Young, wet behind the ears, Hiro Hiyorimi, dies trying to save a beautiful princess by the name of Hime. She comes from a demonic family of royals. Hime brings Hiro back to life by making him half immortal, which in this case, I'd rather be dead than be half immortal. You see, the catch is that Hiro's "immortality" is limited. He is only living through borrowed time and has to be revived by Hime every few days. Otherwise, he will die permanently. He is essentially a battery that needs to be recharged every few days. And through weird circumstances, Hiro, and his older sister Sawawa, now work for and live under Hime. Hime as a character is pretty uninteresting. She's the stoic, cold-hearted princess who doesn't care for most things, especially other people. Unless you work for her, then she might possibly, maybe, perhaps, sorta like you. And on a Friday evening. You're also introduced to characters like Flandre, an android who works as a maid and can only say "Huga" and that's it. Why is this the case? It's never really explained. Flandre's older sister, Francisca, is also the same way.
You have other characters like Riza, a werewolf half breed, and without going into spoilers, during her first appearance she despises Hime and tries to kill her. And once again, through weird circumstances she ends up living and working under her. You have Reiri, this completely innocuous and inconspicuous vampire chick who probably has the tightest pussy on planet Earth, and is clearly not planning Hime's demise. Reiri obviously plays a bigger role in the story and a lot of the conflict in this anime is connected to her. This isn't a spoiler, it's pretty obvious during the episode she's introduced in. You can tell there's much more going on in the background, but the anime wants to stay mysterious for the vast majority of it. I'm positive, that if I stuck it out just a little bit longer it all would've been explained. However, and I'm being nice here, this show is such a snorefest, my god! Most of the eighteen episodes I watched were episodic. Each episode would typically play out like this. The characters will be minding their own business in Hime's mansion. Since she's royal blood, monsters and other demonic creatures of hell would want to suckle on her blue blooded teet. Her blood gives unbelievable power to anyone who drinks it. A monster attacks the mansion, and then the main characters win through stale, sluggish, and stiffly animated battles that drag on for an eternity. This happens a lot and it very quickly becomes repetitive. This is a horror, action series but the action is one of the many weak points of this anime. It does action so poorly and everything is so stiff. And the monsters that attack Hime's mansion are ordinary mummies, sea monsters, werewolves, etc. Nothing scary in the least.
None of the characters are all that compelling and are written all that well. I skipped quite a few of them, but they're not worth mentioning. Characters are never quite on model, especially during the action scenes. This entire show is painful to look at most of the time. Boring, uninspired soundtrack, with the exception of one song. This one song is the only great positive I can give this show. "Hizamazuite Ashi Wo Oname" or "Kneel Down and lick my Feet." The ED for this show, AMAZING. This show doesn't deserve an ED like this. And it's one of the very few instances where the characters look good and it's well animated. One of the best ED's I've seen in a while. It has incredible lyrics such as:
"Kneel down and lick my crimson nails"
"With your tangled tongue, and call me your queen."
This is just the very first line of the song. I can get down with that.
(〃￣ω￣〃)
Pure sadism. Nice.
The frantic melody of the song mixed with the singer's beautiful and operatic voice makes the song sound so good. I love it. That's the only good thing I can say about this show. Also Riza dancing in front of the camera is pure gold. Like a late 90's hip hop music video. I thought giving this a "3" was pretty harsh, but it was so difficult to sit through. Very little of it was enjoyable to me. It's a pretty bad sign if it's starting to become painful to sit through. It's also riddled with tropes that we've all seen a trillion times, but here, it's much more egregious for how forced it all was. This show definitely deserves a 3 out of 10. It feels a bit arbitrary, yes, but a "2" and a "3" are pretty much interchangeable for me. I've seen worse anime out there, but this sucked. My scores:
Story: 3/10
Art: 3/10
Sound: 4/10 (The ED got me through some of the show)
Characters: 3/10
Enjoyment: 2/10
Overall: 3/10
