English Dub Review: The Vampire Dies in No Time “Citizen Baseball Kane”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

A vampire who loves playing rock-paper-scissors challenges the Hunters Guild to a tournament—but whenever they lose, they must strip off an article of clothing. After many loses, Draluc finally asks the Hunter’s why they don’t just beat him up, and they proceed to do so. Next, Draluc teams up with Satetsu in an effort to make him more heroic in the eyes of the public, but things don’t go as planned when he takes on a vampire who likes to litter. Finally, Ronaldo teams up with several other Hunters to rid the beach of a vampire named Mini Bikini.

Our Take:

The Vampire Dies in No Time returns with its ninth dubbed episode this week, and unfortunately it’s also a return to form in the plot department as well. Last time, I wrote about being pleasantly surprised by a storyline which saw the show getting a little more complex. Alas, it was a one time thing, and things are back to normal with Citizen Baseball Kane… which means a lot of weirdness.

The first segment sees the Hunters Guild dealing with a random vampire who shows up and demands to play rock-paper-scissors. Only this vamp only plays the strip kind where you take off a piece of clothing every time you lose. It’s a ho-hum gag that gets old really quick, and the fact that he’s only doing it to get girls in the ring with him only makes it less entertaining. There were a few fun moments though, like when John loses and has to get shaved or when Satetsu asked if his barrette counted.

The middle segment is probably the best one of this week’s bunch. It’s still not very funny, but it at least gives us some nice character development and backstory for a guy we haven’t gotten to see much of: Satetsu. The arm guy has always been one of the more prominent side characters, but this time we get to see another side of him as he replaces Ronaldo as Draluc’s partner for a day in order to boost his reputation. Unfortunately, he gets assigned yet another lame vampire to hunt instead of a tough one like Ronaldo, but when John is attacked he lets out his wilder side and ends up confessing that he used to be a public menace and so prefers to keep things in control these days.

Finally, we make it to the last storyline, which sees yet another weird vampire fetish trying to take over. This time it’s at a public beach, where a vamp called Mini Bikini is brainwashing people to, well, wear nothing but mini bikini’s. It’s as dumb as it sounds, and there’s really nothing else going on besides that joke. The show tries to play it like a zombie movie homage, with one of the hunter’s sacrificing himself as a decoy for the rest, but the stakes are so low that it’s hard to care about anything going on. Eventually they figure out that removing the bikini ends the mind control, and the four hunter’s wind up naked on the beach together.

The previous episode felt a little like a step forward for the show, with the plot becoming a bit more engaging and thoughtful. But Citizen Baseball Kane firmly resets things back to the status quo, with segments that resort to nakedness in place of actual jokes. It’s a bit disappointing, but nothing that I didn’t expect from a show this juvenile. The first and last segments were basically the same story: an oddly sexual vampire shows up, the hunters try not to get drawn in by him, and then they realize there’s an obviously simple way to win. At least Satetsu, Maria, and some of the other side characters got a chance to get more screen time this week.