaking too “formally” however this refers to nuances of Japanese that aren’t really translatable.

So episode 2 of YuYuYu season 3 was mostly about animating the Mebuki stuff which LN readers knew about way back during season 2.  But they still won’t animate NoWaYu.

Pokémon: Secrets of The Jungle was great. It’s one of a number of Pokémon movies that are trying to be quite a bit about Environmentalism, but it’s the best of that bunch in my view, regardless of my Nostalgia for some of the earlier ones.  These Pokémon movies are often compared to Miyazaki films like Princess Mononoke, but Pokémon's philosophy on this subject is very different from Miyazaki’s.  Miyazaki, even at his most empathetic to Humanity is still ultimately misanthropic.  Pokémon's message that Humanity and Nature can find a way to live in balance, and that even technology can ultimately help us do that, is much more appealing to me as a Communist.

I watched the Leiji Matsumoto Bohemian Rhapsody video which I learned existed because of Trixie’s recent videos on Star Wars Visions, it was good.

I decided to watch Vampire Hunter D again. I watched it on HIDIVE which obviously has the more recently made Sentai dub. I'm pretty sure I first watched it when the Streamline Dub was still all that existed, but it’s been so long I can’t remember what those voices sounded like.  At any rate I think I liked it more this time than I did the first time.  John Gremillion as D sounds like Liam Neeson, I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but he really does sound like him.

Realist Hero episode 6 provided some interesting world building.

I finished Castlevania on Netflix and it was fine, it’s still not Anime but it’s fine.

The Detective is Already Dead episode 2 was pretty cool, I now get the point of telling a story with this title.  The bad reviews of this show are critiquing it as a Mystery show when that’s really not what it’s trying to be at all.  And even if it was, well I already made a post on that subject.

Episode 7 of Battle Game in 5 Seconds referenced the Hello Fellow Kids Meme, in the Dub at least, and I rather liked it.

The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 10 proved pretty good even though I felt a little bored at the start.

Well in SlimeIncarnation episode 43 the Battle is finally starting.

I've still seen more Anime from 2017 then any other single year

43 entries I've watched to Completion on MAL.  It's not by a super significant margin since second place is 37 and a few are about 33.  But it's interesting.

Again 2017 is the year I started truly following Anime seasonally, in 2016 I had only started becoming vaguely aware what was airing in the later half.  So before that a lot of the flash in the pan shows I'm less likely to have even heard of.  

And even the 2017 shows I didn't watch at the time but watched later I was aware of at the time and my memory of the discussion around them was a factor in my eventually watching them.  Except for ChaoS;Child, for some reason I didn't hear about that at the time even though it's related to a huge franchise so that's weird, also that one show technically takes up 3 of my MAL entries due to the movie and episode 0.

So that explains why I've seen more of 2017 then any prior year, but I've stayed following seasonal Anime, and gotten better about being aware of even the more obscure stuff as I've increased my connections.  2020 had less stuff then usual, but still 2018 and 2019 generally had more stuff, at least of the Genres that most interest me.

Maybe it's the sentimental factor of it being my first year.  I oddly became nostalgic for it as soon as it was over.  And there are still shows I haven't watched or finished yet that I want to, I even keep considering returning to some of the shows I dropped.  With the years since some shows I waited to binge, but most of what I passed on at first I still haven't given a second thought to.

Perhaps it's a good time to revisit my rankings as they have changed.  In Another World With my Smartphone still has a special place in my heart, but I'm no longer willing to call it the best of the year simply for my special relationship with it.  I really do think the best show of 2017 is probably Fate/Apocrypha, it was on my mind a lot at the time and it holds up when I return to it.

Anime Update, entering Halloween season

Episode 9 of SSSS.Dynazenon finally dropped, and it was good stuff.

The Seven Samurai arc of Million Lives Isekai had a satisfying ending.  I’ll at least start the next arc when next Friday rolls around.

The first Episode of Yuki Yuna Is A Hero: The Great Mankai Chapter was fun.

The first episode of The Detective is Already Dead was pretty good stuff.

Battle Game in 5 Seconds episode 6 finally had the MC use his ability to obtain something other than the Hand Cannon.

On October 4th after watching Trixie’s video on Digimon I decided to at least watch the original short film, since it was written by Reiko Yoshida who’s called one of my favorite Anime writers.  I decided to watch it Subbed because the presentation of “Digimon The Movie” is an awkward mess.  It wound up being a fitting movie for October since it’s essentially a Kaiju film.  It’s a pretty good atmospheric little film.

