Vassalord.

Well I have to say that I really wanted to watch this anime after reading the manga volumes over and over again... I love the story behind it and the ova was following volume 1 perfectly. But there is a but in all this.

For a reader like me who had already read all the chapters it's easy to know and understand EVERYTHING that happens, but I'm not sure if a person that haven't read anything would understand certain things here.

Therefore as a reader it's hard for me to know how a person without the background history would look at this great ova. I'd ... say it's a great one filled with what i expected.. though a little too much blood for my taste is all.

To tell the truth, ova 1 only contains chapter 1 from volume 1 from the Vassalord manga which contains many more chapters and more than 4 volumes. So if you liked the ova, please do read the manga

Overall I give this ova a 8 because I love the story behind it, the art was great, and loved the voice actors too

Watched it for the sake of the shounen ai but found there was almost nothing about it, on the other hand the art, visual language and animation of the episode were jaw dropping! This weird 30 minutes of an episode is a trippy action packed dramatic almost nonsensical hard to understand journey that does little in trying to explain itself. Sometimes it bores, other times it grips you hard to the screen. I'd recommend trying to watch the first scene and to chose from that if it interests you to complete the viewing, the fan-service driven promotional poster certainly doesn't do that piece of enigma ... justice.

I am in utter fucking disbelief that this anime has better fight scenes than most shounen. The art was good. The characters were pathetically shallow and cookie cutter. The story was a couple of nuggets of misdirected angst. But the fight scenes... why are the fight scenes so damn good. That's all I have to say.

(((let me write a short review goddamn it I elaborated enough you piece of shit website when will you be satisfied with my word count I just wanted to write a silly review not the Odyssey of reviews it'sa shitty yaoi there isn't alot to mention bro just let me ... post this fucking review fuck shit ass tits damn hurry up and accept my fuckin' word count I have shit to do I just want to post this stupid thing already this is getting ridiculous come on man)))

I decided to review the Vassalord. OVA, which I watched one week ago on a whim, for my first ever review because it left me surprised and disappointed at the same time. I'm struggling to come up with a suitable word to describe what I was left feeling when the credits began so I hope I can figure it out through writing this spoiler free review.

- STORY/CHARACTERS -
The story obviously suffered because the OVA is only 27 minutes long. It would have benefited hugely from being much, much longer. I feel parts did not get enough time focused on them and the explanation of ... things was rushed. I really enjoyed the action, mystery and overall darkness of the story though. If you like that kind of thing then you'll probably enjoy this.

Character development could obviously not be done all that well either but I quite liked the two main characters Charles Chrishunds and Johnny Rayflo and their interactions with one another. It's a real shame because from what the little the OVA gave us, it was truly promising. I need more! Preferably a TV series! I want to see a more detailed and longer story involving these two guys. The other very few characters were not memorable or likeable at all.

- ANIMATION/ART -
I adore Production I.G and everything visually in Vassalord. was beyond beautiful. Overall I really loved the animation, art, character designs and so on. It's just something really gorgeous to look at. Watch this if you adore Production I.G or just good looking anime in general.

- SOUND -
I liked the voice actors for the two main characters Johnny Rayflo and Charles Chrishunds. The voiced fitted the characters and they did a good job. The ED song Misunderstanding is a really pretty sounding song. It ended the OVA perfectly and was great to listen to as I reflected on what I had just seen.

- OTHER COMMENTS/ENJOYMENT/OVERALL -
I'm disappointed despite going in to the anime with no expectations at all. It kind of just felt like a promo for a manga. However, I want to read the manga now so I guess it did its job there. It does does its job well of giving you a taste of what Vassalord. is all about. I adore the overall darkness and the atmosphere of the anime. It left me wanting and literally needing more. I am very intrigued and want to see and explore more of the world of Vassalord. It seems like a really cool supernatural world.

