The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess

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Shut-in vampire Terakomari, or Komari for short, awakens from her slumber to find she's been promoted to commander of the army! The thing is, though, her new squad has a reputation for being violently insubordinate. Although Komari was born to a prestigious vampire family, her hatred of blood has made her the picture of mediocrity-scrawny, uncoordinated, and inept at magic. With the odds stacked against her, will the help of her trusty maid be enough for this recluse to blunder her way to success?

The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess is based on a light novel series of the same name by Kotei Kobayashi. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Saturdays.

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Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

This is one of those anime premieres I wanted to like more than I actually did. The premise itself is built for comedy. A super-weak vampire girl is forced to become a general in a society where everyone is constantly killing each other to climb the ranks. Thus she has no choice but to pretend she is so insanely strong that it would be not only suicidal but also utterly pointless to challenge her.

The issue I have is that I don't feel Tomori Kusunoki's voice quite fits the part of our reluctant heroine, Terakomari. While I think she does the spoiled hikikomori bit well, she completely fails at the “arrogant and unstoppable general” role. Her voice simply lacks the charisma and gravitas needed. So instead of being a convincing cover-up of her true nature, her voice is to the point that I can't believe anyone would be fooled by the act.

Now, perhaps it's a directorial choice and she was told to deliver her lines as she does. Or perhaps it's part of the joke—that the vampires in her unit are so unbelievably stupid they take her words at face value despite the obviousness of the lie. Or heck, maybe they all know she's lying from the start but she's so cute they decide to go with the flow. Regardless, in this first episode, it kept pulling me out of the show.

All that said, there was one thing I really enjoyed: the twist at the end. While Terakomari fears death, this is due to the pain associated with it rather than the actual being dead part. After all, in this world, especially in the area between the six main countries, death seems to be impossible. Anyone who dies or is injured will be healed automatically by magic. This means the “wars” she is forced to wage are ultimately pointless—and are little more than entertainment for the masses. This adds a lot of potential depth to the story—making it seem like we could get a lot more than simple slapstick humor out of this one.

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Nicholas Dupree
Rating:

Even after an entire episode with this show, it's hard to get a read on what it's going for. Roughly 60% of this premiere sets up the goofy farce of a shut-in vampire who has to bluff her way through becoming a general in the Incredibly Violent Vampire Army. The other 40% is exposition about a bizarre world where vampires, angels, beast people, and other races all fight in a war where nobody dies or gets hurt for reasons yet to be explained. In the middle of all that, there's some intentionally trashy comedy about our heroine being harassed by a thirsty lesbian vampire queen and her equally thirsty maid. It's juggling a lot of different ideas and tones and just isn't adept enough to make that balancing act work.

On the comedy end, it doesn't quite go far enough in on its punchlines. Watching Terakomari Gandesblood (yes, that's her name) bluff-check her way through her unearned promotion is relatively funny, and there are some good gags, like her unintentionally killing a subordinate and instantly earning her soldiers' respect. You'd think that would make for an excellent base to continually heighten the joke – maybe have her off an enemy general by slipping on a banana peel or something – but instead, it just sits at that level for the rest of the premiere. Komari talks a big game; everyone believes her, and then we move on without building to bigger punchlines. It's an odd half-measure that makes it difficult to grok onto this half of the premise.

The other half also raises a lot of questions and doesn't seem very interested in answering them. It's very suddenly revealed that the wars Komari and her soldiers are waging are...play fights? Some magic mumbo jumbo exists that prevents soldiers from dying or sustaining permanent injuries, so I guess these battles are to show off? It's not explained beyond calling it a "war of entertainment" and leaves the wrong lingering questions. Like, wouldn't this mean Komari doesn't have anything to lose if her cover is blown? Or is the threat of death only real off the battlefield? How does this work? Why is it here? I don't know, and the lack of explanation makes me less interested in finding out. My best guess is it's a device to defang the idea of Komari leading soldiers to their potential deaths to save her own skin, thus keeping things open for goofy comedy, but it seems like too drastic of a step for that one narrative sleight of hand.

It does at least look nice. The designs of the minor characters are simple and goofy, but the ones that matter look appealing and are animated with lots of expressive energy. That helps the third angle, with Komari's thirsty maid constantly trying to entice her into making love, not war. It's a very trashy brand of yuri fanservice that won't appeal to everyone, and Vill's bit does wear thin by the episode's end, but if you want to see some well-drawn girls getting up close and personal, this seems more likely to deliver than not. I'd prefer if the show could be funnier, more coherent, or just more unabashedly shameless. As-is, it feels like a collection of halfway-developed ideas crowding for screen time and robbing each other of any chance to leave their mark.

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James Beckett
Rating:

You know, it might have been because, as of writing this preview, I've been watching and reviewing anime for nearly eight hours straight, but I found the premiere of The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess to be a bit…overwhelming. It isn't bad, by any means; the art and animation are consistently excellent, there's a good amount of slapstick and visual humor that lands, and I'm generally down for the premise of a cute little vampire girl doing battle with a bunch of other vampires. Still, though, this show has a lot going on, both in terms of the number of gags it tries to cram into the runtime, and how much of its scatterbrained story is delivered through very long sequences of goofy dialogue that barely ever stops to take a breath.

This can be a good thing – you could say that the same breakneck pace applies to comedy masterpieces like Kaguya-sama: Love is War! In the case of Vexations, though, quantity doesn't always mean quality. The opening scenes spend a lot of time on our heroine Komari trying to escape the vice grip of her new maid so that she can go pee, which ends up feeling more like the writers indulging in some barely disguised kinks than a properly paid-off joke. Then there's all of the material surrounding the various women that spend their time trying to grope and caress the underaged-looking Komari, which…yeah, you probably already know how you feel about that kind of humor. Even when the jokes do work, it's easy to be distracted by how much set-up is needed to establish Komari's new role as a Crimson Lord, the whole deal with this eternal cycle of monster wars, and all of the side-characters that pop in and out with every new scene.

Despite how overstuffed and undercooked some of its material can seem, though, I didn't hate the time I spent with The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess. As I said, its visuals are excellent, which makes the slapstick-based jokes stand out. The funniest moment of the whole premiere was the slow-motion triple-replay of Vill the Vampire's gruesome decapitation. If the story can settle into place and give the characters time to grow into their roles, and if the visuals can maintain this level of quality from week to week, then Vexations may well be worth sticking with, for a little while at least.