Vampire in the Garden – review

Directed by: Ryōtarō Makihara

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

There is so much vampire genre material out there that it is impossible to keep up, hence this blog has been running so long and why I have a watch pile like Mount Everest (and that pairs with an equally high read pile). There seems to be little excuse for me to have not watched this anime series, however. Only 5-episodes long and released to Netflix it is a short, satisfying little animation.

soldiers

It starts with a group of soldiers including the young woman Momo (Megumi Han). They are human troops and they are in conflict with vampires. This is a world which has virtually fallen to vampires, with cities in ruins. These humans live in a conurbation that they protect with a wall of light and they scavenge from the dead lands to survive. Momo, we will later discover, is the daughter of General Nobara (Rika Fukami), and on these duties to stave off suggestions of favouritism.

musical box

In a building they discover vampires and Momo faces a child who holds up a musical box that has a painting in the lid of vampires and humans living in harmony. The music startles Momo – music has been banned in human society and is deemed part of vampire culture – as does her apparent youth. As more troops arrive, the child injects a vampire drug that morphs her body into a monstrous form. It is defeated and once back at the city Momo is reprimanded for not firing.

vampire decadence 

Elsewhere the vampire queen Fine (Yū Kobayashi) tries to avoid her duties by attending lavish parties and hides the fact that she is ill as she refuses to drink blood. It is notable that at this point you could read the vampires as a millionaire class, decadent and dancing, with the humans as a worker class who are violently estranged from the vampire class. However, later we see poor and destitute vampires and thus there can be a further reading of the false promise of trickle down economics and the impact on those workers who buy into the system (are turned).

Fine and Momo

There is a raid on the city by the vampires (human traitors have been promised turning to take down the generators for the lights) and Fine is, reluctantly, amongst the vampires. Momo has been caught with the musical box and has run from the city in upset. Fate brings the two together and, coincidentally, Momo is the image of Fine’s human lover, a relationship that ended disastrously. Finding each other they run away – but the humans want Momo back and the vampires want their queen.

Megumi Han voices Momo

What was nice about this, beyond some lovely animation, was the fact that the story concentrated on a friendship and invested itself entirely in that. Of course the relationship could be read as deeper than friendship and queer but that is a subtext and the writing felt like it wanted to genuinely portray a growing friendship without needing to rely on sexual attraction (and fan service) and felt all the more authentic for it.

monstrous vampire

However, beyond this, the story did feel a tad curtailed, as short as it was. There was a whole fascinating world that was barely built due to time. They just put the essentials in place to carry the story forward and thus develop the friendship aspect. Don’t let that put you off, there is a neat little anime here that looks lovely, has some fighting and vampire action and is worth your time. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.