Babanbabanban Vampire

Fantastic anime. Probably anime of the year if I'm being honest. The relationships between the vampire and the extremely young and delicious boy is the best written relationship I've seen in any form of media. Mori's excited tendencies really showcase his love for the character he is trying to groom into his next meal, or next romantic partner.

On a real note, the vampire is a massive groomer and pedophile. It's a hilarious and extremely disturbing anime with relatively interesting character dynamics. You may want to seek psychological help if you genuinely believe there is nothing wrong with this show. Regardless, I think it is ... hilarious and the topic is absolutely insane. I've never seen an anime quite like this one, though I'm sure there are plenty of them. The characters are also written surprisingly well and the dialogue isn't bad either. Looking forward to the rest of the season, and hopefully we get a few more.

(Joint review)
You know what you need when watching this?
Some friends, alcohol, and the resolve to die (on the inside, over and over again).

We felt like to dying after watching every single episode (the very mention/animation of a boner from Ranmaru made us cringe so hard that we wanted to crawl out of our skin, and burry ourselves under a rock). You're going to need some bleach, plenty of vodka shots, a comfort blanket, and to cry for your mama while you all fall down this miserable cycle of self deprecation.

Harsh criticism aside, this hardly is a show for anyone to take seriously. ... (I don't think even the author is taking this seriously, and if he is, well, shit, someone make sure there's no underage virgins within a 500 meter radius around him.) This show has a range of varying characters: from a pedophile/groomer, underage virgin boys, an exhibitionist, there are plenty to be surprised by. The character's are over the top annoying/stupid/oblivious/delusional/cliché, that it makes it kind of entertaining to watch them stumble over their own feet while you claw your own face off with the sheer amount of facepalming and second hand embarrassment.

Each episode, although generally talking about Ranmaru keeping Rihito's virginity intact, is not dull. There's always some new misunderstanding, new obstacle, new challenge to solve or problems to stir up. And since you have little care for the well-being of the characters, it's fun to watch them spiral into eternal suffering.

Because we sure are suffering from submitting ourselves in such a masochistic hate-watch of a challenge.

Let’s talk about queerbaiting.

Queerbaiting is when an audience is led to believe a work of fiction will feature prominent LGBT characters, and/or center LGBT story arcs, when in actuality those elements are barely there, or even implied rather than actually included. It’s a term i am very reluctant to use. I’ve heard some others in the LGBT community advocate for straightbaiting, in which straight people are led to believe a story will be about them until it’s revealed at the end that nope, it was queer all along! I’ve seen this done a few times, and i can’t say i’m a fan. The problem with ... straightbaiting is that it feels like queerbaiting right up until the last moment; i’m not convinced that final relief is worth the emotional strain that the earlier parts of the story cause.

With that in mind, let’s talk about Babanbabanban Vampire.

The main character of this series is indeed a gay vampire, and it appears to be marketed as a BL story, but it’s very hard to trust. It feels, rather than a gay story, more like the gay vampire is a plot device to get a straight couple together. The manga runs in a magazine that isn’t known for telling queer stories, and given the context of the anime thus far, available chapters of the manga, and the magazine carrying the story make even the pun of interpreting BL as “Bloody Love” concerning. Even if you overlook the elements that could be interpreted as straightbaiting, the vampire Ranmaru’s relationship with human boy Rihito is incredibly disturbing. Ranmaru’s favorite type of blood to drink is that of 18-year-old male virgins, and the story revolves around him living with Rihito’s family and attempting to preserve Rihito’s virginity until he reaches the age of 18, when Ranmaru will then drink his blood. It plays very strongly into the current queerphobic dogwhistle of “members of the LGBT community being pedophiles grooming children.” The way Babanbabanban Vampire seems to be promoting this belief is incredibly harmful and insidious. The art is excellent, but even the best art doesn’t make up for bad writing. I’m honestly not even sure who this is targeted to; homophobes will avoid it due to the purported BL element, and the LGBT community will be put off by the apparent queerbaiting and homophobic dogwhistles. Straight women who fetishize gay men, maybe…?

Even at its best, Babanbabanban Vampire seems to be focusing on the wrong elements of its story. The fact that Ranmaru is based on a historical figure, and the frequent references he makes to his relationships with other famous historical figures, are incredibly intriguing. I’d have preferred for it to be about Ranmaru’s (historically factual!) relationship with Oda Nobunaga, who perhaps surprisingly does not fit Ranmaru’s preferred type – when Nobunaga died, he was 48 years old the way we in the modern world measure ages, 50 the way he would have measured his own age, and hardly a virgin. He had a whole lot of kids, only one of whom was adopted. And yet he’s the one Ranmaru thinks of when asked about past loves. Ranmaru’s later escapades with the Bakumatsu-era revolutionary Sakamoto Ryouma are also more interesting than his current relationship with Rihito.

I hope i’m wrong. I hope that Babanbabanban Vampire is indeed straightbaiting rather than queerbaiting, and the elements that seem homophobic are resolved in a comfortable way. But i can’t trust it. I’ve been burned too many times before, and i cannot recommend this series to my fellows in the LGBT communities or allies.