Visual Prison

Vampires have existed for centuries and live under the rule of the Scarlet Moon. Once a year, "Visual Prison" occurs, a visual kei competition where the vampire who sings the most beautiful song is bestowed with great power by the Scarlet Moon. At the forefront of the competition are ECLIPSE—the reigning champions who stand for an established order, and LOST EDEN—a group that believes the strongest should rule.

Ange Yuki is a lonely boy with no confidence in his singing ability. He moves to Harajuku in search of a musician he idolizes, but during his quest, he gets entangled in one of the many live performance clashes between ECLIPSE and LOST EDEN. Their fascinating stages stun him, but he soon collapses, overcome by bloodlust. Regaining consciousness, Ange finds himself under the care of Guiltia "Guil" Brion, the musician he admires, and learns that he is a dhampir—half-human, half-vampire.

While Ange now has the privilege of participating in the upcoming Visual Prison, Guil explains that he will not join him in this endeavor. Meanwhile, Ange encounters Robin Laffite, a foreigner from England who is enamored by his astonishing singing voice. With the day of the competition slowly creeping up, Ange has to put together a capable unit in an exciting race against time.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Brion, Guiltia Main

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Yuki, Ange Main

Chiba, Shouya Japanese

Louise, Eve Main

Nanami, Hiroki Japanese

Veuve, Elizabeth Main

Nagatsuka, Takuma Japanese

Latour, Saga Main

Eguchi, Takuya Japanese

Laffite, Robin Main

Horie, Shun Japanese

Romanee, Dimitri Main

Masuda, Toshiki Japanese

Jayer, Hyde Main

Aoi, Shouta Japanese

Mouton, Jack Main

Yano, Shougo Japanese

Flaiv, Mist Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Yokoyama, Shuko Producer

Kikuchi, Yuuichirou Producer

Tanaka, Tomoya Director

Furuta, Jouji Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jan 2, 2024

Fyrebirdi

Recommended

I bumbled into this anime while searching for a vampire anime. What I found instead was simply... fun

Don't expect a great (or even coherent) story. I still don't understand much of the logic! Plot holes are simply filled with great music, and ambiguous characters are covered in plot armour. Some scenes are spoiled a bit by the occasional use of 3D, which I felt didn't blend well. There is much that one can criticize about this anime... and yet... it's still fun.

Visually this anime is eye candy with sexy vampire musicians and homo-erotic subtext. The voice acting and singing is stellar, and characters look great ... both on and off stage. It's truly all about the music and ultimately thats all an anime like this needs to be enjoyable. Its great for those times you'd prefer to switch off your brain and let your foot tap to the beat of the music. Even if you are clueless about J-Rock (like wtf is Visual Kei?), it still holds high appeal. The main aim of this anime is to entertain... and damn, it does it well.

Overall I enjoyed it for what it offered. 7/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 29, 2021

Ellenwitch

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (4/12 eps)

Visual Prison can be best served up as an experience lol. Take the first episode as an example of it. You'll be left wondering if this is more a debut of a musical album, rather than an anime in itself. While there is a story there, the story isn't it's strongest part, it's strongest part is more it's music numbers, and it's flashy and deep coloured art.

It's almost like you've gone to the theater, or a pantomime, to see not only a show, but to see it in a musical form. It's that kind of experience all round when it comes to this show.

Like, it ... might be the sole reason why Visual Prison has close to a 6 on MAL's rating, and in my review, as it's purely because the sound, the music, is fire. I legit would want to listen to each and every song that has come on through this show from start to finish, and I'd listen to them over and over again. The art too, is so well detailed, if any of the budget for this show went anywhere, it went into these two directions for sure.

As for the story itself...It's not too bad, but just feels there in order to push the show along, and won't be what you came to the show for. It explains itself. As Yuki is a lonely boy with no confidence in his singing ability. He moves to Harajuku in search of a musician he idolizes, but during his quest, he gets entangled in one of the many live performance clashes between ECLIPSE and LOST EDEN. Whom now has the chance, to partake in the Visual Prison, which is basically vampires singing, and the winner by the end who is chosen, will be given remarkable power. So heavy stakes all round lol.

