DIABOLIK LOVERS

DESCRIPTION

CAST

OVA SupernaturalDIABOLIK LOVERS OVA
TV SHORT DramaDIABOLIK LOVERS MORE,BLOOD
MANGA PsychologicalDiabolik Lovers Anthology
MANGA DramaDiabolik Lovers Prequel
MANGA AdventureDIABOLIK LOVERS YOUNG BLOOD

REVIEWS

• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  20/100
  Note: This review was written before the dub was out.

  When seventeen year old Yui Komori’s father has to go overseas for work, her church convinces her to temporarily move into a large house shared by six teenage boys… Because that’s totally something a church would do… And transfer into the night school that they all attend. What they don’t tell her is that the six boys are all vampires, and like any boys their age, they are only interested in one thing.

  They make no bones about the fact that she now belongs to them, even branding her with the demeaning nickname “Bitchu-chan,” which roughly translates to “Little Bitch.” With no hope of escape, and hungry fangs awaiting her at every turn, will Yui’s new living arrangement turn out to be a sweet dream, or a beautiful nightmare?

  

  Before I sink my own fangs into the meat of the story, I guess I should talk about the artwork and animation. Thankfully, I really don’t have anything negative to say about it. Diabolik Lovers has a very strong, very consistent sense of visual style, blending the flowery water-color aesthetic that you’d expect from a shoujo series with a dark, gothic edge to a very beautiful result. The backgrounds are rich and highly detailed, with a lot of obvious love and care going into every frame. The character designs are inspired and memorable, if not a little on the rough side. The animation is low budget, but it’s well managed, so it still looks passable.

  It’s a very pretty looking show, but unfortunately, that beauty is only skin deep, and this anime has a wealth of problems below the surface.

  To start, the dialogue may have a few clever moments, but it’s mostly stilted, expositional, and sophomoric. We’re told a lot of things that the characters say ‘should be obvious,’ but that’s rarely ever the case, as the logic behind it all is spotty at best. The six brothers have unique traits to them, but at the end of the day, they all have one thing in common: They’re all heavily unlikeable douchebags who don’t care about our heroine for any reason other than the bright red juice flowing through her veins. In fact, they’re so voracious about it that the only thing the writers have to do to endear one of them to Yui is to have them stop drinking her out of boredom. Nothing about them ever changes, from first episode to last. Even the flashback episode, which tries very hard to humanize them and explain their adult attitudes, just comes off as hollow for the effort.

  But as badly as our male cast is characterized, they have absolutely nothing on Little Miss Little Bitch. Even though she clearly doesn’t like being feasted on, she is submissive down to her very last drop, rarely ever putting up a fight against them aside from a half-hearted ‘no, please stop!’ request. She’s not clever, she’s not smart… Painfully so on both counts. No matter how much pain her frail little neck endures, it doesn’t even compare to how sore my throat is from yelling at her to stop making so many stupid decisions. Yes, I know, this anime was adapted from a Visual Novel, and the people doing the adapting thought it would be just fine to leave her as the blank slate she was when they found her. It’s not uncommon for the main character in this type of adaptation to be a self-insert wish-fulfillment character, but who the hell would want to insert themselves into a role that could basically be described as human livestock?

  Well, let’s examine that idea for a moment. If you haven’t caught onto this just yet, Diabolik Lovers has developed a reputation for being incredibly rapey. This is a reputation it whole-heartedly deserves, on numerous different levels, from the vampires’ lack of concern with Yui’s emotional status to the genuine affection she develops for them as a result. But I’d like to take it one step further… I don’t think this show is rapey by accident. I think it was intended, in every conceivable way, to be a rape fantasy, with actual rape being replaced with fang-rape. And I can prove it, with one simple observation.

  See, the icing on this cake… Is the fact that the vampire brothers all eat cake! Yes, that’s a bad joke, but I’m not really kidding, either. The vampires are shown eating human food on several occasions, and it’s suggested that they do so on a fairly regular basis. They like the taste, as well. It’s not hard to draw the conclusion that it sustains them just as well as it would sustain any other human, since no information either for or against this idea is ever brought up in story.

  Why is this a problem, you ask? Well, in most vampire stories, the nocturnal ne’er-do-wells need blood for sustenance, which makes their plight all the more sympathetic and understandable. They can survive on substitutes, like the animal blood in Twilight and the synthetic blood in True Blood, but it’s a poor substitute for the real thing. In Diabolik Lovers, however, the brothers don’t actually need Yui’s blood… They can survive on human food, which eliminates the sustenance argument completely. They don’t physically need it, which narrows their desire down to two possible explanations… It’s either a psychological compulsion(addiction), or a sexual desire.

