The moon is full and eerie over the Houston sky, and I just got back from the screening of Volume 1 (eps 1-4) of Dance in the Vampire Bund. Oh. My. God. It was pretty damn awesome. Beautiful, boundary-pushing... excellent voice English voice casting...
Playing the lead role of Mina Tepeš, of Romania, was the lovely and talented Ms. Monica Rial. Oh, dear Lord, I can listen to Monica voice disturbingly sexy vampires all day long...
It's not like Monica is new to this kind of role...lemme see, where do I remember her doing something similar...
Oh yeah, thanks... *grin* Hi, Hazuki (waves) ...miss you, babe...
Now that I'm home from Vampire Bund, I find I totally want to go watch MoonPhase all over again.
Mina Tepeš is actually a more emotionally complex, darkly tortured soul than Hazuki (well, discounting the whole weird split personality Hazuki/Luna thing, anyway)...Hazuki is initially not a very sympathetic character, while Mina definitely is. Mina has a confidence bordering on arrogance, but she's not overtly evil, at least, not yet. She's insanely rich (living for centuries plus the ordinary miracles of compound interest and wise investments), but her motives are something of a mystery.
Her bond with her werewolf...servant? lover? is complicated and interesting.
Collen Clinkenbeard also does a fantastic job as one of Mina's chief lieutenants, again delivering a voice performance so sexy it can probably melt butter. I also picked out Brina Palencia's voice as the initial TV hostess, and Jamie Marchi as one of the contestants in the show.
I am a total Vampire Anime fanboy...I don't know what it is, but I eat it up...
Trinity Blood, MoonPhase, Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate....Hell, the best episodes of Negima! are the ones which feature brooding Vampire hottie Evangeline with her snooty Queen's English accent...
I love Evangeline, especially in the shortened Negima!? re-boot...
We get more of Evangeline's rather sad back-story in the rebooted Negima!? and learn she is really more tragic than outright evil. I love morally complex characters like this, and I get a sense that Mina Tepeš will unfold in a similar manner in Dance in the Vampire Bund.
I've seen only the first four episodes and look forward to catching the next four (5-8) next month at Alamo Drafthouse. I can hardly wait. But next week, I will see if I can't catch the screening of the new Sentai Filmworks release High School of the Dead. We were treated to a brief trailer for it at Alamo this evening and it looks pretty awesome in its own right. I definitely feel motivated to check it out.
I can only conclude that Vampires in Anime/Manga TOTALLY ROCK!
