English Dub Season Review: Dark Moon: The Blood Altar Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

In the seaside city of Riverfield stands Decelis Academy, home to seven mysterious boys sharing the same secret: They’re vampires, hiding their murky pasts.  When Sooha (Elsie Lovelock), a female student who hates vampires, transfers to the academy, the boys find themselves irresistibly drawn to her.  As strange events shake the city, old sins and buried secrets resurface, and their world begins to fracture.

Our Take:

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is an anime adaptation of a South Korean manhwa written and illustrated by HYBE.  It is directed by Shōko Shiga, with Touko Machida writing the scripts.  It is produced by Troyca, known for other projects such as Re:Creators, Bloom Into You, Overtake!, and Atri: My Dear Moments.  Masami Inomata designed the characters, and Naoki “naotyu” Chiba composed the music.  The opening theme song, “One In A Billion”, and the ending theme songs, “CRIMINAL LOVE” and “Fatal Trouble”, are all performed by Enhypen.

When transferring into a new school, it can be quite challenging to make new friends, especially when you’re anything but normal.  However, it’s no surprise that the best solution is to find someone who is just as different as you are.  But that may depend on how you feel about these new friends actually being blood-sucking vampires hiding in secret.  But, at the very least, their good looks and abnormal powers make up for their secretive identities, mainly when they’re inspired by a real-life boy band from South Korea.

I’m not joking when I say that Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is part of a multimedia initiative inspired by the South Korean boy band, Enhypen, and their music videos.  Even the vampiric students that the protagonist, Sooha, befriends are modeled after the band’s respective members.  This similar approach also applied to the werewolf students from Sunshine City, who were modeled after the Japanese boy band, &Team.  In short, you can say this manhwa is every boy band fan’s dream come true…unless they’re not into vampires and werewolves.  If so, then those fans have another reason to remain in that dream, thanks to the anime adaptation of the franchise’s main series.  Given the manhwa’s success, there’s no doubt that followers of Enhypen and Dark Moon would crave their anime thirst in seeing the vampiric students come to life on screen.  But will it be able to quench the newcomers’ thirst as well?

I never even heard of Dark Moon or Enhypen until I researched the anime.  However, I am familiar with the “Twilight” franchise, and reading the premise of The Blood Alter immediately reminded me of those films regarding the characters being vampires and werewolves.  Heck, even the love triangle between Sooha, Heli (Kieran Flitton), and Khan (Ricco Fajardo) somehow bears resemblance to the Twilight Saga’s Bella, Edward, and Jacob.  Considering the release of Dark Moon seventeen years after the debut of Stephenie Meyer’s romance novel, I wouldn’t be surprised if HYBE also took inspiration from the book series.  This is evident in the season’s first seven episodes, which see Sooha, a super-strong teen who hates vampires, gradually falling in love with Heli, unaware that he’s the blood-sucking being himself.  However, sparks begin to fly when Khan, a werewolf student from Sunshine City, enters the picture.

In other words, we’re looking at yet another high school teen romance anime involving a female protagonist choosing between one hot guy and another; a basic love story that’ll have viewers cheering for one or the other to get the girl.  However, to my surprise, Dark Moon is another series that uses those noticeable tropes to infuse its familiar premise with everlasting charisma and heart.  Part of the reason is the characters, who offer plenty of charm through not just their personalities but also their development, especially Sooha, whose trauma involving her childhood friend’s death leads her to despise vampires.  This isn’t until she uncovers the boys’ secret identities that she realizes that not all bloodsuckers are entirely evil.  I also really enjoyed Shion’s (Minh Ton) personality, especially in the third episode, in which he goes on a date with Sooha, notably due to Ton’s performance conveying his appealing personality very well.

But the eighth episode, “Old Moon – Vampire Lord”, is where the series takes a hard left in regards to its concept.  Once the boys’ origins are revealed, the show transitions from a high school rom-com to a fantasy action anime featuring Heli and the boys rescuing Sooha from its antagonist, Dardan the First Vampire.  While I would like it to retain its teen romance vibes, the final few episodes have enough moments in their stakes and traditional narrative to warrant this change.  The best example of this was its tenth episode, “Waning Moon – Mortal Combat in Autonal”, which puts the boys in a life-threatening scenario against the vampiric sisters.  Despite the lack of bold choices, that episode managed to keep my blood pumping in terms of caring for the characters’ survival.

The anime adaptation of HYBE’s Dark Moon: The Blood Altar might initially seem like just another “Twilight” knockoff, featuring a love triangle between a vampire and a werewolf.  However, to my surprise, it stands out as one of the more enjoyable adaptations inspired by the fantasy young adult franchise.  It may not have the best execution of its similar tropes, and the final few episodes felt like I was watching an entirely different series.  Nonetheless, the anime provides enough charm and intrigue into its action fantasy narrative to sink its teeth into its concept for the right reasons.  With likable characters, a solid dub cast, and suitable animation from Studio Troyca, The Blood Altar is a bloody good time for fans of the manhwa and even for newcomers curious about the future of HYBE’s multimedia initiative.