English Dub Review: The Vampire Dies in No Time “The Longest Day of Tsujigiri Nagiri”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

A dangerous vampire named Tsujigiri Nagiri is on the loose, so Hinaichi and the Vampire Control Division enlists the help of the Hunter’s Guild in order to bring him to justice. But when Draluc winds up stumbling on the superior vampire’s separated soul, the hard-to-catch villain becomes putty in Draluc’s unwitting hands. Later on, Draluc, Ronaldo, and Hinaichi work together to free a stray cat from a tight spot and wind up under the kitty’s vampiric control. Finally, Draluc gets a surprise visit from Handa, who shows him some of Ronaldo’s most embarrassing moments.

Our Take:

The Vampire Dies in No Time returns this week with another dubbed episode. From tracking down a formidable foe to matching wits with a mangy stray cat, Ronaldo and Draluc keep up their mildly funny hijinks. While it doesn’t have any big moments of humor, it is fairly consistently ho-hum in a pleasant enough way, which was good enough to earn it a solid grade in this week’s episode The Longest Day of Tsujigiri Nagiri—but being an enjoyable episode doesn’t mean it’s pointed the series towards a good path.

In the first storyline, The Vampire Control Division is after a dangerous vampire named Tsujigiri Nagiri. Tsujigiri uses a blade formed from his own blood to hunt his victims, and he’s also apparently separated his soul from his body, making him virtually invincible. Luckily, Draluc’s innocent naivety is on full display here. He finds Tsujigiri’s soul buried underground and through a serious of small accidents ends up incapacitating the superior vampire. It’s a pretty fun serious of events for sure, featuring some silly things like Draluc cracking Tsujigiri’s back and some slightly less silly things like Draluc stripping off Tsujigiri’s clothes in front of Hinaichi. Altogether, it’s a good way to change up the format of the usual jokes a bit while also giving Draluc a more heroic role than usual.

The second act finds Draluc and Ronaldo hunting for a neighborhood stray cat whose presumably trapped in a tight spot. It starts off fairly lame, repeating some of the same gags we’ve seen before when Draluc needs to get to things that are trapped (like dying and then moving his sandy remains into the tight spot). Thankfully, things take a turn for the better when the cat turns out to be a vampire who’s intent on enslaving humanity and forcing them to worship felines. That wrinkle is enough to carry the bit for the remainder of the act, even though they lean on the Autumn Books editor again to tie up the conclusion.

The final act finds Draluc alone at home when he gets an unexpected visitor. It’s Handa, and he’s not there on business. He says that he wants to hang out with Draluc. I was interested to see how their dynamic together would evolve, but unfortunately Handa doesn’t really want to hang out—he just wants someone to watch him dunk on Ronaldo. It turns into a few flashbacks showing how Handa tried to mess with Ronaldo in high school, including how he lured an inferior vampire to a shed and then trapped Ronaldo and himself inside. It’s basically just a repeat of how much Handa dislikes Ronaldo, and it’s also the least funny part of this week’s episode.

The Vampire Dies in No Time is sort of treading water at this point I feel like. The show has some solid characters and the writing can, at times, be fairly clever and sometimes pretty funny. But when there’s no overarching thread or storyline to tie things together, the show needs to be better than being occasionally funny. If the series continues on its current path of reusing the same old punchlines, I would love to see if lean into more drama to balance things out and keep the episodes interesting. Because if it doesn’t, I can see my interest in this show dying just as quickly as Draluc.