alt title(s): Chibi Vampire
"It's so embarrassing
!"
The very terrifying vampire.
a.k.a. Chibi Vampire (English title of the manga, the anime is being translated using the original name.)
Karin Maaka is a bubbly, slightly ditzy, cute sixteen year old girl, dealing with many of the problems faced by girls her age. Her family doesn't understand her. She's easily embarrassed. The new guy at school makes her feel funny. And she seems to have a condition that leaves her out of sorts about once a month...
OK, maybe it's not that simple, when you factor in that most of the above is related to her — and her family — being vampires.
To make it worse, Karin is a very
strange little vampire. It turns out she is a "blood-maker"; instead of needing to drain the blood of others, she has to inject her excess. If she doesn't, it builds up and eventually, she gets a
nosebleed that puts one in mind of the elevator scene from
The Shining.
Karin is understandably put out by this state of affairs. She doesn't have any real special abilities to keep this under wraps, relying on her little sister to cover up any mishaps. Even in temperament, her sunny but easily flustered demeanor does not a creature of the night make. This puts her at odds with her family, who despite caring for her, call her "mutant" and "failure", and make her work to pay bills; after all, she's the only one who needs electricity or food in the house.
But she makes the most of it all, until life sends her a new delivery of trouble in the form of tall, creepy-eyed, earnest Kenta Usui, the new student. One look at Kenta and her considerable store of blood starts racing. The reason, of course, isn't hormones - it turns out that vampires have "tastes" in blood related to a certain emotional quality. Karin's mom craves the blood of liars; her father, that of prideful people. Despite her condition, it turns out Karin has a taste too, and Kenta is apparently Flavour of the Month. Being around him puts her at risk of painting the town red, literally. Too bad they share a class. And a route to school. And look who just got hired on at Karin's part time job....
For all the hijinks and strange setups,
Karin is a remarkably natural boy-meets-girl series. The relationship between Usui-kun and Karin is never rushed, developing smoothly from the admittedly supernatural set-up and arrangement of convenience into understandable affection. The secondary characters are generally well-rounded and, if not deep, consistent. The notably grating exception is Winner (pronounced "Weiner") Sinclair... and even he manages to pull off a little sympathy near the end.
This show provides examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: The anime veers off the manga plotline rather quickly, especially when Winner is introduced, but it winds up still being a good series in its own right.
- Armor Piercing Slap - Carerra Marker, Karin's mom, is an evil shot with a slipper, up to and including charging it with a Battle Aura. And since she's never wearing slippers, it's apparently a Hyperspace Mallet as well.
- Banana Peel
- Bicep Polishing Gesture - Done by Fumio when she declares that she "has faith in her body!". She's referring to her work ethic, but thanks to her Hello Nurse qualities, it winds up being grossly misinterpreted.
- Bumbling Dad - Karin's father is totally whipped by his wife and mother, yet he stills shows a strong side when he goes to save Karin.
- He doesn't do much better with his daughter either...
- Can Not Spit It Out - Kenta and Karin, naturally.
- Cute Little Fangs - Played straight, but also subverted: on occasions when Karin goes berserk with bloodlust, her fangs get a dangerously large upgrade.
- Crash Into Hello - Happens to Karin and Kenta Usui a few times in the first episode.
- Cute Monster Girl - Karin and Anju, of course.
- Deadpan Snarker - Boogie-kun.
- Dojikko - The more excited Karin gets, the more likely she is to trip over something.
- Driven To Suicide - Fumio, before Karin and Ren's intervention.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita - Anju.
- Emotionless Girl - Anju.
- Enjo Kosai - One of Kentaro's first encounters with Karin was seeing her in the park with her arms around a middle-aged salaryman, lips on his neck. Not knowing about her condition yet, he puts two and two together and comes up with squickiness.
- Fanservice - The anime has a lot more of it than the manga - nothing quite tops having suggestive naked poses of the title character thrust at you in the OP. Karin's cup size also seems to have increased.
- First Kiss - Winner. Sort of.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires - The whole Maaka family, with one exception.
- Gratuitous English - Mostly from Winner-kun.
- Gratuitous Japanese - Or, Gratuitous Japanese idioms is usually how Winner starts a speech. They're usually sort of relevant, but it's an odd way to speak.
