VLAD LOVE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

REVIEWS

• 

  NakolHira

  70/100
  It's beautiful, has cute girls why won't you give it a try?

  (I first wrote this on MAL)

  Vlad Love, a show full of simps, made for simps and brought into life by a genius team full of simps. This is, Mamoru Oshii shitposting on modern anime culture.

  With constant spreading of otaku culture, we are now at a stage where consuming anime is not leered by surrounding, something which we can not imagine in late 90's or early 2000's. With the increment in audience demand, anime has delved into more and more varieties. There’s a demand of everything seeing animated by a Japanese studio. We are ready to evaluate ANYTHING drawn by them.
  Despite however, how has this affected the creative talents? With keeping in mind the type of audience you are making anime for, what should be the proper attitude?
  How many shows truly feels like an inspired product, where you can find love and caress poured into every episodes? I'm talking about the rewarding factor. A show made with your 100% and a show made with 50% of your intellect somehow ended up having same level of evaluation. Because you know, "this is just an anime", "anime is trash so am I",
  This is how present day otaku looks like. A medium full of simp consumers who are ready to take anything that is, hand-drawn and animated by a Japanese studio.

  "Vlad Love" is a show full of simp characters, just like viewers. They simp for a vampire beauty called Mai Vlad Transylvania (400 years old, worry not) who does nothing but sucks your blood. Sounds familiar right? She truly gives you nothing but the sense of watching her physical beauty unfolded before you. In return she'll suck your blood, and she does need a lot of blood. Not even just that, the types of blood she imbibes makes differences in her personality ; if she drinks a violent person's blood she gets violent, she'll get stinky if she drinks a stinky degenerate's blood (looking at you, weebs).
  She is loved by everybody but you are not. She stays pure because you won't like another person tickling her. She takes everything from you (takes 500k yen to dance with her) but gives nothing (you are not allowed to touch her!)
  She won't be yours because she is for everybody. You can’t stay still without seeing her because you are a simp.

  In simple word, Mai Vlad Transylvania (coolass long anime name) checks every waifu standard. She'll give you the best smile you can imagine, will depend on you since she can't live without drinking your blood, will listen your blabbering but somehow she won't be yours, since she's for everybody. Oshii created a perfect metaphor of waifu culture, using Mai as the centrepiece, presenting how it lets you become more and more obsessive with something which has no returns. The main heroine Bamba presents her blood as favour, gets sucked up everyday and feels grossed when Mai drinks an ugly person's blood. Bamba has only one thing to do, pleasing Mai. Same as weebs who want nothing but her waifu's smile.

  Characters in Vlad Love are more or less cantered around this theme. Most interesting of them is the Cinema Club president, Watabe Maki, who makes movie/documentary/PV featuring Mai. And she does a horrible job at making, being the knowledgeable on movies but naive on making movies. She knows "Failure is the pillar of success" so she isn’t afraid if her movie gets booed by audience. She's so confident on making the perfect movie that she ends up making nothing but garbage.
  Sounds familiar? Currently the least-rated anime on MAL is airing, we all are familiar with the type of confident directors like Maki.

  Another character which takes my interest, is the disciplinary committee girl named Jinko. She's so obedient to rules, craves for perfection and doesn’t like it when it goes into unholy hands. She ends up taking the director position for a stage drama in school festival since everyone else was slacking off. With a cast full of inexperienced actors her project didn’t have a chance of succeeding. As it turns out, the serious stage play becomes a chaotic comedy show. Her perfect image was in stake, but plot twist, she received huge applaud because guess who was in the stage? Yeah, Mai, her charm swells over every negatives of an otherwise shit product. This leaves an impact on Jinko as her view of being obedient to rules gets challenged and she accepted the new meaning of success, leads to the hot sensei commenting "Finally she's on our team now!" (Team full of characters who don't take their job seriously)

  With Mai as the waifu, Bamba as the simp viewer, Maki who's all for naught making a good movie and Jinko who understands efforts do not get acknowledged here, we got the image of how present day anime works.

  Your project will be praised if it has a waifu like Mai
  You shouldn’t care about quality because there are simps like Bamba who are all ready to buy your shit if it has Mai
  You don't need to bother on making good product because you believe that your failure of this time will lead you to your future success
  And you don't even need to put 100% of your efforts because they won't be rewarded with proper recognition.

  This is the sad reality of anime, a veteran like Oshii understands it better. I call him a simp earlier, mainly because only a simp for animation can afford to make a bizarre shitposting on the medium. Unlike Bamba though, he's self-conscious of his love for this medium. Seems like producers at IG port gave him a budget to do whatever his mind wants to play with and that's how he created the gorgeous looking shitposting namely this, breaking his long hiatus from anime industry.

