Vassalord.

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.

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.

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.