Rosario + Vampire - Reviews

For an anime based on a really good manga, they did a horrible job.  Even if it were not based on a manga and I judged it without that foundation, it is barely subpar because of how badly the story gets sucked into a mundane boring rinse and repeat routine.  She is the wolverine of the X-men movies.  Ya know a story with an ensemble type of cast of characters but irresponsibly it focuses too much on one character.  The mistake with X-men is, it is supposed to be a team, not a one man show.  In Rosario's case, though the rest of the cast may not have the same power or level of power they have different skills and specialties that in the manga you get to see them use alot more.  It is seen some in the Anime but not as much and in the end, everyone still depends way too heavily on Rosario herself.  She always needs Tskune to remove her rosary but that isn't the way things always worked in the manga, which makes for an incredibly worlds better story.  Also, in the anime, the characters do not seem to progress or change much or at least no where near like they do once again in the manga.  

I know video media usually takes on some creative license when presenting stories especially story adaptions from books or comics but usually they at least try to cater to the strengths of the story and not turn it in to complete rubbish and a meek shadow of the literary presentation like this series did.  Sure, they do a pretty good job of setting up the story, presenting the characters, and giving each a little background/side stories, and then they taper off quite a bit quality wise.  Tskune feels like the most weak and worthless character ever presented in any story and he is stuck with that moniker.  This series does nothing to turn him into a worthile character.  The manga might differ with it's treatment of Tskune more than anything else.  Since the manga does just that, Tskune changes, he contributes, he adapts and grows while aquiring some skills to handle the influx of challenges, the dynamic with him and Moka is much better and stronger, and his part of the story is one of the most interesting in recent years.  That's a total opposite of the anime Tskune.  Anime Tskune is a total wimp who relies almost exclusively on others, especiallly Moka to bail him out of virtually every little problem.  He never has a chance to learn, adapt, handle things on his own, or really contribute, and he is only a hand that removes the rosary and sorry folks at the studio that produced this sad adaption, that just is not enough.

There are some good story arcs and nice little bits of humor, true, however, it all resembles fluffy decorations meant to conceal a total train wreck of a production.  In the end, the constant rinse and repeat cycle that so drastically veers off from the manga, makes the series pretty dull with no depth or meat to the story, no welcome changes from trying experiences all the friends share to any great degree, and even the story arcs are missing so many elements they are mere shadows of similar story arcs featured in the manga.  As far as literary works adaptions to video media go, this is one of the worst if not the worst one ever done.  As far as standing on its own separate from the manga, it might qualify as a small footnote of interest but nothing outstanding.  

The animation quality is as good or better than the manga, the sound is up to specs, the stupid bat is a crappy distraction that takes more edge off the story than contributes any positive factors, and the over the top constant simpleton level mushy scenes only serve to enhance how poor this series is when compared to the spectacular manga.  Consequences are pretty obvious by how far off it strays from the manga such as, a significant drop in action, a much weaker and harder to follow progression of a love story, much shallower characters who contribute a fraction of what they do in the manga, fewer story arcs, fewer antagonists, far less tension, muddled pacing, mismatched and or screwed up characters, heavy plot holes that when compered to the manga make you go "oh now i get it", sloppy story arcs that are by comparision incomplete, huge changes between the manga and anime that not only do not benefit the series but severely handicaps it in major negative ways.  

I really wish they did the anime right, it would be one of the best if it were even close to the content of the manga.  There are too many changes from the original story and honestly none of them are good.  It is almost as if the creators skimmed summaries or breif reviews of the manga rather than actually read a single issue.  One of the biggest plot devices is completely missing that involves one of the most interesting side characters, the chairman.  What the manga does with the relationship between Moka and Tskune when faced with adversity really stands out as a unique and cool concept completely missing from the anime.  It is partly this unique relationship that the entire story is actually centered around but since such a significant and important factor is wholly missing from the series, for that reason alone it can never measure up even to the feet of the manga.  Again though, even if this were not one of the worst story adaptions to film or tv ever, ever made, it fails to stand up on it's own.  At best I might have given it a 5 but more likely a 4.  This is cause it is one of the most boring animes ever made.  It focuses too much on the same gimmick over and over and over again so much it just drives you nuts with how stupid and boring the repitition gets.  None of the characters develop well especially the main character, Tskune.  Tskune is the weakest most pathetic useless character I have probably ever seen in an anime, and that honestly would have stood out more if I did not know about the much much much much much better story found in the mangas.