  Since they express their desire for her blood right off the bat, and immediately start the process of ‘domesticating’ her, It’s fair to say this isn’t just an addiction. If that were the case, they’d be actively farming humans to drink from. Which wouldn’t be difficult, because they go to school, and are surrounded by human females on a nightly basis. (At least I assume so… We only see them in school once, and no other human characters are shown.) They want her, specifically, because she’s in their territory, and she belongs to them. Once that sense of male entitlement enters the picture, It doesn’t get any more clear-cut than that. They want her blood not for the nutrition, but for the thrill of it… For the sense of power it gives them over her, as they know in their cold hearts that she wants it just as much as they do, whether she realizes it or not.

  In other words, the thirst for blood in this show is entirely sexual, and never consensual. For that, Diabolik Lovers isn’t just specifically designed to be a rape fantasy… It is hands down the rapiest anime I have ever seen. Oh, and the fact that Yui is basically roofied in episode five doesn’t help, either.

  And even if you’re able to forgive all the moral problems with this show, you’re still left with a terrible story. For ten straight episodes, we follow this helpless little damsel in faux distress as she gets bounced from vamp to vamp, having her seemingly endless supply of blood drained as inappropriate music plays in the background, ranging from romantic to borderline pornographic, a musical tone that’s not at all helped by the way a lot of these attack are staged and framed. Her wounds then magically heal faster than you can say ‘Wolverine,’ and she’s on to her next pitiful display of self defense.

  Even in the rare moments when she escapes, she never takes advantage of it. She’ll run to a church, instead of to a police station, and even though the crucifix approach failed her in the first episode, she’ll be surprised when church doesn’t work, as they just effortlessly teleport to wherever she is. She doesn’t try to ask anybody for help, and at one point even consciously decides to stay for some forced, senseless reason that never actually gets followed up on.

  There’s an actual plot in the last few episodes, but the writers clearly had no interest in it, as it has little impact on the story and gets swept away with little finesse, despite the admittedly impressive set-up that went into it. The episodes are mercifully only fifteen minutes in length, but the pacing is so awful that I didn’t even notice it until episode ten. There’s no development, no logic, no consistency, and seemingly no thought beyond the desires of it’s immature target audience.

  And here’s the most annoying part… With a sweets-guzzling, stuffed animal-wielding immature character like Kanato floating around, there’s a very distinct possibility that this entire franchise might have been conceived as a terrible Ouran High School Host Club fanfic, with Haruhi replaced by the author’s own blank slate self insert character. Seriously, think about it… The eldest brother is a lazy blonde, who pushes all of his work and responsibilities onto a glasses-clad second in command, and if that doesn’t prove it, nothing will.

  This show is intended specifically as a metaphorical rape fantasy for teenaged girls who can’t decide between 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight, and hey, if that’s what you’re looking for, then look no further, this is the perfect show for you. For fans of dark vampire romances who DON’T want all of their precious bishies to be detestable douchebag rapists, then I highly recommend checking out the first season… And I can’t stress this enough, ONLY the first season… Of Vampire Knight. It’s not a great show, but it’s still leagues better than this piece of garbage.

  

  For the rest of us, Diabolik Lovers is an uncomfortable and often infuriating experience. There are some things I kind of like about it… It looks great, and I thought having the episode numbers represented by a ticking clock was kind of cool… But overall, It just doesn’t have any qualities that are good enough to justify all of the things that are glaringly wrong with it. For that, I can’t think of any good reason to give it anything higher than a 2/10.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  AdmiralNyan

  0/100
  A Serious & Poisonous Provocation of Rape Culture

  Diabolik Lovers follows a young girl named Yui who moves into a gloomy castle while her priestly father goes overseas for work. Upon arriving, she is immediately assaulted by one of the adolescent male occupants of the castle. Shortly afterwards another five guys or so arrive, all of them brothers, who turn out to be vampires. The longer that Yui stays at the castle, the more she uncovers about these boys and the real reasons behind why she was essentially dumped in such a place.

  Please note that this review will be discussing the topic of sexual and physical abuse and rape. If any of these things are sensitive subject matters for you, you may want to avoid reading this article. Please, read at your own discretion. Thank you.

  I can be the first one to admit that I love vampires. With the exception of Twilight and True Blood, which I loathe passionately, I tend to really enjoy dark, twisted stories about these supernatural monsters. While I prefer ones that inherently more horrific, depicting vamps for the vile and dangerous beings that they are (The Strain, I Am Legend, etc.), I can appreciate some fluffy and smutty nonsense very once in a while. However, things that I will never tolerate include the exploitation of rape, which is pretty much everything that Diabolik Lovers entails.

  Within the first few moments of the pilot episode, we see Yui get pinned down onto a couch and molested by some random teenage boy with hot pink ombre hair. It isn’t sexy to see her struggle, or to see the intensity of the discomfort and fear that she’s feeling as he places his mouth all over her neck whilst tightly pinning her wrists down. It’s disturbing and disquieting.

