Vampire Princess Miyu by Toshiki Hirano (Review)

Hmmm… I’d heard this was a rather stylish slice of anime horror. However, I found it fairly dull. Unfortunately, I was watching the dubbed version, so I have a feeling that a good deal of the plot was lost in the translation. Like many such anime, like X or Vampire Hunter D, the film’s concept could have made for an awesome movie, but the actual product was a disappointment.

The OAV (which consists of four separate episodes) centers around Miyu, a young vampire who is charged with hunting down renegade demons called Shinma. She is challenged by Himiko, a spiritualist who believes that Miyu is committing a series of vampiric crimes. All four episodes are fairly independent of each other, which made for a jarring and confusing experience; I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if it had just been made into one cohesive movie (though that might have resulted in something as disappointing as X).

More than once, I was left scratching my head and wondering what was going on, with no help from the dialog. I’m chalking it up to the terrible dubbing, so I won’t pass final judgment until I see the subtitled version, but I remain fairly skeptical.