Abloutely awful and pales in comparison to it's manga counterpart.

  I started watching anime and reading manga when I picked up volume 1 of Yotsuba&! at my school book store when I was 6. I didn't take me very long to get to the Rosario + Vampire manga. But that's not what we're going to be talking about today. Now, we're going to be talking about it's pathetic-accuse-for-an-anime counterpart.

 There is literally no story in the anime. Tsukune Aono is an idiot who is painfully average. Failing all of his High School enterence exams, He has no choice but to go to a strang boarding school, with an application that his father got off the street from a creepy monk. This school is Yokai Academy, a school made so that monsters such as vampires, (surprise, surprise) orcs, werewolves and the like can eventually coexist with us humans, who generally rule the world. Everything after the first few episodes is mindeless filler and pantyshots, with the anime leaving out major plot arcs, even going so far as to cut the real ending, where the manga shined the most, in the epic comfrontation against SPOILER:Hokuto, the head of the student council.

The animation is nothing spectacular, with simple character models, and not much bad animation, but some things are painfully obvious CG, such as the stairs.

 The sound is nothing too great. It fits the mood, but nothing is really memorable. The opening theme "Cosmic Love" is quite a catchy J-Pop song though.

 The characters have become stereotypes, with Tsukune, a pacifistic twat, Moka "That nice girl", Kurumu, The all-purpose eye candy, Mizore, the emotionless stalker, Yukari, the lolicon, and Ruby, That-one-girl-who's-never-here. Any and all character develepmont has been removed to make room for more pantyshots.

Overall, if you're interested in the series, read the manga and wait for R+V to pull a Kai/Brotherhood and give us a good adaption of a good manga. The anime is downright trash that can make Dokuro-Chan look good. ... All of this and I'm still willing to buy the dub...

...meh.... I really liked the first couple of episodes, when they introduced every character in its own way, but those last 5-6 episodes were a total pain to go through...

Loved the backgrounds and some of the character designs (especially Moka and Mizore), but goddamn they screwed up every time they tried to make the story a little more serious. That final episode couldn't have been more anti-climatic, the super-bad-vilain of the show was introduced in the second-to-last episode, right? In the end, this series was a total waste of my time. If only I could have my 4 hours back...

What do you get when you take a vampire monster show and make a love story about it? You get something that is exactly like Twilight. At least, close to it in a sense but with more sexual stuff it seems. I am not going to lie, this show is extremely ecchi with its use of panty shots. Those who are like me might wonder just what this show has besides that and I actually wonder that myself. From the personalities to the ecchi, it just seems like another school life show.

We start out with a character named Tsukune Aono who is pretty much a average human… actually should I consider him below average since he flunked most of his high school entrance exams? Anyway, his parents seem to be the type of people to be so air headed that when they find an entrance letter to a school, they just take it and have their son go to a school they know nothing about in typical anime trope. To this point, I wonder if most anime characters would actually be better off if they were considered orphaned or their parents are abroad because most parents who stay with their children seem like complete idiots. Going back to Tsukune, there really isn’t anything at all that makes him stand out. He has average looks, a slightly below average grade point average (I’m guessing because of the tests), and is from a middle class family. He has average temperament, and overall is a bland character. So why the hell does all these magical creatures want to get with him? The only thing that explains it is that Moka seems to like his blood a lot. That’s really all there is about it. It’s like if Edward told Bella he liked her for her personality. (For real, I do not like Twilight. Bella just seems to have no personality at all.)

Next, we have the Vampire Moka… who does not act like a vampire for most of the series. Sometimes I wonder if her pink hair dye seeped into her brain and permanently damaged it as she is a pretty big air head. First glance of her we see is her panties by the way. She is not winning best intro scene for the main character award as we don’t get to see her face first, it’s her butt. In fact, most scenes with her, I wonder if she is a talking butt or boobs as they keep on centering in on those areas. I don’t understand why a school would even say it’s ok to have a school uniform that does not cover the girl’s butts at all because no matter what, we get a nice long look at those panties even from a distance. For the longest time, I have been wondering weather I should call this a magical girl anime as well because there is a lot of transformation scenes because of Moka’s other side. I would rather that this other side be the main character of this show as she seems to be more put together… more sex appeal which the artists would probably play off of but at least the personality would be better.

