birdlandmemories

*This review contains spoilers*

This anime, well it has some very obvious flaws. For one thing, most of the girls in the series are basic tsunderes that follow the same tropes. The protagonist is nothing special personality wise and is a vampire. That last note leads onto my third point, since he's a vampire, you can guess what that means. That gets played for fanservice to the extreme. There are a few other critiques I have of this series that I'll explain below. I get that from how I'm describing this anime to this point, it'll get a terribly low score of 1 or 2. But I'll give this show some credit, it isn't boring, and it has a few interesting characters. Now, onto the individual scoring.

Story: The main protagonist is Kojou Akatsuki, who is the fourth progenitor, which means he's an incredibly strong vampire who is also immortal. He like all familiars has being called familiars, which are a source of his tremendous power. Eventually he meets up with our female lead, Yukina Himeragi, who is tasked with killing him if he's dangerous by orders from the Lion King Organization, who she works for. However, she takes a liking to him and that original plotpoint is no more. Eventually more girls are introduced, we meet up with a few family members of vampires, and of course a wide variety of villains.

There are 2 main problems I have with the overall story. The first is that there's no overall theme. It all comes across as more of an "and then...." sequence. The second problem I have is with the directors. When the action and fights do occur, they often skip key moments in those said fights. For example, when Dimitrie Valter, a descendant of the the first progenitor, is fighting one of the villains who escaped the prison. The anime cuts away from the fight with Dimitrie on the defensive and struggling to hold on. But when it returns to the fight, suddenly Dimitrie is ready to finish him off, and no explaination is given as to what transpired. This occurs very often, and it really dampens what should be exciting battles.

There's also a lot of fanservice present that I'm guessing is there for comic relief. It doesn't really work and I find it annoying how moments that could've been used to fill in the missing plotpoints in fights like the one I mentioned above, are wasted on meaningless fanservice.

Animation: It's decent. There's nothing unique or special about it, but the character designs are decent enough, and the backgrounds, while somewhat bland are far better than some previous anime that I have watched.

Characters: Well, there's a mix of good and bad here. Minamiya is easily my favorite character in the series. He powers are interesting and her personality is unique compared to the female characters in the series. And there in lies one of the big problems. Sayaka, Yukina, and Asagi all have they same tsundere personality type. They love the main character but will never admit it. It's one thing to have a tsundere character, every anime these days seems to have one, but to have your 3 main female love interests have the exact same archetype, it doesn't work.

The other problem is the characters lack long term goals. Dimitrie for example causes chaos because he's bored with eternal life. Yes, it makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's a good reason or motivation for his character. I have no idea what Kojou's goals are, nor do I have any idea what the goals are for the other characters like Yukina or Sayaka are. And I'm not talking about marrying Kojou or getting him to love them.

Overall: This series when averaged out gets a 4/10, and that seems about right. There are a few decent things about this anime, but it's largely disappointing. If it focused more on the action and had an overreacing storyline instead of a patchwork one, it'd score higher. However, I can't ignore the unnecessary fanservice, the lack of uniqueness in some of the characters, nor can I ignore the random skipping of key moments of fights.

Favorite Character: Natsuki Minamiya. She's the most well-written and has a bit more of a unique personality compared to everyone else.

Least Favorite Character: Nagisa Akatsuki. *Spoiler* Outside of being a vessel for the previous fourth progenitor, she doesn't really have much of a purpose.