It's the kind of League of Extraordinary Gentleman gothic ludicrousness that I'd normally love, but to my surprise I disliked it. My problem is with its dual protagonists. They're immune to death. This isn't always a stumbling block (e.g. Undead Unluck), but here it was. 1. Aya is an immortal who claims to be looking for death, but isn't looking very hard. 2. Tsugaru is a monster who can defeat anything and claims to be looking for an interesting death, because ultimately he's going to fall victim to his own blood taking him over. Result: they're smug gits who are never particularly bothered by what's happening around them. 3. However, I quite liked Aya's cold, hostile maid. She's human, she's not invulnerable like the other two and my favourite bit in this series was around ep.11 when she temporarily becomes the most important character and is forced into playing detective.

AYA RINDO = an immortal who's currently just a severed head. Having her body stolen just made her snarkier. These days, she's playing at being a detective. I don't dislike her as a person, but she's a literal talking head with no motivation except to show off her intelligence. (Yes, she wants her body back and theoretically also to be killed, but neither of those is in immediate danger of happening.) She is, though, very clever.

TSUGARU SHINUCHI = he doesn't care about anything and wanders around making jokes. He tries to swindle a taxi driver out of his fee after driving them to a mansion of vampires. He comments on Shizuku's flat-chestedness. (Both of those are in ep.2, though, so perhaps he gets better. Also, his reason for wanting to live in ep.1 is evil.) As far as I was concerned, he could bog off. He's incredibly strong and presumably we're expected to cheer him on when he fights monsters, but: (a) his victories feel preordained, and (b) I was always hoping he'd lose.

SHIZUKU HASEI = stoic, cold, hostile and never smiles. She's still more likeable than the other two, though, and not just because she'd like Tsugaru to drop dead

It's the late 19th century, with vampires, werewolves and famous fictional characters... Arsene Lupin, the Phantom of the Opera, Sherlock Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. The anime also bastardises the hell out of historical characters like Aleister Crowley and Jack the Ripper.

This season has three story arcs, presumably adapted from three novels. 1 = vampire whodunnit. 2 = literary mega-crossover. 3 = werewolf whodunnit. The murder mysteries are ingenious and depend on the appropriate mythology, but they also play fast and loose with the lore... sometimes including Rindo's deductions. I cry "bullshit". We're told that silver kills vampires, but not werewolves. Admittedly there are legends in which vampires don't like silver, but it's not one of the classical vampire weaknesses... and those were largely codified by Bram Stoker, who doesn't mention silver at all. In this story, Dracula is real and was killed last year. Meanwhile, you can't kill vampires with wooden stakes. Ep.4 states that vampires can be killed by silver, holy water and nothing else.

As for the werewolves, they've evolved past their vulnerability to silver. Okay, at least it's been acknowledged. These werewolves are apparently into eugenics and forced breeding. What doesn't exist, though, is werewolf infection. The villagers are aware that someone born in the village can't be a werewolf, which is why they suspect outsiders.

As for the borrowed fictional characters, Phileas Fogg is as rich as Croesus and can afford a Bond villain lair in the middle of London. Carmilla is the kind of anime lesbian who has huge boobs and wears such a low-cut dress that she's functionally topless, while infecting people with her aphrodisiac blood. She's so over-the-top that it's stupid. I should be the last person to complain about this kind of thing, but even I found Carmilla annoying. (They also perpetuate the age-old confusion of Victor Frankenstein with his creature, but I'm going to assume that this monster took its creator's name.)

Almost none of it works. I didn't care about any of the literary characters, unless you count being irritated by their distortions of them. Arsene Lupin promising to steal the something-or-other was a big pile of Not Interested. The vampire whodunnit's okay. The werewolf whodunnit populates even its human village with bigoted morons who deserve to die, e.g. accusing someone of being a werewolf simply because they're an outsider. The story also signposts its intentions too obviously by starting with innocent female werewolf victims being hunted down by the humans.

There's also an elite team of monster hunters with names like Alice Rapidshot. Go on, guess what weapon she uses.

No no no no no. It's not even fun to flick through second time, because there's so little that's likeable. Instead, it's full of things that are annoying, irritating, unlikeable, smug, wilfully inaccurate and/or dramatically static. I bounced off it.