English Dub Review: Cop Craft “Lonesome Vampire”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The vampire escapes the scene, so Tilarna tells Kei about Semanian vampires, which were supposed to have been wiped out a long time ago. This case has a casualty, Cecil’s jerk assistant, but he wasn’t a hot girl so it’s fine. Still, the way to catch the vampire will require a keen sense of smell. They start searching for clues, as well as a growing trail of bodies, though one report saying she’s able to form a cloak out of shadows. Tilarna uses a tracking ability (with the side effect of turning everyone CGI for a minute) to locate her, leading them to a closed shopping mall, which goes against the clues they’d been following up until then. They do find her, but she gets the drop on them, knocks out Kei, and kidnaps Tilarna.

Tilarna awakens to find the vampire attempting to read a magazine, now coming to terms with being in another world. Before she can learn much, Kei and the SWAT team show up to gun her down, but she escapes again. Tilarna finds her curious and hopes to get her taken in alive, though Kei is against it. She’s heavily wounded, so she can’t get very far, but a savior arrives in the form of Zelada possessing someone to offer her help in exchange for information on the “Book of Niba”, something connected to the portal that connected the human and Semanian worlds. She turns him down, facing her death till the bitter end. Kei and Tilarna arrive soon after, but they end up needing to get out of the way of an oncoming train, which kills the vampire. But at least their partnership seems to be getting better…I think?

OUR TAKE

And that’s a wrap on the second story arc, I guess. I don’t know if they rushed through it or if there really wasn’t that much to cover, but a lot of this seems to have just been some set up for future developments bundled into an underwritten story about fighting an unsealed vampire. We get a little better sense of Kei and Cecil’s history and do what MIGHT be nudging Kei and Tilarna together if I’m reading it right (although I really hope not), though it feels less than compelling. At only an episode and a half in length, I hesitate to even call this an “arc” or even a two-parter. Feels like more of a side story than anything, but then the only overarching plot we have at the moment is whatever Zelada’s up to. Zelada DOES briefly make an appearance, showing that his plans seem focus on getting this Book of Niba, and given its connection to the portal between the worlds and Zelada’s own feelings about what it’s done to both cultures, he might be trying to close the portal if not something worse.

The more interesting bits come from the vampire lady, who seems to spark some parallels between her and Tilarna due to them both being fish out of water, although the vampire is also out of time too. It also seems like whatever connection she might have with Tilarna is dropped just as soon as it begins, since she’s already raring to kill the vampire the moment she sees she killed someone else despite saying minutes before that she wanted her alive. Just seems pretty rushed, since the fight might have ended up being a bit more tense if Tilarna was conflicted between her sense of justice and her curiosity, but I guess one was easier to follow than the other here.

Also some rather distracting directional choices here, including ones that make this show’s cutting corners REALLY start to be blindingly obvious. Then there’s the aforementioned CGI bit that is likely supposed to be weird looking, but still sticks out like a sore thumb. But I guess this studio isn’t exactly known for quality, being responsible for those horrendous adaptations of Berserk a few years back. Something tells me this will not be the last time the animation is going to look cheap and stiff by the time this show is done.