Draluc is a legendary badass vampire... who'll disintegrate into dust if you so much as open the door. Or kick him in the shin. Or anything, really.

The idea's quite funny. The episode, though, feels like a four-panel gag manga adaptation, with flat characters who shout a lot and Draluc saying the Japanese word for "sand" every time he crumbles into dust/sand. (Why? Stop it.) Some of the jokes are okay, e.g. Dracul being unable to overcome a small boy who visits his mansion to play video games, but I don't really see why a vampire should then decide to move in with Vampire Hunter Ronaldo the Great. (It's a sitcom set-up, yes, but I'd have found it funnier had I been able to believe in it.)

Apparently there will be lots of off-colour humour from ep.2 onwards. That information tempted me, briefly, but no. This is a perfectly good silly vampire comedy and I'm sure my reaction is atypical, but this one zoomed past me. I don't buy it.

The title sequence has lots of pretty boy vampires. (There are admittedly one or two characters who look female and have names like Elizabeth and Eve... but no, they're pretty boys too. This show's mythology says that only males can become vampires.) How many of these people are there? I counted thirteen. This is an anime adaptation of a mobile phone game, right?

It's not. I have no explanation for this episode.

Anyway, our vampire boys want to compete in a music competition called Visual Prison. The vampire who sings the most beautiful song will be given great power by the Scarlet Moon! Can Ange put together a musical idol unit in time? (Visual Kei musicians aren't technically J-pop idols, but there's not much difference these days. It's not really a music genre, but instead just involves outrageous make-up, hair and costumes, which sometimes look androgynous. Theoretically, it's not unlike Western glam rock.)

No no no no. Alternatively, no. I couldn't even sit through the episode. It's diving head-first into all the seductive glamorous vampire cliches, but with boy bands.

"My mission is to make everyone happy by singing. Welcome to NiaLand!"

That's the first thing we hear. My expectations plummet.

NiaLand is a warzone, with girls who can crush your head one-handed and head-smacking flying sphere drones. Anyone with a circle on their neck will kill you. Lots of corpses.

That's more interesting.

Oddly, the episode's about both of those things. Vivy is an autonomous AI whose mission is to sing, as described. She has no other goals or desires. (We're shown how AIs in this universe couldn't handle multiple missions. They couldn't prioritise and mixed things up inappropriately.) This makes it hard to get her interested in, say, a mass slaughter of humans in a hundred years' time. This frustrates a talking cube that becomes a teddy bear but is really a clever AI voiced by Jun Fukuyama (an actor I like a good deal).

There's a politician who's trying to pass a law for AI rights. There are assassination attempts. There's Vivi, who's emotionlessly focused on singing (which ironically means no one's interested in listening to her) but she also happens to be an extremely fast runner and possibly bulletproof. This looks a bit different. Should be worth seeing where this one goes.

I'd never considered this before, but "blood" and "Vlad" sound indistinguishable in a Japanese accent.

Anyway, Bamba is a schoolgirl who loves giving blood so much that the school nurse calls her a pervert. One day, a vampire called Mai appears at the blood bank, who misunderstand dreadfully.

It's quite weird and possibly not for the super-squeamish. (Mai's a lovely girl who refuses to do anything that might harm others, but there's still a lot of enthusiasm for and talk of blood. She also drinks amusingly if given a blood pack. I laughed.) There's comedy nudity, but it's censored with big black stickers that claim it's "ARTISTICALLY NECESSARY".

That school nurse is outrageous, amoral and not very plausible, but I'm pretty sure "plausibility" isn't one of this anime's life goals. I'll keep going.

Blood donation.

I can't give blood. I get squeamish thinking about it.

The show definitely looks good and I'd happily recommend it, especially since it's created and directed by the legendary Mamoru Oshii. But I'm going to be ducking out here.

It's just a music video. No plot or dialogue. iDOLM@STER characters sing and dance, including to my surprise the boys from The iDOLM@STER SideM (which I didn't watch, so I always forget about it). They do something vaguely rap-like in the middle.

The song's forgettable, but the animation's quite good... if you don't mind the fact that it's just an idol dance performance. It's bookended by some laser special effect stuff, as if the girls were being created by 3D printers.