The characters are a bit hit or miss. Not that they're bad, but more that there is a fair bunch of them, that all fit into different groups, as after all, each musical talent is their own. Which makes sense. So they'd kinda match up to your tastes. But one thing is for sure. Most are quite the determined and mostly just have that aggressive, or 'better than you' attitude to them. Not all of them, but a lot can come off that way.

Visual Prison is a stand out of the season for sure. But for very weird reasons. It's hit or miss, depending your tastes, and may be remembered for more of the music, then it's actual content. That, and if you like BL, you may like this a little more. But it might be worth giving it a watch.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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May 29, 2022

GleewJoy

Not Recommended

This anime doesn't make sense and I'll prove it to you very clearly in this review.

Starting with all characters and their respective groups:

• Band 1 •

OZ: Ange, Robin, Eve and Guil. This is the main group formed by Ange, all because he liked to sing but couldn't "could". Now a brief summary about all of them.

Ange: The protagonist who doesn't consider himself a vampire, even though he felt the same things as a vampire and still talks in the anime that he didn't fit in the human world and that he was happy that he finally found his place... How come he doesn't is ... a vampire?

Robin: The classical music stranger loves his twin even though they can't even be called twins anymore considering their external changes.

Eve: he put in the anime that he thinks he's a monster just because he killed a nun (important), all because he hunted vampires and killed a good guy by mistake, if he had used Santa's method, I would never have been so paranoid in the work.

Guil: He doesn't want to sing because his best friends died, he committed the biggest lunar crimes, biting a woman (they'll understand that yet) and on top of that taking away the right to choose a baby in its mother's womb yet.

• Band 2 •

LOST EDEN: Saga, Elizabeth, Mist and Jack. Rival anime group. In brief, they like red and black, speak subjective words of destruction, and everyone has some weird story, or almost.

Saga: If you see that Saga is not normal when he realizes that his dream is to make the world a black Friday every day, the only difference is that you wouldn't take money, why money in a world where everyone is kings, right? Even better would be to receive a phrase like that from the store attendants "thanks for your preference, I hope you enjoyed your experience here at the totally free game store".

Elizabeth: Beth is complicated, she doesn't have a story and if she does I lose it at some point, so I'll just mention the oddities. She uses a string wand to release her powers, Beth sings a song where at the beginning she says that beauty is everything, and then in the anime she says that beauty is not everything, of course that wouldn't be a problem, characters change their perspectives all the time, so what's the problem here? She just forgot to mention what she has in her life so reveal to change even her highest ideals.

Mist: Played on those chart analysis sites and got rich, since he was going to die in thirty days, he decided to donate all his fortune to some big shot with a good cause, then he donates all his money to some weird guy who wants to extinguish the world's money basically... Normal. If he realizes that mist doesn't quite hit the head when in his moment of not living, he says that the reason he doesn't want to become a vampire is that he will only feel pain and suffering for not being able to have what he wants, and then what would it be this thing he would never get? Simple, the love of the guy from the totally free stores, what did I miss for in the end, he's saying that he's powerful and beautiful and he's all loving, it must have been a week since they met on the internet... that's it. This is wrong in so many ways that I'm even questioning if this really happens or is it just the person who is getting emotional too hastily.

Jack: He hates his brother just because he sings gospel music better than him, so he reneged on his former self and is now Japanese rock and not questionable at all. He tried to kill the same brother twice for the same reason... Jack was supposed to be the character that puts fear in people's heads, but he only achieved this effect with his brother himself, a character so aimless that even Beth was glad she didn't have it. A story now.

• Band 3 •

ECLIPSE: Dimitri and Hyde. A group originally created by Guil, also had Saga after a certain point, it disbanded because of Guil who wanted to sing the songs of his new muse, after that Saga also left and only Hyde and Dimitri were left in the group.