Another woman that seems to be all over Tsukune is Boobie McFlirty… I mean Kurumu Kurono. Sorry but throughout the whole show, I only really understood her as the Succubus because that was all her character really was. She throws her boobs around so much and her shameless panty showing. She ended up being a love rival to Moka but I really didn’t even understand why it happened. Her first reason is to help make sure that succubi don’t die out… and then because he just decided not to let her have her wings and tail from being ripped off.

Then we have miss pedophile bait… I mean Yukari Sendou. By now, I think you can tell that I never really remembered any of the characters names. They were just stereotypes that I could not get away from. I could never understand her much as she seems like a cute lesbian girl who is a child prodigy, meaning that she is a young girl who skipped a few grades. If you want an example of this, look at Chi from Azumanga Daioh or Negi from Negima. Unlike the two I listed off, Yukari is just childish and immature. I never have seen one time in which she acted more adult or smart. Now the lesbian part is because she falls head over heals for Moka, and then just like that it seems she ends up falling for Tsukune as well. I think it would have just been better if they just had her interested in Moka if they even had to make her interested in someone. By the way, get used to seeing her underwear too because boy do they not care how old the girl is.

There are a couple other girls that end up wanting Tsukune but I can’t go fully into them as it may spoil a lot of the show. All I can bring up is that yes, there are a lot more panty and boob shots.

There is something interesting they did when it came to the fights. They actually timed the fights and tell you just how long it was through this strange narrating talking bat. I liked this for the fact that it actually added a bit to the comedy of the fights and the fact they were even having a fight happen to begin with, what I didn’t like was that it just meant that with that short of a fight, the rest of the episode was going to probably be more panties and boobs from the ‘main character’ group. Not that the fights were without panty shots and boob shots, but at least they had a little more of a reason seeing as when Moka grew into her true vampire form, her clothing didn’t grow with her. That meant that her rather short skirt got shorter and her shirt got tighter around her bust area. That was the only part that actually made any sense in having that much to see.

The artwork is panties… panties… panties and more panties… and a little bit of boob. Alright, so besides that, the artwork is pretty average when you get right down to it. Most all of the girls are moe and the guys are sometimes bishonen to ugly, I think probably because of the fact this is such a harem style anime. When Moka does her transformation thing, they just reuse the scene over and over with the bats and its one of the reasons why I have a hard time not calling this a magical girl show. I think they also reuse a scene where Moka and Tsukune are staring at each other and calling out each others name too much as well. They will go back and forward a few times saying their names in a really glittery pink looking background and then finally the gag will hit. And since the animation was created by Gonzo, they have all the normal problems that go with that. Gonzo has had times where the animation is really nice and beautiful and then in things like action scenes or comedy scenes, things can get strange. Characters lose proportion a lot; the animation can look sort of half done, and so on.

The music of the show is nothing special. I could probably pick out only one song from all the songs they played that could be linked to this show. The others were pretty much stock music from other anime high school romantic comedies I think. The ending song is a bit energetic and mysterious piece but not really catchy. When we get to the voices, this is where the show shines… with bland to bad voices. I understand that it’s not because the voice actors are bad at all, in fact, they fit the characters really well. We have Todd Haberkorn as Tsukune (he seems to always be in the supernatural animes, doesn’t he?), Monica Rial as Yukari, and Alexis Tipton as Moka. The problem lies within the script. The script seems a bit dull compared to what the story could be. They created the show to be more like a slice of life school genre anime with a ‘monster of the day’ problem happening. Because of the over saturation of the school life genre, it feels like they tried to copy every other show out there. Oh, and why do we need a voice over explaining what happens when Moka transforms every single time? I don’t get it. Nothing changes in why she would transform so there is no need to bring it up every time.

While the show isn’t all that bad, it did bother me that they kept on showing the girls panties so much. They over sexualized the show and the characters. The rest of the show was more like typical school life drama with a guy who has so many girls flaunting around him.

The plot is just interesting enough to keep you watching the next episode. I watched the first season with interest and tried to keep an open-mind. What ruined the show is the overwhelming amount of sexual tinged scenes. Seriously the number of panty shots per episode is ridiculous. This is excluding the fact that some of the girls look like they are in elementary school and that mostly all the characters are underage. I can deal with one or two panty shots every couple of episodes. When it occurs in every episode numerous times, it becomes stale really quick. Couple that with the boob rubbing and it makes the series barely watchable. The plot is what held me on through the first season. After the first season, I was done.