It's a shounen series for boys. I can hardly believe it, but it is. The manga launched in Akita Shoten's Bessatsu Shounen Champion in October 2021. Nonetheless, I'd have sworn this anime was aimed at adult women, because...

1. Its cast is full of attractive men who are Extremely Fond Of Each Other. Women are in a minority and will always be oblivious heterosexuals in a Boy's Love world. The protagonist (Mori Ranmaru) is a vampire with no interest in girls and a massive erection whenever he gets overexcited about the prospect of sucking the boy he loves. (Okay, yes, he means "drinking blood", but you couldn't even call the gay reading subtext.)

2. Our heroes work in a public bathhouse, so there's lots of male nudity. It's TV-friendly, of course, but the boys will be getting an eyeful of what the camera's avoiding. (Female nudity is never considered.)

3. A virgin boy's meat is the most delicious kind. "If he's not a virgin, it doesn't taste the same! It's the difference between prime steak and pencil shavings."

4. There's also unrelated sexual tension from the "he's a vampire, so he's not into sex, but wow he's still hot." Girls will be interested.

This show's premise sounds dodgy. Mori Ranmaru is a 450-year-old vampire who's been working at a particular bathhouse for ten years because he's been grooming their son as his next piece of meat. Rihito's 15 years old. Count backwards. Ewwww. Mori sometimes has trouble stopping himself from enjoying the boy now, but he keeps telling himself to wait three more years for the ultimate taste.

Despite that, though, the show's charming. It made me laugh a lot and its message is lovely. I'm shocked that it didn't get a bigger audience.

Firstly, it's a surprisingly hard-edged vampire anime. It's also an adorable romantic comedy, yes, but Mori Ranmaru regularly goes hunting and we have no idea if his prey survived. Furthermore, he believes he doesn't give a damn about humans. Mori disclaims any interest in helping them or in being nice. He's itching to murder Rihito. That's it. He's in love with the boy, yes, but he's still a killer. More than once, he appears outside a girl's bedroom window with the intention of draining her dry, albeit blocked by his need to be invited in.

He's also not the only vampire out there. More bloodthirsty ones start appearing later. Meanwhile, a vampire hunter has been hunting Mori for years and hates him for personal reasons.

This is disconcerting... but it makes the show all the more endearing when it starts doing love triangles between idiots. Mori wants to stop Rihito from getting a girlfriend and goes to great trouble to prevent this, but he couldn't be more wrong about the lovestruck Aoi's romantic intentions. Pretty much everyone is secretly in love with someone who's not interested and/or similarly admired in turn.

Furthermore, Mori is being changing by living with humans. He likes them. He doesn't hide what he is. (Rihito's family don't mind and think his claims are funny, although it's unclear to what extent anyone actually believes him.) He's polite, kind and in love with the innocent Rihito. He might believe himself to be a ruthless predator, but he's being seduced into becoming their friend and looking out for their wellbeing. For what it's worth, that's why I disagree with the "gay grooming" reading of this show that turned off some Western viewers. Calling Mori a sexual predator is simplifying the multiple levels in their relationship (killing him for food, romantic love and of course also sexual attraction) and the whole point of the show is to play with the misconceptions and overlapping boundaries among those.

Anime vampire stories are occasionally hard, bloody horror, but more often fluffy harmless comedies with vampires who can go out in daylight, eat normal food and aren't meaningfully vampires in any recognisable way. It's quite rare to see an anime like this that straddles the boundaries. Before being sired, for instance, these vampires were real historical figures who knew Oda Nobunaga.

I loved it. There's a live-action film adaptation and I'll watch that tomorrow. This is a fairly lightweight show that won't change anyone's life, but future episodes might raise the dramatic stakes as more undead appear. Let's hope the producers make Season 2!

Oh, and the title is just "Va-vam Va-vam Vam Vampire". A Japanese accent turns the English word "vampire" into "banpaia".