Karin – episode 1

November 7, 2005 on 6:50 pm | In Karin | 2 Comments

“Overflow is embarrassing!”

Vampire comedy from the man who brought you Sugar, Burn Up Excess and other, less enjoyable shows!
J.C. Staff sure knows how to pick them.

Maaka Karin seems to be a normal vampire girl. A transfer student, Usui Kenta, moves to her school and we find that this is not true at all! When in his presence, her blood acts up … which leads to the revelation that she is, in fact, a reverse vampire – one who expels blood rather than takes it in!

… I’m not entirely sure how that works.

Karin is definitely an odd vampire, having few troubles with sunlight and operating on a normal day to day timeframe. Unlike the rest of her family, she has no night vision and has an aversion to biting people all the time. Despite all of this, she is happy enough.
Meeting Kenta, then, turns the world topsy turvy! Kenta has piercing eyes, and maybe this will come to mean something; after such a conclusion, could it really be said that he knows she’s a vampire? It’s more likely that he believes her to be a violent nosebleeder.

There’s a good deal that I don’t understand about this show, such as what exactly a reverse vampire does when she latches onto someone’s neck: is she giving blood? That’s dangerous, that is. Still, Kimura’s direction has a surprising leaning toward poetic representation of the material, and he combines that with the beautiful watercolour backgrounds that he used so well in Sugar.

Karin has room to move, as Karin has a nice family, and there’s this general vibe to it. It’s no great shakes yet, but I can sense much potential in this one … for fan service … and general other supernatural comedy.

2 Comments

  1. *Some spoiler follows*

    Yeah, you got that right. Basically Karin produces an unhealthy amount of blood which….uhm…threaten to gush from her nose unless she bites someone and transfers those blood to that person. This, in return, creates an interesting effect on Karin and the person that she bites.

    *spoiler ends*

    Anyway, I like that J.C Staff continues to play with the style of each series they received. Although I have to admit that I have never paid attention to a specific studio style prior to Honey and Clover before. I figure it’s not worth following a particular studio since there will always be some stinkers produced along the way.

    Comment by Garten — November 8, 2005 #

  2. I always follow general production teams: this show has a writer from Sugar as well as the director of said series.
    Lamentably the scriptwriter worked on Eiken as well as Sugar. Still, better material to work with, right? Right?

    Anyway, I think that you can count on studios sometimes: look how good AIC was from about 1992-1998. Kind of depresses me how they’ve disappeared from rocking.

    Comment by Alex — November 8, 2005 #

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