  This entire scene sets the mood and tone for everything that shall follow suit. Every episode is laced with Yui getting felt up, physically abused, or worse, which is all further exacerbated by the sheer sexiness that the show is trying to pull off when these horrid acts happen. Raping someone is not sexy. Hitting them to make them do whatever you want them to do is not sexy. Bullying them when they disobey you is not sexy. It does not feel sexy and it sure as hell doesn’t look sexy. I can be the first person to admit that I didn’t care for Yui because her damsel-in-distress complex is turned all the way up, which can be sensationally aggravating to watch in a continuous flow. But after a while, my heart began to ache for her and all I wanted to watch was her to find a way to escape her environment.

  Diabolik Lovers is the epitome of what rape culture looks like, regardless of where you reside in the world. When society depicts women being as feeble trash who are good for nothing except being sex objects for their horny little boys. When it shows young girls (target audience for the series) that a boy likes you if he’s hitting you or forcefully kissing you because he’s “too shy” to just tell you he likes you. If a girl chooses to wear a skirt—no matter the length or style—and a cute blouse that makes her look beautiful, then she is labelled as “inviting inappropriate behaviour,” or it is used as justification for her to get assaulted. All of these things, and anything that has complete disregard for women as being human beings and strong-willed, intelligent individuals, are the ridiculous types of notions that perpetuate harmful rape culture. Garbage like Diabolik Lovers is what makes women afraid to speak up about being raped because instead of being shown as the victim, they are shown as the instigators of abuse. Fuck that noise.

  I was raped in my marriage. I can tell you right now that whenever it happened to me, I didn’t walk away feeling like the most beautiful person in the world. I walked away feeling ashamed, dirty, humiliated, and completely broken as a person. I never walked away feeling wanted or loved, just used, abused, and violated. I remember that right up until the moment that my marriage fell apart, I had always felt on some level that this was how a natural and healthy relationship was supposed to be. It didn’t matter if one person wanted to have sex or not. Sex was mandatory for a happy and healthy relationship. Everyone around me always taught me these things. It was in the advice I received from some of my friends and family. It was in every single piece of media I ever consumed growing up (TV shows, books, comics, video games, magazines, etc. no matter the region they stemmed from). Hell, even a lot of rape cases that my brother and my cousins had usually showed the women as being the ones who in one form or another had initiated sexual behaviour and were thus liable for being raped. Most of these cases revolved around the clothes she had worn or the some of the things she enjoyed sexually (fetishes and kinks) or flirtatious conversations. Films would show how a woman would be begging a man to stop touching her, yet by the end she had fallen in love with him and came to view his unwanted advances as a sign of affection. The assault had become endearing. It wasn’t I left the environment that I began to realise what had happened to me, and I finally understood why I felt guilt and ashamed when I had no reason to feel this way.

  Diabolik Lovers fetishizes abuse exactly the same way as all of the media I mentioned. In one episode, Yui has a significant lack of appetite brought on by the stress and trauma of being attacked at every corner, not to mention the significant amount of blood loss she has undergone from the vampires constantly feeding on her. When people tell her to eat, she says “no” because she physically is unable to. The same thing happens when people want to touch her or drink her blood. Her saying “no” gets her smacked around or bullied relentlessly, or worse. The fear she felt initially mutates into a sort of numbness. It’s her way of checking out of this tragic reality as a coping method.

  I underwent multiple eating disorders during my period of abuse that spanned ten years. Most of it was from feeling sick, but a lot of it also had to do with making myself less appealing. Then when it became too much, I would pretend to be anywhere else within the confines of my mind as the abuse was occurring because I knew that “living” in the moment would destroy me. Yui is exactly the same. She wants to live, she wants to escape, but knows all too well that the option to do so is utterly impossible for her, so her mind conjures up ways for her to seek her escape in other means.

  The men who abuse her are all individuals who have some sort of inferiority complex within themselves that makes them feel like the only way they can be validated is by inflicting pain on another person. It’s the literal control they have over Yui to make them feel self-important, which is a common characteristic in abusers.

  Ayato has a significant complex of needing to be the best and the first at everything. Having a bunch of older brothers who may be better than him at doing various things probably made him feel so useless. Shū is always told that he’s a lazy good-for-nothing even though that may not be the case. He’s an anti-social introvert who is extremely apathetic about life. But these misconceptions and verbal abuse he endures from his family has made him create a toxic perspective of himself. Reiji is one who craves a severely disciplined routine and his desire for control seems to be the worst.