  Talking about it's production side, this looks gorgeous. Character design is stunning (Mai and Maki have the most complimentary design to their character) , there are tons of comedic faces drawn which is a sign of creator's goodwill, background art and colour design managed to create the perfect atmosphere, from horror to comedy to casual life. Impressive and strong drawings, with countless reference to many old movies, in dialogues as well. There are two Opening, both of them are eye-catching and I liked "Winds of Transylvania".
  One of the most impressive aspect of Vlad Love is the voice acting. Veteran seiyuu like Romi Park and a bunch of other popular seiyuu including Hayami Saori, Ayane Sakura, Hikasa Yoko and Miyake Kenta putting an unbelievably strong performance. Specially Sakura Ayane recently has been torturing her vocal cord with Gabi's screaming in ep65 of Attack on Titan and here Bamba takes a lot of vocal power. Everyone did a good job at showing their skills, this really is a blessing for any seiyuu fans in general.

  However, this isn’t a show which can be enjoyed regardless of your mood. Not every episodes are as endearing as the others. There’s a lot of dialogues which hardly makes sense to any casual viewers like me. Not much to say about music, this is certainly not the most Impressive work of Kenji Kawai.

  Vlad Love is meant for everybody, but certainly not to be enjoyed by all. Maybe after years of burning out with anime, you'll return to this show and laughed at how much it tried to tell. This is truly "Mamoru Oshii shitposting" which is better than most unfortunately uninspired anime and I'm all in for it. If not anything, you should watch this because it has beautiful sexy girls. Who doesn’t like them?

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• 

  KitKitovsky

  80/100
  Comedy from a legendary director, not for zoomers

  It all starts with references

  In the second OP, the teacher puffs on her cigarette like Onizuka in the first GTO OP
  Mamoru Oshii - living legend is back. So much time has passed, time to create something new! But Vlad Love is more like the 12 episodes of Urusei Yatsura in a new package.
  Twelve wonderful episodes, where one of the most famous directors in the industry is do Sh1tposting.
  The anime was filmed without a production committee, with the investment of 4 studios.
  Therefore, the series consists only of what the director loves. Nothing for random zoomers, anime for himself and for those who are not indifferent.

  Oshii loves his creativity, so he uses his insanely outdated ways of presenting comedy, and allows to redraw some of his own work.

  

  Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993) VS Vlad Love (2021)

  Oshii loves games, so game references are everywhere: Follout (shouting STIMPAK), cosplayer girl constantly in Chun Li's outfit, an entire episode dedicated to the production of Castle of Vania, because F*** Konami.

  

  He is very fond of his dog, the signature Basset Hound is here

  Oshii loves cinematography, # 7 with a post about the director's life as a creator, # 8 re-filmed scenes of boomers films like the 1970 Sunflower.

  

  I havn't watched this movie, but it has good reviews

  Ep #9 and Grandpa calls Oshiyama to help him make Yoshihara Tsuge's spooky Sh1tposting.

  

  A small festive spectacle for those who know firsthand about Beautiful Dreamer and Tenshi no Tamago

  In the fourth episode, I hooked on one unfamiliar word - Nanmaider, a reference to Osomatsu-san. Quite by the way, because only Osomatsu today can afford to do something like that - to talk about his incomprehensible, but interesting (sh1tposting).
  But Osomatsu suffers from frantic self-censorship, and only laughs at his heroes. Grandpa is not shy, and make fun of his bro Miyazaki.
  And adds the typical dialogue of anime fans who will discuss CG and the amount of budget in a scene. And CG was not there ...

  Vlad Love completely depends on Oshii's wishes, without looking at the audience. This is rare today because a committee-led production system imposes enormous constraints (Neverland 2 could have been just a manga adaptation, but the production committee decided otherwise). Few people can create something of their own that will not be decided by the committee, and even fewer have the resources for this.
  The system has reached a dead end for a long time, and Vlad Love shows that this can and should be corrected. At the very least, you can respect the show for that.

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• 

  Storm9691

  65/100
  VLAD LOVE y cómo entendemos el "cine de autor"

  En una proyección de su reciente Vlad Love, Mamoru Oshii dijo que el anime actual era “pulcro y ordenado, visible por cualquier persona. Blando e inofensivo; ni veneno, ni medicina”. También comentó la razón por la que comenzó el proyecto: “Todo empezó con el sentimiento de “Vamos a mostrar lo que ocurre cuando cabreas a un anciano. Hagamos un anime que sirva como una medicina fuerte”.

  Ciertamente, es una opinión bastante cuestionable. Especialmente teniendo en cuenta que Vlad Love salió en la misma temporada que Wonder Egg Priority, obra que se mete a saco con temas como la eutanasia, la autolesión, el suicidio, la depresión, el acoso escolar y un largo etcétera. Sin embargo, sí puedo empatizar con parte de esta frustración. Si cogemos la lista de animes de temporada de los últimos años, es fácil clasificar la mayoría en tres o cuatro temáticas, y la mayoría de proyectos son adaptaciones que sirven más como anuncios largos que otra cosa. No sé si Vlad Love es esa “medicina fuerte” que necesita el anime, pero, para bien o para mal, es una serie extremadamente autocomplaciente.

