VAMPIRE HOLMES

The Vampire Holmes anime is a pretty obvious advertisement, and it's not even that good of an advertisement. Made to promote a mystery smartphone game developed by Cucuri for iOS and Android devices, the plot follows Detective Holmes, and his assistant Hudson, as both of them solve a case given to them by the Metropolitan Police of London.

While the plot is basic, it is enough to get a mystery mobile game rolling. And you'd think that a short anime used to advertise said mobile game, it could lead into the games plot as some sort of prelude, or maybe be an adaptation of a small part of the plot from right at the beginning, but it isn't.

In the anime, Holmes is given a case to solve, but we don't see him solve any of it. Oh, he does solve the case that was given to him, you just don't see any of the actual detective work, with the anime instead focusing on all of the in between bits that you wouldn't want to actually see. This was probably done because of extreme budget and time constraints, but it makes the entire series frustrating to sit through. Which you wouldn't think is a problem with how short the whole thing is.

Each episode is only 3 minutes, and with 12 episodes, that's a total of 36 minutes to work with. While not a lot of time, it could have been used to solve a smaller case. Or tease the plot of the game like i mentioned earlier. But instead, the whole series is Holmes and Hudson spending most of their time not solving the case and arguing about not solving the case.

The whole plot gets solved off screen. What we get instead is slapstick involving a loud and annoying landlady who continually hassles Holmes for rent, and Holmes's pet, a mysterious cat named Kira, who is more than it seems, and not much else.

The worst thing about it's measly 3 minute time limit is that a significant chunk of each episode is the opening and closing credits. So the series went from having about 36 minutes of time to work with, to less than 15. Did a series like this need an OP and ED around the same length as a regular series?

The Vampire Holmes anime isn't really worth watching, unless you need something quick and easy to digest during a lunch break. And even then, there are quite a few other anime that you could watch instead of this, such as Detroit Metal City, Inferno Cop, and the Lucky Star spin-off Miyakawa-ke no Kuufuku. Even the McDonald's advertising campaign (the Join The Crew campaign), about the girl who becomes the boss of her own McDonalds, is a step up from this.

Maybe if you speak Japanese fluently, or even read Japanese really well, you could probably go check out the game instead. At least you'll be solving a mystery.