It could have been something incredibly special (I wanted to say, "Really *swear word* amazing!") but it turned out as being a decent but too short OVA which left me with a great and difficult to explain feeling. Since I just clicked and watched it at random Vassalord. took me completely by surprise. After some consideration: I'd give it a 6/10, it just fell short of a 7. I wanted to be very generous with my rating for it but I felt I had to be harsher due to the disappointment and thoughts of "Huh? Is that it!?" I had at the end. I was not satisfied at all. It's a good job there is a manga to read next!

If you have nothing to watch and half an hour to kill then I suggest you watch Vassalord. Definitely watch it if you can't get enough of the supernatural (specifically vampires!). By the way, this anime also has a tiny, little drop of shonen-ai in the atmosphere but don't let that put you off if you don't like that kind of thing. If you do like it then you'll be disappointed by the lack of it but enjoy the little hints.

Please don't expect Vassalord. to be a masterpiece, just an anime that had some potential. It is definitely an interesting watch and I'm sure those who did read the manga before watching this enjoyed it more. Who knows, maybe when I've read the manga I'll feel differently...? If you're on the fence about reading the manga I think this OVA will give you an idea of what it's about and might leave you with a stronger desire to read it.

Rate of 5
english subbed

Pro(s)
-art is beautifully done
-art matches the plot
-plot is original
-conclusion was a very helpful segment that answered the main questions regarding the plot.

Con(s)
... -plot/characters is borderline on making sense. Yes, the general aspects of the questions are answered but the more definitive parts like individual characters appeared to be brushed off. For example the sidekick if you will job is counter-intuitive. He acts but how can he give who he is? Also, his make up seems off putting. Like blending a tomato with a pineapple.

-introduction painted a confusing standpoint for what is supposed to be.

-art was not done well enough to convey a horror portrayal.

sound: did not convey proper suspense.

p.s. commercial/horror is interesting but is pretty hard to get a good blend. If you want a dark laugh then you might like this. If you want to stain your pants don't bother with this.

This is my first ever review so bear with me. :)
Firstly, i really enjoyed this OVA. When i first watched it, i had absolutely no idea what it was about and only went in due to the shounen ai/yaoi factor. However, once i got the gist of what the story is about i found that i loved it. It has a pretty good plot going on. Though if like me you went in without any idea of the actual story you will find yourself completely confuse. Being confuse isnt such a bad thing to me tbh, because most of the time whenever i watch/read ... something new i would be unclear of what the main story is about.

The characters to me are pretty interesting. I feel that the two main characters have a good chemistry going on. haha. After completing the manga, i feel that they did a decent job of developing the characters just through 1 OVA.

I think that the art and sound did the best compared to the story and character. The way the characters were designed and the voices they had fit perfectly well together. Of course im not trying to say it was the best thing i have ever seen, but compared to my expectations, it was very well done.

Overall, i feel that watching this OVA is worth wasting 27 min of my life. It is visually pleasing, and you can really get engaged into the story if this kind of story is your thing. It even made me read the entire manga afterwards so... Therefore, i give this OVA an overall of 8 and hope that people that enjoy this genre should give a shot.

There's only so much you can do with 1 OVA episode. It is impossible to capture the full complexity of the manga's plot and character development in just 20 minutes. Vassalord's OVA does not try to do that. Instead it focuses on simply capturing the mood and tension of emotions in the story, and that, it does extremely well. The opera-inspired music score is juxtaposed with a lot detailed, blood-stained scenes, to very memorable effect. Some might find the music somewhat melodramatic. But for me, it takes away the 'gore' effect of the blood, and transforms it into something beautiful, melancholic, full of lost and ... longing.

Having read the manga, I found this very enjoyable. But I think, even for someone who has not read the manga, this OVA is a good first taste of what the rest of the story would feel like.

Well that was ~25 minutes of pure confusion. I felt no emotion attachment, the story was rushed, the characters weak, and the plot devices were interesting but underdeveloped.

I'm a person who has never seen the manga, so I can only review from the anime alone, and it doesn't carry itself well at all. I found myself thinking that it would be interesting in a short anime series where more character development and exposition can take place.

