VAMPIRE HOLMES

DESCRIPTION

CAST

REVIEWS

• 

  megafat

  20/100
  A blatant advertisement for a video game

  The Vampire Holmes anime is a pretty obvious advertisement, and it's not even that good of an advertisement. Made to promote a mystery smartphone game developed by Cucuri for iOS and Android devices, the plot follows Detective Holmes, and his assistant Hudson, as both of them solve a case given to them by the Metropolitan Police of London.

  While the plot is basic, it is enough to get a mystery mobile game rolling. And you'd think that a short anime used to advertise said mobile game, it could lead into the games plot as some sort of prelude, or maybe be an adaptation of a small part of the plot from right at the beginning, but it isn't.

  In the anime, Holmes is given a case to solve, but we don't see him solve any of it. Oh, he does solve the case that was given to him, you just don't see any of the actual detective work, with the anime instead focusing on all of the in between bits that you wouldn't want to actually see. This was probably done because of extreme budget and time constraints, but it makes the entire series frustrating to sit through. Which you wouldn't think is a problem with how short the whole thing is.

  Each episode is only 3 minutes, and with 12 episodes, that's a total of 36 minutes to work with. While not a lot of time, it could have been used to solve a smaller case. Or tease the plot of the game like i mentioned earlier. But instead, the whole series is Holmes and Hudson spending most of their time not solving the case and arguing about not solving the case.

  The whole plot gets solved off screen. What we get instead is slapstick involving a loud and annoying landlady who continually hassles Holmes for rent, and Holmes's pet, a mysterious cat named Kira, who is more than it seems, and not much else.

  The worst thing about it's measly 3 minute time limit is that a significant chunk of each episode is the opening and closing credits. So the series went from having about 36 minutes of time to work with, to less than 15. Did a series like this need an OP and ED around the same length as a regular series?

  The Vampire Holmes anime isn't really worth watching, unless you need something quick and easy to digest during a lunch break. And even then, there are quite a few other anime that you could watch instead of this, such as Detroit Metal City, Inferno Cop, and the Lucky Star spin-off Miyakawa-ke no Kuufuku. Even the McDonald's advertising campaign (the Join The Crew campaign), about the girl who becomes the boss of her own McDonalds, is a step up from this.

  Maybe if you speak Japanese fluently, or even read Japanese really well, you could probably go check out the game instead. At least you'll be solving a mystery.

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• 

  Bountyful

  5/100
  A less-than-3-minute-per-episode anime series that's somehow boring to watch.

  This show is genuinely hideous, with one exception.

  There is nothing meaningful to discuss about it, and I can't even try to spoil some stuff to present my case, a cursory glance at the first episode clearly shows how terrible it is at... everything. I am also left wondering why "Vampire" is even in the title, given the complete absence of vampires from the anime.

  It should have been a promotional material for the detective-style game the anime was based on, but it ended up being a disgusting promo that arguably caused fewer people to be interested in the game.

  Because of the lack of budget, they just skipped solving any case (which is the main reason one would have downloaded the game, to begin with) and resolved them off-screen during the last episode. This appalling decision makes me question what was the point of a promotional material that doesn't even hook you into the meat of the game, but on the contrary, keeps you from touching it with a 10-foot pole.

  I would usually try to briefly analyze the story/art/sound/character departments but there is just nothing of value all around. It's all pure, unadulterated garbage.

  There is barely any animation, and when it is there, we are dealing with powerpoint-level stuff, everything is recycled to nauseous degrees, sound effects are ear-bleeding, visual effects are actual, unironical stock effects that you can find in Youtube videos back from 2006, the "jokes" aren't fun and just don't work, and even if they were, the comedic timings are all over the place, the characters themselves are annoying, the voice actors are amateurish, random stuff keeps happening for no reason whatsoever, with no continuity between episodes...
  I hope this is enough to prove my case.

  One thing I want to stress though is that this anime shows how important the budget is to make people laugh. Granted, the jokes are shit anyway, but even if that weren't the case, the pitiful amount of budget wouldn't have allowed enjoying this even from an ironic perspective. This is why I had to increase the speed for a less-than-3-min-per-episode anime.

  Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, you have stuff like inferno Cop that with a similar budget still manages to get a few chuckles from the viewers (I thought it was repetitive after a few episodes, but still better than this pile of dregs). Why was that? Novelty effect + way better comedic timings and jokes. Inferno Cop didn't take itself seriously, it knew it was shit from the get go, Vampire Homles didn't.

  The only exception comes from the OP (which is recycled as the ED, lol). Whilst not pathetic, it is still dreadful and tiresome, given the fact that it occupies 1/3 of the running time of each episode. I am fairly confident that almost the entirety of the budget was spent on the singer.

  Avoid like the plague, there are better trash anime, like mars of destruction, Skelter Heaven, Ex-Arms, Arifureta...or you could watch paint dry. It's basically the same, anyway.

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