Moka and Tsukune in Rosario + Vampire, Episode 6: “Newspaper Club and a Vampire“

Rosario + Vampire

Today, I’ve unearthed Rosario+Vampire to see if it’s worthy of a remake or if it’s best left to just recall fondly through the rose-colored glasses of early 2000’s nostalgia, when expectations were lower and trailers literally used fan service as a selling point. So, how did it hold up?

Now, I’m totally down to admit that my affection for Rosario + Vampire could be due to some recency bias, since I only read the manga, written and illustrated by Akihisa Ikeda, for the first time about a year or so ago when I discovered it while doomscrolling through the Shōnen Jump app.

History and Production

I read through the entire series, charmed by the comedic adventures of Moka, Tsukune, Kurume, and the many other characters. But what works in print sometimes successfully translate to animation, and there were quite a few other good harem and romance anime that also came out around the same time.

First published as a one-shot in Monthly Shōnen Jump in 2004, Rosario + Vampire became serialized later that year and continued publication until the magazine shuttered in 2007.  Rosario + Vampire II would be published in Jump Square from 2007 to 2014. The complete series, original and sequel, would have twenty-four tankobon volumes, licensed in America under Viz Media. 

The anime was produced by Gonzo and directed by Takayuki Inagaki, who recently directed the under-watched Birdie Wing: Golf Girl’s Story. It was released in January 2008, and a second season followed that October. American audiences had to wait however, as Funimation was unable to hit their original target date due to delays from the licensors and had to push back the release few months until July 19, 2011.  

Both seasons are now available to watch on Crunchyroll, which is where I binged the first chunk of episodes to find out if Rosario + Vampire holds up against the manga, as well as passage of time.

Content Warning

A few things to get out of the way before I get into my thoughts: I try to judge entertainment on the genre standards with which it presents itself.  So, if you promise me a supernatural romantic comedy harem with lots of fan service, I’ll be judging the quality of those things. And as a last note, Rosario + Vampire is labeled as a mature-rated series on Crunchyroll, due to the fan service elements. This review will discuss those elements, so feel free to skip that section or come back next week.

Recap – Spoilers Ahead!

For this review, I watched the first six episodes of Rosario + Vampire and then reread the manga just to refresh my memory. Right off the bat, pun intended, the differences in the storytelling, although initially slight, quickly began to add up to. Putting the manga to the side for now, the first question I had was how well the anime on its own stood up to over a decade of innovation in storytelling, even in the harem genre. 

Rosario + Vampire follows Tsukune Aono (a very normal fifteen-year-old human and terrible student) who finds himself mysteriously accepted into Yokai Academy after he fails the entrance exams for all the other high schools. There, he meets and becomes enamored with the lovely Moka Akashiya, who almost immediately drinks his blood and informs him that she is a Vampire.  

But it’s okay, because she wants to be friends with him. It starts to become apparent how Tsukune bombed his tests when her drinking his blood doesn’t worry him all that much, or stand in the way of their blossoming friendship. But to his credit, she’s really cute.

It takes his teacher straight-up informing the class that they are all monsters who probably want to eat humans while also being hunted by them for him to realize that Moka was telling the truth and he’s probably in over his head. Tsukune handles this about as well as one would expect and, after defending Moka from the class bully by bravely allowing himself to be thrown into a vending machine, he decides to head home where he probably won’t be eaten.  Moka tries to stop him by warning him of the dangers of the human world that she hates so much, and broken-hearted Tsukune admits that he’s human after some harsh words and runs off. 

 The bully makes his monstrous reappearance and Tsukune, forgetting that he’s the least powerful person in the school, runs back to rescue Moka. It’s going badly for him until he accidently removes the rosary that seals Moka’s powers and the “other Moka” is unleashed, complete with gothy magic girl transformation sequence. Other Moka dropkicks the bully so quickly that our helpful bat narrator gives a to-the-second timer. Moka and Tsukune make up while she drinks his apparently addictive blood and he wonders which Moka is the real one, setting up maybe an ongoing plot thread?

