Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu (Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Moon, Laika, and the Bloodsucking Princess

Japanese: 月とライカと吸血姫

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 4, 2021 to Dec 20, 2021

Premiered: Fall 2021

Broadcast: Sundays at 01:35 (JST)

Producers: Shogakukan, BS TV Tokyo, Bandai Namco Arts, ADK Marketing Solutions

Licensors: Funimation

Studios: Arvo Animation

Source: Light novel

Genre: Fantasy

Themes: Historical, Military, Space, Vampire

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.32¹ (scored by 53,288 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #2649²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1526

Members: 150,696

Favorites: 736

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@LAIKA_anime

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Streaming Platforms

Crunchyroll

7.32

Ranked #2649Popularity #1526Members 150,696

Fall 2021TVArvo Animation

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Episodes: /12

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Synopsis

On November 23, 1957, the whole world witnessed the Federal Republic of Zirnitra's monumental achievement of sending the first live animal—a dog—to outer space. Since then, the space race between the confederacy and its competitor, the United Kingdom of Arnack, has intensified; the two countries hope to one day send humans to the cosmos above.

As a dog's biology is inherently different from a human's anatomy, there is no way to perfectly identify the risks involving space travel and its effects on an individual's body without actually sending someone for observation. However, Zirnitra's government has a potential solution: to experiment on vampires, whose biological similarity to humans is too significant to ignore.

Despite being forcibly taken from her home in the mountains, vampire Irina Luminesk shows no resistance and is even willing to train as a test subject. Lev Leps, a former top candidate to become the first human cosmonaut, is designated to accompany Irina and act as her guide. Through their time together, Irina and Lev begin to develop a mutual love for outer space, bringing them closer together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu was released on Blu-ray from January 26, 2022 to March 29, 2022.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu
Other:	Arifureta Itsuka

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Luminesk, Irina

Main

Hayashibara, Megumi
Japanese

Leps, Lev

Main

Uchiyama, Kouki
Japanese

Simonyan, Anya

Supporting

Kino, Hina
Japanese

Harlova, Ludmila

Supporting

Ichimichi, Mao
Japanese

Natalia

Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko
Japanese

Plevitskaya, Rosa

Supporting

Komatsu, Mikako
Japanese

Korovin, Slava

Supporting

Hashi, Takaya
Japanese

Gergiev, Fyodor

Supporting

Ogata, Kenichi
Japanese

Rimsky, Zhores

Supporting

Natsume, Kyouhei
Japanese

Fellmann, Franz

Supporting

Yamaya, Yoshitaka
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Maruyama, Hajime

Producer

Kondou, Shuuhou

Producer

Itou, Naoko

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Hii no Tsuki (緋ノ月)" by ALI PROJECT

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Ending Theme

"Arifureta Itsuka (ありふれたいつか)" by Chima

Reviews

Dec 19, 2021

Rachiba

Recommended

“The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory, as some people make it out to be. You have to put in a lot of work, a lot of sweat, and have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin”
- Yuri Gagarin

The Cold War lived between two opposing blocs, the beginning of a space and arms race, the dangers of a possible nuclear war and its end in the early nineties inspired many writers, artists, cartoonists and the media to create different works that sought to explain, ...

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Dec 20, 2021

SanaeK10

Mixed Feelings

Going into the Fall 2021 Season, I would have never thought an alternate history fiction about a Soviet Vampire going to space will be my Comfy Anime of the Season, but here I am. In spite of its oppressive setting, or maybe even because of it, Tsuki to Laika has been a light and enjoyable viewing experience.

One thing the show makes it abundantly clear even in the first episode, is that the Vampire/Dhampir are a catch-all for assorted prosecuted races and ethnicities in the Soviet Union/USA. The show being hard historical fiction with relatively accurate depictions of the Soviet Space program came to me as ...

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Dec 23, 2021

literaturenerd

Not Recommended

Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut. Just the title lets you know this is going to be a weird one. I went in having absolutely no idea what to expect, but I was still somehow disappointed by this one. I’m going honest and upfront. This isn't very good.

Brought to you from the director of Cutey Honey Universe and a first-time writer, this is an alternate history version of the space race told through the perspective of the Soviet Union. Isn’t that literally just the plot of Royal Space Force? Gainax already did that shit in 1987 during the Cold War. Irina adds one new element to the ... formula by adding vampires. What do vampires have to do with space exploration? Absolutely nothing. However, Irina wants to preach a message about racism and does so in the most tone deaf, incompetent way possible.

When we first meet the vampire girl Irina, she is being used as a test subject by the Soviets. She has fangs and must sleep in a coffin, so you would think the portrayal of vampires will be somewhat traditional. Instead, we learn that vampires don’t have any magical powers. They don’t attack humans or drink blood. They’re just a hated and oppressed ethnic minority who happen to have fangs and sleep in coffins for no reason. During the Bubonic Plague, vampires were falsely blamed for poisoning wells and were hunted down in pogroms. After that, the vampires lived in isolated communities and over hundreds of years many racial myths and negative stereotypes were created about them. This is seriously the route the anime goes in! They basically just made the vampires a stand-in for Jews. It's not subtle about this at all.