That being said, the art and music is interesting and the characters had an intriguing enough premise that I was annoyed when the plot didn't deliver. It's promising, ... and perhaps better addressed in the manga version.

Tl;dr If you're looking for a quick hit of gory, vampyric, shounen-ai action then this is not it. If you're looking for a teaser or a quick preview of what you can expect from the manga before you dive in, then PERHAPS this is the way to go.

It's a really bad sort of trailer for the manga, from the voice acting to fighting, to plot, to characterization.

Perhaps its worst crime is that they decided to make this the only anime adaptation of the manga, when it's a relatively faithful adaptation of the manga's beginning, but the beginning is probably the weakest part of the series. The reason I'm unsure if its worst crime is what the crew chose to adapt (so you can't really blame them for how bad it is) is because the 'episode' opens with a really, really terrible broken English conversation. While watching this I thought I'd mistakenly found ... an English dub of the video. I'm not sure if it's better that this ISN'T the English dub; it's just THAT bad. I'm also not sure why it was necessary? It adds nothing to the story. In the manga, there's no indication they're speaking in English (or if there is, it doesn't break you out of the story so bad). And this is LITERALLY the first spoken part of the episode. Bad opening.

The episode(?) (it's not an OVA) is basically a quick runthrough of the first mini-arc in the story. They skip over a couple minor tidbits (off the top of my head they remove a funny character-building scene between Rayflo and Charles when Rayflo buys some stuff, and they for whatever reason remove the dead bodies when Rayflo and Charles come across the massacre, but leave these weird bodiless blood spatters on the ground), but overall it's basically just the opening of the story. They even add a scene where Rayflo solves a cypher, perhaps so they could give Rayflo something to do. It actually helps the scene flow better and helps demonstrate Rayflo's age, whereas in the manga it kind of just cuts from Charles not understanding something to answering a phone call. They also made it look like one character is a vampire when they're actually not for some reason (in both anime and manga), which wasn't the case in the manga. I don't know what that was about.

In this arc/episode we're infodumped, which is normal for the openings in fantasy/supernatural series. We're also introduced to the primary relationship - RayfloxCharles. You have to set the rules. Unfortunately the rules set are largely ignored for the rest of the series, and the dynamics set up are, for no apparent reason, bizarrely twisted to something else. The problem is that neither of the dynamics set up are necessarily bad as story elements, but that one doesn't just switch to the other.

One rule that's completely ignored until basically the very end of the series is the wings. Charles gets them when he nearly dies near the end of the episode due to, I guess, blood loss, and then gets a boost of blood from Rayflo. We never see these again. We never get an explanation for why this happens. Charles does frequently abstain from drinking from Rayflo during the series, even collapsing twice from it during the series outside this scene, and Rayflo appears to give him an emergency transfusion. But at neither time do the wings reappear. Rayflo does get his wings at the end of the series, but this is implied to be a power he seldom activates, and only when he's very, very angry. Charles gets angry and desperate plenty of times. The wings never show up. No other vampire is shown to have this ability besides Charles and Rayflo. Rayfaelle, like Rayflo, is shown to be able to turn into a swarm of bats. Princess Minae, who is apparently old and powerful, does not seem to have wings. Now imagine this, but microcosmed into one episode with no explanation before or after. Other than that it's a thing that Rayflo is apparently aware of.

And then there's the RayfloxCharles relationship. I don't hate the relationship. It just doesn't make sense half the time and a good chunk of that is in this arc. In this arc, it initially seems to be setting up a relationship where 1) a vampire hunter somehow ran afoul of a powerful vampire who turned him, and now the vampire hunter keeps trying to kill him to get free, but since he's weaker than the vampire and partially under the vampire's control, he can't do it, or 2) Charles knows Rayflo is immortal and just uses him as a punching bag to test his skills so he can level up because it's easier than looking for targets to murder and he cares very little about Rayflo's wellbeing.

