Vampire in the Garden is a beautiful but anemic horror romance

There’s no shortage of anime vampire stories. From classics like 2000’s Blood: The Last VampireOr Vampire Hunter B: Bloodlust to more recent fare such as the Kizumonogatari film trilogy and last year’s slapstick comedy Vlad LoveAll of the anime in this series tap into the tension between humans and supernatural predators. This drama is a result of the tension between their seemingly incompatible lives and their mutual attraction.

Vampires in the GardenWit Studio produced the Netflix series “The Originals”. Vinland SagaAnd The Ancient Magus’ Bride fame, attempts to tap that same vein in service of an apocalyptic melodrama of star-crossed love and friendship — to mixed results.

Directed by Ryōtarō Makihara and Hiroyuki Tanaka and written by Makihara himself, the five-episode series is set in a world several generations after a prolonged and bitter war between humans and a race of immortal vampires has ravaged the planet. Vampires in the GardenThis is the story about Momo. She was a woman who served as a soldier for one of the last fortified urban areas. Fine is Fine’s begrudging queen, and she meets her. Together, they run off to seek a better life, away from conflict, or even a paradise.

Image by Wit Studio/Netflix

Makihara and Tanaka are no strangers to horror, with the former having previously directed 2015’s Empire of Corpses and the latter having worked as an episode director and storyboard artist on 2006’s Hellsing Ultimate. This familiarity can be seen, even though it is not apparent in the case where the repetition of Vampires in the Garden’s story beats and characters. There’s very little in the way of genuine surprises or twists, with the premise essentially boiling down to a star-crossed romance plot familiar to anyone with a superficial grasp of the genre. The anime’s story bears a surface-level resemblance to Wolf’s Rain From 2004, the story is about a band of shapeshifting, wolf-like wolves that travels across an equally bleak world to find their own mythical paradise. But Vampires in the Garden is lacking when compared to that series’ emotional sophistication; nothing about Fine and Momo’s journey is as memorable or surprising as Wolf’s Rain. Instead, it settles in a comfortable groove and doesn’t rise to or fall to anything extraordinary. In short: It’s okay, but only that.

Which The Vampire GardenIt excels in the environment and background layouts. This is because it draws inspiration from Soviet-era and Czarist Russia coded architecture and art in order to create landscapes that are both beautiful and chilling in their cold desolation. Music and art play an important role not only as an element of distinction between human and vampire society but as the impetus of Momo and Fine’s fast friendship.

Image by Wit Studio/Netflix

As told in the anime’s first episode, human society banned music and all other forms of artistic expression so as to fend off vampires, whose senses are so keen that any music or art runs the risk of arousing their attention and incurring their wrath. It is evident in the oppressive architecture of the human city with its gunmetal gray walls and searchlights emitting sickly-green ultraviolet light. The humans sacrificed all expressions of their humanity to save the vampire-kind.

Fine, her childhood friend Allegro and their vampiric society are so dependent on music and art that they derive their names by musical commands and movements. These represent their personalities and perspectives. Allegro has a passion for exterminating humanity and is vindictive. Fine, who is still haunted from a trauma she suffered in her past, hides her desire for death beneath dramatic display of morbidity. While attempting to attack the city of humans in episode one, Fine encounters Momo. She is moved by her voice and so regains the desire to live and maybe even find love. “This war will never be over,” Fine tells Momo while surrounded by a group of human soldiers. “Eventually all logic will be lost and everyone will become monsters. Do you wish to stay here and live as though you’re already dead?”

Image by Wit Studio/Netflix

Momo and Fine discover a new calling to their lives through shared passions for music and eventually each other. Escaping together, Fine teaches Momo how to sing, nurturing Momo’s self-expression in a way denied to her by her life among human society. Most importantly, Momo is faced with the question that no one, not even her own mother, save for Fine asks her: “What is it that you want out of your life?” Throughout the series we catch all-too-fleeting glimpses of what a life beyond the human-vampire conflict might look like, all while hounded by the threat of not only human and vampire soldiers who hunt them but Fine’s own long-suppressed hunger for blood.

But while these elements themselves are laudable, they’re not enough to carry Vampires in the Garden. The episodes are often rushed and the characters seem a bit underdeveloped. The visible distinctions in class between vampire and human society go unexplored, while the anime’s conclusion attempts to have it both ways as to whether its definition of paradise is figurative or literal. Most of the series’ fights and transformation sequences, as well as the design of the vampires in their beastial superpowered forms, feel rushed, unrealized, or inherently unimaginative. Ultimately, it leaves the audience with the sense that there’s nothing to this world beyond Momo and Fine’s love story, despite the potential for something deeper and richer visible at the periphery. Vampires in the Garden is certainly gorgeous to look at, but once you’ve sunk your teeth into it, there’s little to draw from it other than a fairly standard romance story.

Vampires in the GardenYou can stream Netflix right now