We’re told that vampires are just a harmless minority early on, but the same researcher who tells us this still hates vampires for no reason and is completely ok with killing them in medical experiments. In the world of Irina, the leading Soviet officials and most of their scientists still believe medieval era myths about the vampires for some reason. Myths that any semi-educated person would have stopped believing centuries ago in a world where vampires are real. That would be like in our world if all the Soviet Union’s top scientists in 1960 believed that Jews have horns and that’s why they wear yarmulkes.

Despite showing the space race from the Soviet POV, this anime is Red Dawn levels of anti-Soviet. Every Soviet character besides “nice male MC harem lead” is an evil bastard. They want to use Irina as a guinea pig and make her the first person in space, then kill her and send an ethnic Russian into space. This is not only stupid, but incredibly tasteless and insulting to the first cosmonauts who risked their lives for human progress. Why would you shit on some of the greatest heroes in history?

The answer is simply to tell a monster girl story. Remember Monster Musume and how it tried to have this shoehorned anti-racism message? Only the MC is nice to the monster girls, while everyone else is ridiculously horrible to them. Elfen Lied is also kind of guilty of this admittedly. This would be fine in a purely fictional setting, but Irina goes out of its way to use real historical figures where only 1 letter in their name is changed and directly reference real historical tragedies like the Nedelin Disaster of 1960. It wants the audience to think this is basically a 1:1 retelling of the space race only Soviet minorities have been replaced with monster girls.

This is especially problematic since the CIA ran a propaganda campaign in the 1960s that the Soviets constantly went through cosmonauts like tissue paper and only achieved historic firsts because they cruelly threw away the lives of their explorers. To back this up, an Italian plant produced faked recordings of Soviet cosmonaut death screams that he somehow recorded off a ham radio. These were later found out to be forgeries. It is absolutely true that the Soviets rushed frantically to achieve their goals and covered up 2 high casualty events that were only discovered later, Nedelin being one of these. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets were not purely innocent. However, they didn't constantly go through cosmonauts, which would be highly impractical considering the time and resources required to train them. The Soviets also never put a self-destruct bomb into their landing capsule in order to prevent the Americans from discovering the easiest part of space exploration and kill their own guys in the process. They also didn't use fatal medical experiments on ethnic minorities. On the other hand, NASA was very confident about survival data such as the exact time humans can survive in zero pressure. That's because NASA had some pretty bad dudes working for them such as notorious war criminal Hubertus Strughold. A man whose best friend was executed at Nuremburg for doing the same experiments.

While the Soviet Union did a LOT of bad things during its history, the Soviet space program was one time they were actually the loveable underdogs. They used their own scientists unlike the US, who kissed some a-SS and made a deal with the devil in order to win. The Soviets started from behind and had a small fraction of the money and resources, but miraculously achieved some of the finest feats in the history of engineering. Yet, here we have an anime that wants to repeat propaganda from the Cold War, completely ignore all wrongdoing by NASA, and portray the Soviets as stupid, brutish monsters. All so it can tell a Monster Musume style love story. Fuck this anime.

When it isn't being clumsy and totally pointless propaganda, Irina does have some sweet moments. If you like Monster girl stories, the romance between Irina and Lev is serviceable. There are some sweet scenes here and there like Irina going ice skating where the anime is allowed to be kind of good. The show also makes a last-minute decision to reveal some of the Soviet scientists were good guys and have them rebel against the Kremlin. So, in the last episode, it decided to not character assassinate Sergei Korolev. The source novels aren't actually finished BTW, so this was an anime original ending. Whoever wrote the anime at least made a last-ditch effort and I'll give him credit for that. I even raised my rating by 1 based on the last episode alone.

Sadly, as a space exploration story, Irina really isn't very good. It's not even comparable to an anime like Royal Space Force or Space Brothers. Both of which are excellent. The monster girl romance detracts from the space focus and the series often veers either intentionally or through sheer ignorance into pretty hateful territory with its historical portrayal. As a monster girl story, it also doesn't work because it's weighed down by its need to tastelessly reference real life tragedies like the Nedelin launch failure that killed around 300 people. It's not quite as bad as when the writer of the Sonic comics tried to tell a 1:1 Holocaust parallel with overly sexualized echidnas, but it's pretty tasteless.

So, would I recommend Irina? I'm going to have to go with no. I thought the premise was unusual enough that it had some potential. I don't normally watch seasonals while they air, but Irina hooked me with its bonkers plot alone. As I've covered in this review, the execution leaves much to be desired. It's possible a lot of the problems present in this 12 episode anime aren't quite as bad in the LNs. I've not read them, so I can't say who is to blame for Irina's issues. Unfortunately, this rocket never quite achieves orbit.

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Luminesk, Irina

Leps, Lev

Simonyan, Anya

Harlova, Ludmila

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Plevitskaya, Rosa

Korovin, Slava

Gergiev, Fyodor

Rimsky, Zhores

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