Reviews

Story: The series started out a bit slow, but it quickly picked up the pace and delved into what started to feel a bit like Higurashi. It has a similar atmosphere of mystery wrapped up in the cloak of a peaceful environment. However it became quickly and dully apparent what was killing the villagers and from this point deteriorated what feels like a very contrived form of despair. Most of the characters (and there a lot of them) seem to possess no real intelligence or logic and have very few realistic reactions to the events that keep occurring around them. This eventually infects the "main" characters and things go even further downhill from there. I wonder if these people have ever heard of a telephone?

Animation: The style in this is very unique, I have only seen it used in one other anime which I can't remember at the moment. I thought it was a bit weird at first but it kind of grew on me and I also appreciated the fact they disguised the characters so well. Rather than trying to make all the characters attractive as many anime do, there is a large variety of appearances to distinguish everyone. Ugly, fat, average, old, young, middle age, and a few good looking characters -- making it quite well balanced.

Sound: The music seems fitting for the setting and I have no complaints about the voice acting. Other than the fact a few people have awkward appearance / voice combinations.

Characters: As mentioned in the story section, the characters are very shallow. It seems like the creators purposely made them all stupid in order to allow the antagonists to rain free without any real thought or purpose.
Update: It seems the doctor in the village does possess some intelligence as well as strength of will, but he doesn't seem to want others to know what he does. It's like... oh I saw a guy with a axe walk by the window outside, but I shouldn't tell the others that are staying in the house... right.

Enjoyment: The story had some potential initially, but the mundane characters and progression are slowly destroying any enjoyment I may have had in the initial and very short lived mystery.
Update: The only mystery left is why in a town of 1300+ people no one has seen fit to tell anyone outside the town about the very bizarre events that have been taking place. Even diffusion of responsibility has it's limits, or perhaps I am overestimating the villagers? I suppose there is nothing strange about 6 members of my family suddenly dieing in a short period of time when they had no prior health problems.

Overall: If the story had been set about 100 years ago it would of probably been much better. Being based around modern times and people however, makes it absolutely horrendous due to a utter suspension of reality. The writer needs to take technology and education into consideration when trying to write about vampires in modern times. Particularly since the plot clumsily tries to deal with it, if they had outright ignore it as least the viewer wouldn't have been compelled to think about it.