  In future episodes, as Yui comes to understand more about the individual boys and the demonic burdens (metaphorically) that they each carry around, she develops a sort of sympathy for their plight. Honestly, it made me further sick to my stomach. These scenes when combined with all of the traumatic experiences she has with this family, is teaching girls that it’s okay to be a victim because A) it means they’re “special,” B) saying “no” means you’re playing hard to get, and C) even though they’re being abused, on some mental level “the boys didn’t mean to do it, they were just upset” or “they had a difficult childhood” so it’s okay in the end.

  Where do we draw the line from indulgent, fantastical fiction into unacceptable sexualisation of problematic societal practises? Where do we stop and say: “This has gone too far” and is promoting an environment that coddles predators while silencing victims and their ability to get justice for crimes committed? When you have shows like Diabolik Lovers, constantly telling us that rapists are just disturbed people with “mental health” problems, particularly when that is not true at all, how the fuck do we hold ourselves accountable for disseminating harmful and poisonous constructs like rape culture and victim-blaming?

  It’s simple. When we create thing like this show right here, we fucking don’t. We put on a blind-fold and ignore the ways that we have nurtured a world where forcefully having sex with an individual who doesn’t want it and then claiming “love” or “insanity” or “provocation,” as a defence. We moulded world where such terrible, blatant excuses are not only accepted, but welcomed. And that, my friends, is the fucking problem.

  Diabolik Lovers is an offensive, harmful, and severely problematic series—video game, anime, or anything else—that should not be seen by anyone, but particularly young people. People who will watch it and believe that it’s okay for a boy, girl, or non-gendered person to touch them inappropriately, even if its completely unwarranted. A show that will teach them that when they say “no” they’re actually saying “yes, please.” A show that associates mental health illnesses with abusers, rapists, and criminals, thus further spreading a whole different sort of negative stigma and culture. I hated this series with a passion and I cannot and will not ever recommend it to anyone.

  0 outta 10.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Hannelore

  3/100
  This anime is shit. Discover why without having to watch it.

  This anime has no plot. Literally. You would think that an anime whose premise is a girl surrounded by six vampires would be interesting and mysterious, well, no. There are literally not many spoilers to tell as there is not much to tell! If you are going to watch this, keep in mind that you will only see a girl being abused, and nothing else. There is no reflection, there are no moments where you look for empathizes with the protagonist because of her torment, but you arrive at the moment where you simply know that this anime aims to get girls horny by bringing "erotic" scenes of physical and psychological abuse of six sexy vampires to a girl with no personality. And here comes another point, the protagonist has no personality. And I'm not saying it to be rude on purpose, but the only words of the protagonists are No! and Stop! but deep down it gives the impression that she ends up enjoying it, which makes this even more horrible.
  This anime is targeted to females, which makes it even sicker, as if we find enjoyment or something "cute and romantic" in such things. Therefore, it is a just misogynistic anime. There are scenes so cruel, without being bloody. that they are equivalent to group sexual abuse, where two vampires approach her to bite her, but it is not difficult to reinterpret the scene.
  Another point is that this anime does not appeal to anyone. Do you like vampire stories? Well you won't see that here, just guys abusing a girl with the excuses of being "vampires". Do you like teen romance between girl x something? There is no here, they do not love her nor she does, there is only abuse. Do you like perverse shows? This is not even good at it, since it's super edgy.
  There are times when you can't even be outraged because you no longer take what happens seriously, but the series tries to seem respectable even adding past to the characters so that in the end they do not develop, they do not arise, nor is there an characters arc, they are there only to justify the actions of the characters.
  It is an insulting show in many ways, and not only to women, but also to the genre of vampires.
  The worst thing is that the anime is not presented as an anime of abuse and eroticism, but a vampire story, which it is not. It is a story of six wicked boys abusing a hyper submissive girl wrapped in a vampire atmosphere with no plot background.
  Only the soundtrack is slightly enjoyable in this anime, which could be one of the worst ever.

  But let's face it, things like these wouldn't exist if there wasn't a demand. It is really sad that people consume this and like it, or try to justify the characters. Pathetic.
  If I had to rate it I would give it 3/10. 3 because its soundtrack is decent, the opening serves its purpose, and the animation is sometimes a good thing.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• ANIME

  RomanceDance with Devils
• ANIME

  ComedyUta no☆Prince-sama♪ Maji LOVE 1000%
• ANIME

  RomanceBROTHERS CONFLICT
• ANIME

  DramaVampire Knight Guilty
• ANIME

  FantasyAMNESIA
• ANIME

  FantasyKamigami no Asobi: Ludere deorum
• ANIME

  DramaVampire Knight
• OVA

  EcchiHoly Knight
• ANIME

  MusicVisual Prison
• ONA

  ComedyObey Me! The Anime Season 2
• ONA

  DramaTianmei de Yaohen
• OVA

  EcchiKuro to Kin no Akanai Kagi.