- Half Human Hybrid - Yuriya in the manga.
- Hello Nurse - Kenta's mother Fumio suffers from this in spades. She's constantly sexually harassed, which results in her losing her jobs rather quickly. Karin also gets this kind of attention from Winner. And Winner gets it from every female character apart from Karin.
- High Pressure Blood - Karin's blood builds up if she doesn't bite to release the excess, leading to explosive bursts of blood from her nose. To lower the gross-out factor, this appears as a shower of red flowers. But afterwards, there's still a bloody mess to clean up.
- Hot Shounen Mom - Stacey's mom has nothing on Kenta's mom Fumio. Nothing.
- Ho Yay - The boarding school episode. So much.
- I Have The High Ground - Anju stands atop a lamppost to watch Karin covertly, Ren mounts a powerpole to give Winner the slip.
- Identical Grandson - Sort of. Grandmother Elda and granddaughter Karin apparently bear an uncanny similarity to each other, differing only in Elda's hair colour and length, and Karin's taking after her well-endowed mother in the cleavage department.
- And in the manga, Anju looks just like their other grandmother.
- Winner's grandfather also greatly resembles him.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming - Episode titles are "embarrassing!"
- Impossibly Cool Clothes - Subverted in Winner's mantle; it simultaneously marks him as somewhat unbalanced mentally, yet he draws enough admiration from looks alone that it gets viewed as part of his charm by his groupies.
- Laser Guided Amnesia - Vampires wipe the memories of their victims to prevent panic, being caught, etc. Naturally, Karin does not have this power, and her family frequently has to do this for her so she can keep living her normal life.
- Lethal Chef - Carrera and Anju nearly killed Karin and Maki making a normal human meal for them.
- Luminescent Blush - There is lots of blushing in this series, and Karin does a ton of it. As Boogie-kun snipes at one point, "Her body is 98% embarrassment!"
- Nosebleed: Subverted - Karin's nosebleed is caused by her "blood maker" nature. But the situations in which it happens are still very similar to the standard usage. It even winds up saving her life at one point: her top accidentally comes undone in the final confrontation with Winner's Knight Templar granddad, and the old man passes out from blood loss before he can harm her.
- Noblewomans Laugh - Carerra Marker, and later Elda Marker as well.
- Our Vampires Are Different - Spun twice for good effect. The vampires of Karin are affected by very few of the traditional vampiric weaknesses, and they are noted for having a particular "taste" in their victim's blood related to emotions. Karin, on the other hand, is different even from other vampires, as noted above.
- They do, however, sleep in coffins.
- But the reason they hate garlic is because of the smell.
- Overprotective Dad - Henry, who's not exactly thrilled about Kenta's effect on his daughter's life.
- Phenotype Stereotype - Winner-kun is a foreigner with blond hair and blue eyes. He also has a rather strange accent.
- Right Behind Me - In the manga Maki spots Karin giving a lunch to Usui. She and the other girls then demand that Karin tell them all the sordid details of her obvious torrid love affair with him. Karin insists that He is Not My Boyfriend without success, given her Luminescent Blush. Finally she yells "I Don't Have Feelings for Usui-kun!", just as Usui comes around the corner Right Behind Her.
- School Festival - Culture festival.
- Secret Keeper - Kenta, partially of his own free will, and partially because Karin's family threatened him with Laser Guided Amnesia (and possibly worse) if he doesn't.
- Spell My Name With An S - The Marker/Maaka family name. There is a definite change from the original "Marker" (used by the parents and Elda), and "Maaka", written with the kanji that means "crimson". However, subtitling for the anime has been known to be inconsistent even from this.
- This is Hand Waved in the manga, in that Karin's parents elected to keep their European names while she, Anju, and Ren decided to go with "Maaka" to make them fit in better with the Japanese. Presumably this is also the case for the anime, but its never actually explained.
- Spoiler Opening: Subverted - the only character that doesn't show up in the first episode is represented as a black silhouette in the opening until after he is introduced to the storyline.
- The Un Favorite - Karin's family can be pretty hostile about her condition. Her grandmother would literally '
- White Haired Pretty Boy - Ren. They have a lot of fun with this trope, especially with his bishie aspects in the special boarding school episode.