Whatever is happening is undercut almost immediately by the fact that it's very clear that Charles cares very deeply for Rayflo. This is all before any backstory is revealed. The whole 'using Rayflo + his maids for target practice' thing is also dropped after this arc. In short, there's a couple ways the story sets up their relationship all at the same time, none of which are ultimately true for no apparent reason, all of which conflict with each other, and basically the guy who cries over Rayflo at the end of the episode has done precisely zero character development over the course of the episode from where he was attacking Rayflo + co out of nowhere at the beginning of the episode. I think the creator wanted to make Charles a tsundere who uses weapons for his feelings at all times but didn't know how to do that?

The art itself is fine. It's actually slightly worse than the manga. The fight scenes are meh. Most anime make up for the brevity of manga pages by adding the inbetweens of shots you don't see on the page. This one doesn't. It's just a lot of cut cut cut superpowerful badasses fighting each other in a fight where nothing matters and no one is harmed or dies. It's actually harder to understand what's going on in the anime than in the manga because the cutting is that bad, except for one shot where Rayflo gets iced. The anime did a better version of that.

Other than that, the actual plot of the arc itself is pretty bad. Part of that is more worldbuilding I'm not going into because it's more of an issue for the manga, but part of that is just that the plot is very confusing, which only makes everything else worse when it's dropped on top. Charles is back briefly from somewhere, attacks Rayflo because... tsundere? Sort of suicidal tendencies? He gets a job and decides to take Rayflo with him for food. But wait, it's actually not the Official church giving him orders. But wait the not-church churchies... don't actually want him? They want Rayflo? Because their test subject coma patient they decided to wake up gave this vaguely foreboding prophecy about something bad happening?

But wait, they were never supposed to wake her up. So why did they? No no, she woke up on her own. Okay, why does this group answer her wishes? And she didn't ask for Rayflo. She was just weirdly foreboding. Is she a special vampire cause she's got ice magic? And maybe other magic? Who cares. The writer doesn't. Just how many kinds of abilities do these vampires have? And why IS Charles mostly immune to sunlight but like these uber powerful vampires aren't? Thus, in this one episode of anime we are introduced to a race with a seemingly endless range of abilities and very few to no vulnerabilities, a world that doesn't make a ton of sense, and relationships that flip flop so badly you get whiplash.

Overall this episode is a mess from pretty much every angle, although again - it's not entirely the crew's fault since they pretty faithfully adapted the manga. If you want to read the manga, it's... I mean it's fine as a yaoi. It's definitely better than this. Just get past this section and you'll be fine. Mostly. Also, Rayflo and Charles get better looking as the series progresses so that's already more points in favor of skipping this and just reading the manga. Although if you want to watch this, at least it's short? If you want to watch a better shounen-ai story, watch "Douyusei"/"-Classmates-" (just a movie) or "Sekaiichi Hatsukoi"/"World's Greatest First Love". If you want a better supernatural story with vampires, "Sirius the Jaeger" is pretty decent and has great art.

I'm sure if I had read the manga the story would've been a little more fleshed out but without more context, it's kind of like a little one-shot. I definitely think it woudl've been better as a series but seeing as there are more volumes in the manga there actually is more story. The art was good for it being an older anime. The characters seemed fairly interesting with the interaction and the little bit of backstory provided. It's just an episode so not like a huge deal but it was still a fun little watch. thank you lots for reading I'm just trying to ... meet word count lmao

To start off, I haven't read the manga – and as such this anime is extremely confusing for me.
I wish they made a series as well, as I feel like they had to cut down everything, given that it is originally from a manga. I assume the manga had clearer story arcs, but in this ova I barely got time to get to know the characters.

I assume this is more as an ode to the manga readers, so I'll read the manga and come back to the ova. But if you're like me, it is definitely worth a view, given that it is only 30mins ... long. I enjoyed it but was left with a million questions, which I hope the manga explains.