English Dub Review: Dark Moon: The Blood Altar “Half Moon – The Pre-emptive Date”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Sooha loses Shion while out on a date with him and is confronted by vampires with sharp fangs.

Our Take: 

When someone tells you to stay away from a girl who hates vampires, asking her out on a date is not what they had in mind.  Alas, that’s what Shion did at the end of the previous episode, as if confronting a pack of werewolf students wasn’t bad enough for this vampiric group.  Given Shion’s perky and mischievous personality, I shouldn’t be surprised that he would pull something like that, but I was wrong.  Admittedly, Shion has also proven to me to be one of the bright spots of Dark Moon in the previous two episodes regarding his charismatic humor and Minh Ton’s vocal performance.  The third episode is undoubtedly no exception, with him tricking the gang to have some alone time with Sooha at the plaza.  Unfortunately, his first “date” suddenly transformed into a fight to save Sooha from a group of feral vampires.

“Half Moon – The Pre-emptive Date” benefits from Shion’s humorous actions to make this date a bit more enjoyable than anticipated.  However, the real meat of the episode stems from the reveal of Sooha’s childhood friend through her flashback.  Her friend, a young boy named Chris, was seen as the only person who was kind and accepting of Sooha despite her superhuman strength.  But, of course, Chris was sadly murdered by the vampires, fueling her hatred towards the bloodsuckers, but his sudden appearance years later may have proven us otherwise.  Was it all in Sooha’s head, or has her childhood friend really returned to the land of the living, but as a vampire?  It’s a bizarre way to cap off Sooha’s first date, but what does she expect from an academy full of super-powered beings?