Director: Mamoru Hatakeyama
First aired: 2023
Contains spoilers
An anime series that (to date of posting) has run a single season, I have to say this was great fun. Set in a fin de siècle setting, in a world where monsters are real and known about, the main character (the undead girl) is Aya (Tomoyo Kurosawa) a fushi who is truly immortal. Unfortunately, she was decapitated and her body stolen and so is now a head carried in a birdcage.
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| Tsugaru |
She and her servant Shizuku (Makoto Koichi) travel to a circus to find the so-called Oni-Slayer, Tsugaru (Taku Yashiro), half-oni (due to an experiment that was forced upon him) he has the ability to kill supernatural beings with his bare hands. She wants him to kill her and in return she will give him the knowledge to stop the oni side of him causing a descent into homicidal madness. The answer is eating parts of her, however they realise that the person who experimented on Tsugaru also stole her body – an elderly western man with a cane bearing the letter M.
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| Godard |
They agree to look for her body and, as they search for clues, she becomes a detective who specialises in supernatural cases. The first takes them to France where Lord Godard (Hiroyuki Kinoshita) and his family of vampires have tried to make peace with humans – a difficult proposition given the actions of Dracula but made easier as the latter is dead. Unfortunately they were attacked recently by a hunter and, following that, his wife was staked in their home.
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| a family of vampires |
The Godard’s were fascinating as the series had them still impacted by silver and holy water (and fire and stakes kill) but they actively went to church and only drank animal blood. They have two human retainers and Aya quickly concludes that the murderer must be from the home, but who is it and how to prove it? This mystery lasts through to the fourth episode and I suspected that this was going to be the most vampire orientated section. But, whilst it was the one where the episode focused on vampires, there was vampiric involvement all along.
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| Carmilla |
The next section is in London and Arsene Lupin (Mamoru Miyano) had declared to the world that he would steal a diamond from Phileas Fogg (Hideaki Tezuka) both Aya and Sherlock Holmes (Shin'ichirô Miki) are hired to foil the crime but there are other players in the form of the Banquet – a secret society led by Professor Moriarty (Wataru Yokojima). He has a crew of monsters – one being Carmilla (Reina Kondô). They want the diamond as it is synthetic and contains the key to finding the lost Village of werewolves.
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| bite |
Looking at Carmilla, she prefers to feast on women, and she has a venom, which works on skin contact, that causes the victim to become hot and numb and fall under her aphrodisiac spell. At one point she is stabbed with a cross and that burns (whether it is the holy symbol or simply the cross was made of silver is not clear). Interestingly, whilst a silver burn takes time to regenerate, cutting the affected area away allows for immediate regeneration (so silver burnt fingers will take a week to heal but cut them off and they regenerate rapidly).
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| detectives |
There is a third set of antagonists – insurance agents for Lloyds who are monster hunters and prejudiced against their kind. This hotchpotch of literary, historical (such as Aleister Crowley (Tomokazu Sugita) who is an agent for the Banquet), and original characters made for an interesting watch and the stories were great fun. The animation was sharp – the character design were typically anime, which made for an interesting interpretation of characters such as Lupin. It’s been a couple of years, but I do hope this gets a second season. 7.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Crunchyroll via Amazon US
On Demand @ Crunchyroll via Amazon UK
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