Vampire in the Garden is a new Netflix anime title from the madlads over at Wit Studio, who have yet again delivered a distinct and interesting story as they continue to build their reputation beyond Attack on Titan. I’ll be honest and say I watched this entirely on a whim, with therefore no real expectations and no intention to review it. But what was initially a blank slate with sloppily drawn character and plot outlines very quickly became a beautiful and engaging piece of art in its own right, and even though it was such a Short story it definitely felt like one worth talking about by as early as the second installment of its five episode run. To give you the general outline, it’s a story about two girls - one human and one vampire - who decide they no longer want anything to do with the hatred, duties and violence of the war between their people. The pair jointly go on an adventure to discover Eden, a paradise where vampires and human beings can live together without fear or conflict.

The first episode tried to get too much done in too little time, and I thought at first that that would be how the entire thing would play out, because how can you really develop a story and a full cast of characters to any appreciable degree in such a short time? The simple answer is: you don’t! And this anime (past the first episode) didn’t even try to, in an approach that shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. You pretty much get thrown right into the deep end around the beginning of episode 1, with Momo (our main character) taking part in a military operation against a group of vampires, and she is - in a character defining moment - unable to open fire on a vampire that had the appearance of a child. Naturally, at this point you don’t know what exactly is happening or why it’s happening other than the general sense there’s a war which you nonetheless have no idea the scope or duration of or even what exact factions are involved, who was the aggressor and who’s in a better position, and by the end of the story you still don’t have this information delivered to you for the most part. Ordinarily that would be the hallmark of a poorly conceived or poorly constructed world and story, but in this case it achieves the exact opposite effect. It does a fantastic job of not biting off more than it can chew while still teasing things that hint at a much larger world, and the way it does that is by pulling away from the war and focusing on the narrower perspective of Momo’s journey and her feelings towards and relation to obligations and violence, a struggle and journey she shares with Fine who is our other main character for this story. Each individual stop on their adventure felt like getting another small window into a much bigger world, with the sense that a lot took place before and after and even parallel to what the audience got to see. In that way it gave me the same feeling as something like Jin-Roh or Maquia, which are Random Comparisons of course but still examples of the kind of storytelling featured here.

This show does have a distinct visual style, but it didn’t always land well, particularly with regard to the character designs. The vampires all have white hair and eyes that look like they have cataracts, it doesn’t Look especially nice and it makes individual vampires harder to distinguish between at points. This isn’t too big of an issue since we don’t actually end up spending an awful lot of time with more than just a handful of characters who are easily recognisable, but it is worth mentioning. Recognisable doesn’t mean Good of course, but honestly the designs aren’t anything you wouldn’t have seen in a million other anime already anyway, so you most definitely won’t mind them. The animation on the other hand was always quite good, which I suppose is as expected from Wit, but it’s still not something you should ever take for granted and it wasn’t Flawless either - there’s a few moments where we get slow panning shots and still frames but once again if you’ve watched any other anime at all you’ve probably already gotten used to that. As a final note on the actual visual aspect of things, the art did look exceptionally good at points, a fair number of individual shots and even just the backgrounds were wallpaper worthy, my complaint about the character designs was more of a nitpick than anything else in the full context of things.

The overarching message was as simple as it was heartfelt - to take charge of your own life and not be shackled by the past. It’s effectively what Fine says to Momo in episode 1, and it’s a goal that the two of them then spend the next four episodes striving towards, before coming to the realisation that there is no paradise beyond what you choose and build for yourself. And in that context, they may have found their Eden within each other’s arms, as their relationship embodied the unity and selflessness that they so desperately searched for. “The past” you need to break free from can of course be interpreted in a few ways, the most obvious of which in this story being the cycle of hatred and bloodshed that the humans and vampires seem to have been involved in for so long, but I personally quite appreciated the writers once again narrowing the scope of things to a more personal level. Momo had to grow beyond her abusive parent to truly embrace herself and her dream, Fine had to grow beyond the weight and pressure of a crown she never wanted. They’re pretty easy to relate to or project yourself onto, and that might’ve contributed to why I became so invested in both characters in spite of how short everything was.

So to go over everything, this is a short, sweet story with a bumpy start but overall excellent worldbuilding through its minimalist approach. Don’t go in expecting insane art or the best visuals ever, or a massive cast of characters that gets fully explored, it’s only five episodes after all. If you can accept the limitations it’s working with then you’ll probably appreciate it quite a bit. I for one appreciated it enough to give it a score of 80 out of 100, just on the borderline between my favourite pieces of media, and things that I thought were just Good without enough appeal to bring me back to them.