1) Incomplete story
The story is about a vampire super soldier fighting evil organizations of vampires, who want to … we are never told. What we are told is that this world is willing to have coexistence between humans and vampires and that many people are offering their blood willingly in order to keep the other kind peaceful. Plus, chances of turning into a vampire are not that high. So yeah, this coexistence is quite the interesting theme, but we never see what the villains plan to do and the whole brainwashing fuss I mention later kind of ruins it.
2) Annoying main character
At first, the lead reminded me of a much calmer Alucard (from Hellsing), as he too is a vampire dressed in red, fighting other vampires to protect the humans. But in reality he is a lot closer to Vash (from Trigun). He is the typical noble warrior, acting too goody with everyone and doesn’t want to hurt innocents; the result of which comes off as stupid. He clearly has no qualms about killing hundreds of vampire soldiers in the beginning of the show but he is more than willing to stop his attack and let the villains escape or heavily injure him if they are holding hostages. As noble as that sounds, it is nothing but lame in practice. The villains will escape and kill far more innocents, or he will almost lose his life for a nobody.
What is even more stupid is how he has no problem when killing vampires who are brainwashed to attack him. They basically count as innocents, so why is it okay to kill them so casually? Because of the berserk state they are in? Killing their controller would switch them back to how they were, so what the heck is his problem?
Also, he keeps around him two very annoying and problematic side characters. They are there just to cause trouble, so it’s stupid to drag them along everywhere he goes, just to act stupid and incompetent while he is next to them.
3) Annoying side characters
One is his brother, a very young cheerful vampire boy. People around him are cut to pieces and he will just ask for ice cream. He is completely out of touch with reality, and thus he ruins the atmosphere of the show. He will always trust people, always want to play, always say only the sweetest things. I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM. He is supposed to offer a bright side to the story and even act as a comic relief mascot animal with all that optimism of his. But for all we see he is nothing but a delusional idiot who always gets kidnapped or ends up in the middle of a battle, just to force his brother to side-track in order to help him out. He is not as uber-awful as Raki (from Claymore) but he shares the same ridiculous archetype.
The other sidekick is this neurotic office girl, who is the typical damsel in distress. As soon as she stands next to the MC she keeps hitting him and insulting him like he is a lowlife. Typical tsundere nonsense to make women come off as a bother and not funny at all.
4) The villains’ motives
We don’t get to see them. We see how stereotypically evil and megalomaniacs they all are, and that is pretty much all of it.
5) Brainwashing
Powerful vampires can mindcontrol lesser ones into doing anything they want, thus turning them to drones and cannon fodder in battles. They are mostly just innocents trying to have a normal life, yet with this cheap plot device the villains can have as many foot soldiers as they want. As cool as it sounds, it is just trashing the personalities of everyone if they can be stripped of free will in a heartbeat. It also ruins the coexistence theme of the two species and makes the MC to come off as a hypocrite when he won’t do a thing when the villains use HUMAN hostages, but he will have no problem when killing VAMPIRE innocents.
6) The hero’s hat
Just because it looked cool on Alucard or D, doesn’t mean that a big hat will look good on anyone. In this case, it was drawn in a way to make the hero look stupid.
7) Average production values
Animation and sound are just average; there are neither heavy artistic overtones nor great voice acting and smart dialogues. The main intro song was nice to listen to for a few times but that’s it.
Piece all the above together and you can see why it’s a simplistic adventure with annoying characters and wasted potential. But to be honest the fight scenes had decent choreography which was not mostly magic attacks doing any shit the scriptwriter wants. Besides stopping bullets and mind control, the action was cool hand-to-hand or sword-based. Not that anyone will care anymore, since the colors are not Demon Slayer level.
