English Dub Review: Vampire Dormitory “The pretty boy drowns.”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Ruka is pressured to marry Miko, but realizes his feelings for Mito. However, he’s too late, as the misunderstanding from earlier has led Mito to Ren in order to forget Ruka.

OUR TAKE

I’ve binged through this show over the past week to get ready to cover this one episode and it’s basically been torture having to wade through every possible cheap romantic drama cliche, most of which require every character to be an idiot in order to occur. Case in point, last episode ended with Mito feeling heartbroken that Ruka instinctively went to save the fake Miko instead of her, which any person with a shred of common sense would know there could be a thousand other reasons for happening other than what he assumed. The story reasons for this are blindingly obvious, which is to drive Mito to Ren one last time in order to prime Ruka up for fully realizing his feelings, which he will then use to fully get Mito back in the finale. And I guess then Mito will get her boobs back and Ruka will realize that she’s been his true soulmate all along! Which will then make his triumphant declaration for loving a man feel pretty much like the definition of queerbaiting, but you’re not coming to Vampire Dormitory for the progressive writing, now are you. Just eat up your fake Yaoi slop and don’t ask questions.

If I may be so bold as to give this show an early Season Review, it’s honestly gotta be one of the worst shows of the year so far. This feels like a series that was made fifteen years ago but got lost in a filing cabinet until a few months ago. Even if Japan isn’t exactly as progressive about homosexuality as even the United States, there’s other ways of having it in your story than this nonsense. If there was any hope of this show sticking any sort of landing, they could have Mito end up staying a guy by the end or something. Because currently, we have a woman crossdressing as a man, in love with a man, who thinks she’s a man and has just now come to terms with himself having feelings for a man, but now the girl, who is now turn into a man, has amnesia and is engaged to a man who is into men…and it all looks pretty bad when you connect all of the dots like that. Like holy shit, I know that Pride Month just ended but you could try to be even the slightest bit subtle. Whatever, next week it’s done.