Speaking of watching stuff for Halloween season.  I already made a post on NightWalker, and I also started watching Princess Resurrection.  

The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent episode 9 was good.

Slime Incarnation episode 42 introduced some new characters and clarified some things.  Only 6 episodes left for the season, things should get moving now.

Follow my Anime viewing in real time at these links.

https://myanimelist.net/profile/KuudereKun

https://twitter.com/KuudereKun888

Vampire Private Detectives, there was even an Anime one

Back in the late 2000s I caught a handful of episodes of a TV series called Moonlight which first aired in 2007-2008, who’s basic premise reminded me of Buffy’s spin off Angel, particularly its first season and a half which aired in late 1999 and 2000.  I sometimes went to Moonlight’s IMDB board where I found that naturally I wasn’t the only one to see the similarity.  However others pointed out that the Vampire Private Detective Idea had been done previously by a Canadian TV series called Forever Knight which aired from May 1992 to May 1996.

Fast forward to 2021 and I’ve become a Weeb looking into the history of Anime Adapted from Visual Novels (and Adventure Games that often get confused with Visual Novels), and on AniDB I find that the Summer of 1998 had both of the first two TV Anime it lists as Visual Novel adaptations, one is called Night Walker:Mayonakano Tantei.  It’s official English Title is Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective but it seems a more accurate English translation of the subtitle would be Eternal Darkness.  The Game it was adapted from came out in 1993, it seems the personality of the Main Character was changed significantly.  The Anime didn’t get it’s English localization till 2001.

I still haven’t seen a single episode of Forever Knight, and as of my starting to write this have only watched the first 3 episodes of Nightwalker.  Still I am fascinated by how many notable variations this one very specific concept had in less than 2 decades.

The idea of having a reluctant Vampire be a Private Detective is one I can easily imagine multiple creators coming up with independently.  It’s a pretty natural way to combine Pulp/Film Noir tropes with Urban Fantasy.  In both Angel and Moonlight the protagonist’s Sire serves as a sort of Femme Fatale.  But in both Nightwalker and Forever Knight the protagonist had a male Sire which I’m sure resulted in some Yaoi shipping.

The Anime nature of Nightwalker certainly makes it stand out within this Tetrad.  The Demons behind our Vampire’s cases kind of have a Youkai vibe.  He also makes weapons from his Blood which anticipates Deadman Wonderland.  And for reasons he has a secretary who’s a Japanese School Girl who wears her School Uniform on the job even though I know in real life you’re not allowed to wear your School Uniform doing other things in Japan, but Citrus is the only Anime to ever acknowledge that.

The Music is interesting, it has this one Guitar riff that keeps making me think of Jesus Christ Superstar.

The Dub is one of those Dubs where the only character who feels off is the main character, this should have been a Crispan Freeman role.  Okay I realize some will assume Hellsing is the Freeman role I’m thinking of given the Vampire context, but in this case I’m actually more thinking of him as Amon in Witch Hunter Robin.

In episode 3 we’re told he became a Vampire centuries ago, but the brief Flashback footage we’re shown has him already in his very 20th Century business suit.  So I’m wondering if there’s an explanation for that or if it's just a huge blunder?

After watching episode 4 of Nightwalker, screw what I said before about Shipping, Cain explicitly calls himself an ex Lover. Also for only being episode 4 it felt pretty big, like a season finale or at least a mid-season finale.  I suspect the source material had enough story for a two cour Anime, but one was all the network felt like investing in.

Well I wound up completing Nightwalker.  It was mostly all good stuff, but the last episode annoyed me a bit.  Also there are dangling plot threads, they were clearly hoping for a season 2 that never happened.

Carmilla should be allowed to be a Bad Girl.

There has been a trend online lately of people complaining about how a lot of these modern Disney remakes and reboots making their classic Villainesses more sympathetic ruins what their original appeal was.  But comparatively they’ve had it a lot better than Carmilla, at least they are still allowed to have some Edge.

Carmilla in the most well known recent adaptations isn’t even allowed to be an Antiheroine, she has to be made completely innocent of any wrong doing in order to be considered good “reclaimed” Lesbian representation.  And I’m seemingly the only person who’s not fond of it.  And no I'm not counting the many In Name Only Camrillas who pop up in franchises that were not originally about her, that Castlevania wanna be Anime's take on the character is a Joke to me.