Dimitri: He likes to walk naked when he is comfortable with the environment, there is a beetle called Odin, together with Hyde they created one of the primordial rules of the world... did I mention that he likes to walk naked?

Hyde: Whenever he has the opportunity to implicate Dimitri, he is Guil's vampire father's brother, the two call their followers lambs and seek to protect them by creating new rules for the world.

• Band 4? •

Carmilla: Best character in the anime, didn't even need to appear much to stand out.

Story: A vampire nun who took care of possibly orphaned children, until one day a heartless human killed her... History is not her strong point.

Why is she the best? Simple, sang one of the only good songs in the entire anime, just wants to make new friends while playing some good games with the guys, it's not bad animated, it's the only female character in the midst of so many men confusing you (this part doesn't seem right, see below), even "weakness" for mayonnaise she has, if that's not the best character, I'm sure I'm under the Dunning effect.

• The world of Visual Prison •

The anime is mostly set in Harajuku in a fictional Japan. In this world, vampires sing to the moon in a ritual called visual prison, whoever sang the most beautiful song would be the winner.

From what I've noticed and heard from the characters, the visual prison only happens every new century.

The prize for singing the most beautiful song is a red tear, joining 10 of these tears you can make a wish on the blood moon. NOTE: one of the wishes was requested by Dimitri and Hyde.

Blood moon is the moon that only vampires can see, if you are the leader of your group you can start the "visual prisons", the leader or leaders will be chosen by the moon if she sees potential in you, only the leader can call diamonds members to the group, through a mini blood ritual.

• Visual Prison Rules •

The rules are enforced by the moon and must be obeyed by all vampires.

Breaking the rules will result in punishment, vampires who break the rules more than once will return to the blood moon as punishment (death).

The most important rule in the anime and made by Hyde and Dimetri as I wish the moon when gathering 10 bloody tears was that no vampire can feed on the blood of humans.

• The Vampires of Visual Prison •

You can become a vampire if bitten by one, but doing so will cause the vampire in question to suffer the moon's punishment for breaking a human's biting/feeding rule.

Visual Prison's Vampires have few similarities compared to other works with the same vampire theme, such as:

Not burning in the sun, having a reflection in the mirror, they don't need blood to survive (at no time did they complain about it, so I don't think they need it).

There are also Dampiros, which are a rare variety of vampires, which occurs when a vampire has a child with a human, in the anime it is said that most of the time this will not result in a dampiro.

• Visual Prison's music •

Some are even listenable, like 5 out of 15 in the anime, but most of the time it's just a repeat of Ange singing the opening. In my opinion, this work fails as a musical product.

• Things that don't make sense in Visual Prison •

- There doesn't seem to be any other bands in the anime besides the three presented, neither vampires nor humans.

- In the anime they use makeup to disguise that they are vampires, this would even work, if they didn't all have the same sword-microphones and red eyes with pointy teeth showing.

- How can you have a vampire princess if women in this work can't become vampires if they are bitten?

- Sometimes the songs that a character is singing alone echoes throughout the city and everyone can hear it, even if they don't have any capture equipment near them.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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	Poll: Visual Prison Episode 4 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 29, 2021	23 replies	by doctor-funk-beat »» Sep 20, 7:27 PM
	Thoughts? Victii - Mar 27, 2021	37 replies	by 1O23 »» Oct 14, 2023 9:12 PM
	Poll: Visual Prison Episode 2 Discussion Stark700 - Oct 15, 2021	20 replies	by xLunaDragon »» Oct 4, 2023 1:02 PM
	Poll: VISUAL PRISON 1st GIG -RED MOON Megabrain90 - Mar 11, 2023	3 replies	by Megabrain90 »» Mar 11, 2023 1:45 PM
	Poll: Visual Prison Episode 12 Discussion Stark700 - Dec 24, 2021	22 replies	by senekohan »» Feb 27, 2023 9:43 AM