For a first episode, it’s not a bad one; it’s heavy on comedy and panty shots, but even for the time the animation is fine.  The one stand-out visual moment is after her transformation when she’s covered in bats, right before she kicks the bully into a mountain.  The voice acting and characterization of the main cast is really the selling point here.  I like Moka, which doesn’t change in the following episodes.

Her tendency to use Tsukune as a human Capri Sun comes off as endearing when paired with her loyalty to those who feel as isolated and lonely as she did prior to meeting our human hero. And while Tsukune definitely starts in the “what does she see in him” category of harem leads, his willingness to stands up for others at the risk of his own life, and his ride-or-die devotion to Moka even in a world he knows nothing about, slowly becomes admirable instead of just eyeroll-worthy. 

As the cast starts to round out with the aggressive succubus, the ecchi elements start to ramp up. Kurumu Kurono is looking for her dream man and using every possible advantage, supernatural and physical. 

 There’s a lot of boob-jiggling and, since she flies, more than the normal amount of panty shots, and that’s a considerable amount. I’m pretty sure Moka’s skirt doesn’t cover her pantsu.

The sort-of-sexy shenanigans continue with the introduction of child prodigy and witch Yukari Sendo. Fortunately, Yukari isn’t the target, more like the cause of said shenanigans? It’s still pretty iffy when she decides that she’s in love with Moka, and that means she can grope her chest, or magically cause other girls to lose their skirts, or use a voodoo doll to have Tsukune grope Kurumu.  Yeah, this kid probably needs friends her own age, and this school definitely needs some kind of adult supervision.  

Yukari’s intro episode does reintroduce one of the core themes of Rosario + Vampire by taking a break from fan service to deal with her loneliness and constant rejection by both societies. All these characters are alone in some way, and the show thematically works best when it focuses on that.  Or when Other Moka is kicking the stuffing out of obnoxious villain-of-the-week-styled monsters. Of course, we have to get through some pretty formulaic fights to get to the kicking, thanks to the need for Tsukune to remove the rosary first. 

By episode six I’d realized two things: I probably wasn’t going to finish the series; the swimming episode killed my momentum. But if not for that, I didn’t dislike the show. It is different from the manga in a lot of little ways; some characters are de-emphasized and others were created for the show.

One big difference was that the pacing was reworked to introduce certain characters sooner, causing a rework of some entire stories, like the swimming club one. The manga version of that story is darker, probably due to the absence of a musical number (!), and I prefer it that way. I didn’t stick with the show long enough to find out how Other Moka’s storyline would shape up but given the limited amount of episodes across both seasons and the pacing issues, I’m not optimistic.

The other thing I realized is, judging Rosario + Vampire on its merits, it’s not that bad;  it has a certain pervy charm. The gags of Tskukune’s suffering at the hands of his admirers hit more than they miss, and occasionally the characters seem aware enough that they are living in a world full of reckless teenagers and absent adults. The only real downside is how repetitive everything becomes; from the never-ending, nearly identical shots of Moka’s underwear to the end-of-episode fight formula.

I’m not objecting to the horny elements of the show, just how unimaginative they become, although I did have to laugh when, in episode 4, Kurumu’s bouncing breasts were contrasted with the bouncing belly of an overzealous admirer. My main reasons for dropping the show are more about the pacing issues and my already limited time.

It would be interesting to see what a modern adaptation of Rosario + Vampire would look like. There are plenty of studios that can balance the line between stories with emotional resonance and fluffier material, and returning to the darker edge of the manga might hit better with modern audiences, especially in a time when more faithful remakes are becoming common.  

Is Rosario + Vampire worth watching?

If you are looking for a low-effort story that doesn’t ask too much of the viewer, is full of cute characters and, at the time I stopped watching, delivers relatively low-stakes conflicts with a generous helping of fan service and acceptable animation, give it a shot. It’s not groundbreaking and probably not binge–worthy, but it made me laugh, right before I reached for the manga to finish the story.

Watch Rosario + Vampire on Crunchyroll or read a free preview on Viz

All images are used for educational purposes only.