  

  Mucha gente ha quedado decepcionada con esta serie tras oír el nombre de Oshii, y creo que es culpa de nuestra concepción del “cine de autor”. Hemos relacionado el término con un cine reflexivo, difícil de entender, no apto para "las masas". Se trata, por supuesto, de una noción claramente elitista y muy alejada de la realidad, que pervierte su significado original.

  Es cierto: Oshii ha adquirido su renombre internacional a través de obras de tono más oscuro y filosófico, como Ghost in the Shell o Tenshi no Tamago. Sin embargo, un dato frecuentemente olvidado es que, entre 1981 y 1983, el tío se dirigió media Urusei Yatsura. Existen ciertas similitudes entre esta obra y Vlad Love. Recordemos que toda la premisa de Lamu gira en torno a un chaval horny que salva la Tierra por accidente y acaba casado con una oni espacial. De la misma forma, Vlad Love parte de la relación entre una adolescente lesbiana y hematofílica que termina viviendo con una vampiresa de sed insaciable.

  Además, a diferencia de Urusei Yatsura, Vlad Love no está basada en el trabajo de otra persona, sino que es una especie de adaptación de Chinamire Mai Love. Hablamos de una novela visual para iOS lanzada en 2013 y escrita por el propio Oshii. Así, a partir de esta premisa, la historia se va por las tangentes que a Oshii le salen de la punta de la nariz, desde una parodia innecesariamente compleja del Castlevania original hasta un episodio entero dedicado a homenajear a Yoshiharu Tsuge, un mangaka que empezó a publicar en el 54.

  Y (¡plot twist!) Mamoru Oshii ni siquiera es el único director de Vlad Love, sino que gran parte de este trabajo corresponde a Junji Nishimura. ¿Y sabéis de qué serie se dirigió 70 episodios este buen hombre? ¡De Ranma ½! Aquí lo tenemos: dos nombres claves de dos de las romcom cutres más icónicas de los 80s, juntos para hacer una romcom cutre de los 80s (pero en 2021, y una extremadamente creativa). Tampoco es como si su reunión se hubiese producido ahora, sino que ambos tienen una larga historia trabajando juntos. En la propia Urusei Yatsura, Nishimura dirigió un gran número de episodios. Y en 2004 hicieron juntos Fuujin Monogatari (serie en la que Nishimura fue director, y Oshii, director supervisor).

  

  Pero, aunque esto explica la naturaleza de Vlad Love, todo este tiempo he estado ignorando la que probablemente sea la raíz del problema. Me refiero a la trampa en la que caemos constantemente cuando hablamos de autores: asumir que un director tiene que tener una filmografía consistente con un desarrollo predecible. Que hace una cosa concreta, que podemos esperar un nivel determinado de su trabajo y que, puestos a ver una evolución hacia otros lugares, esta tiene que ser gradual.

  Constantemente, a través de la crítica, deshumanizamos a la gente que está detrás de una obra. Reducimos su persona a una serie de rasgos estilísticos específicos que mecanizamos y buscamos en su trabajo, además de relacionarlos frecuentemente con la personalidad del autor.

  Muchos directores ni siquiera basan su estilo en algo que quieran hacer o que sientan que los define, sino que los agentes pueden ser fortuitos o económicos. Por ejemplo, SAM es un animador español bastante interesante, que en 2003 realizó un corto de considerable éxito titulado Encarna. La película representaba una España rancia con tono satírico. Durante más de 15 años, este lente definió su carrera como director, y no fue hasta 2020, tras haber conocido Mad God, cuando pudo dirigir su primera película con la temática que siempre le había motivado: la ciencia ficción.

  Si estuvo todo ese tiempo estancado en la comedia negra es precisamente porque todas las oportunidades para dirigir que le llegaban partían de la asunción por parte de productoras de que repetiría la jugada que le caracterizaba, y no al revés. Para un crítico, el volantazo de 2020 puede resultar sorprendente, pero SAM llevaba toda su vida abocetando en su cuaderno sus propios mundos sci-fi.

  

  Este caso no es el único, ni tampoco es uno tan sencillo como para resumir en un par de párrafos (recordemos: los artistas son personas de carne y hueso, y cada vez que escribimos una retrospectiva, estamos hablando de una vida entera, de algo sinceramente inabarcable). Pero nos devuelve a Vlad Love y a su recepción.

  Oí a mucha gente decir que el regreso a la animación de Oshii tendría que haber estado marcado por una obra más "ambiciosa" o que "recordase a sus cintas más famosas". También se dijo cuando Yuasa dirigió una (excelente) película infantil en 2017. Y siento que, como espectadores, no estamos en posición de decirle a alguien lo que debería hacer con su vida.

  Si el director de Ghost in the Shell ha querido hacer Vlad Love en pleno 2021, será por algo. Y ese algo puede ser, perfectamente, que le haya apetecido. Porque es una persona, y no le debe nada a nadie.

  
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