One thing I want is a genuinely faithful direct adaptation of the original Novella. So many people talking about Camrilla just assume a book written by a Male in Victorian England must have actually had a homophobic agenda and there can’t possibly be any positive pro Lesbian reading to the original text itself.  So we have to change things in order to make it Gay affirming.  One YouTuber in their video on Male Bisexuality in Vampires went into a lot of speculation about Bram Stoker’s own Sexuality.  But no one’s willing to do the same for LeFanu.  As a connoisseur of Lesbian content written by people who were assigned male at birth from different cultures, for reasons I can’t explain Carmilla feels to me potentially like the work of a Transbian Egg who never hatched.

But regardless of what gender LeFanu actually was, something about the Ending, how Laura still misses Camrilla in-spite of everything, tells me Laura was a Lesbian herself, not just a victim of one.

In the 1970s we saw the opposite of this trend I’m complaining about now.  The Lesbian Vampire craze of that decade shows us what it looks like when Straight men write Lesbian erotica while still actually morally condemning it.  They are titillated by it in spite of viewing it as a threat, like how many White Men fetishize their fear of the Black Man’s Penis.

Most of those films were not officially adaptations of Carmilla, but regardless what symbolizes them as a counter point to this modern approach to making Lesbian Vampires more Woke is the Het male Romantic rival for Carmilla, the difference is whether that Het male is a Hero or not.  He's the coin with two sides.

So if you really need to add something to your modern retelling of or sequel to Carmilla to make it more unambiguously Pro-Gay.  Instead of pretending women can never be just as abusive and manipulative as men can, add a Lesbian Romantic Rival, make it a full Lesbian triangle.  In part this is what The Moth Diaries is, which is mostly what I like about that movie, but that film also has this “maybe the MC was just imagining it all” plotline which distracts from that and also just can’t work on film as well as it did in the original Book which I own but haven’t read yet.  There is also a Yuri NTR Manga I like called Your Fault who’s code on a certain website is 115990.  Take that story, make Senpai into Carmilla, but also switch the Hair Colors of the Carmilla and Laura analogues, (I’m also very pedantic about how Carmilla should have Dark Hair and Laura should be Blonde), and you have the start of something pretty good.

I'm not saying she needs to be a one dimensional villain, she should have depth and complexities, and maybe as a part of grander saga one of those villains who seems less evil once you get to contrast her with the greater threats.  And maybe even eventually character developed into more of an Anti-hero.  But her introductory baseline should still be as a Lesbian Femme Fatale.

I could now go deeper into the complex relationship in my mind between Yuri Anime and Lesbian Vampires.  Or the broader problems with making Vampires an allegory for Marginalized groups.  But those are potentially their own posts.  However the next Vampire related post I might make on this Blog for October 2021 will mostly be about Male Vampires.

There are some decent Carmilla adaptations already in existence.  A Radio Drama you can find on YouTube, I think it was a BBC one.  A Polish movie that I can’t fully critique because it’s never been Subbed but it looks better then most glancing at it.  And a Comic Book adaptation that I bought, you won’t find it on Amazon searching for Carmilla because it’s in an Anthology, look for Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14.  Due to its lack of Color you could almost mistake it for a Manga adaptation.  And if you want something 80s, try the Nightmare Classics TV Movie starting Roddy MacDowell and Meg Tilly, but even that has some twists I don't like.  I've meanwhile still been unable to find a way to watch 2014's The Curse of Styria.

Among those of us who are true fans of the original Carmilla Novella, the word “Languid” is practically a Meme.  And as someone who likes to intersect my various Nerdy interests, I've started wondering if there is a Dere type I could use to explain what Languid means to my fellow Otaku. An argument could be made for either Nemuidere (Sleepydere) or Darudere (Sluggish).  But The Dere Types Wiki has not proven all that useful in helping me understand these more obscure Deres (as a self identifying Kuudere, I hate their Kuudere page). What I will say is that one Anime character I would definitely describe as Languid is Mako Reizei from Girls Und Panzer.  Margaret Burton in Madlax could also be described as Languid.

Update: So Curse of Styria is on Amazon called Angels of Darkness which doesn't register to me as a great name for a Carmilla adaptation.  It's a decent film, but manages to in it's own way annoy me as an Adaptation.  I guess Carmilla is the one subject where I am everything I hate about VN fanatics hating on every VN Anime.  But the changes I'm being petty about are comparatively far more story relevant.