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Despite taking place in the glittery, plasticized universe of Japanese girlband stardom, a strange drabness pervades director Koji Fukada’s “Love on Trial,” a downtempo price-of-fame drama that consistently takes the least interesting route out of the fraught situations it sets up. Where there’s the potential for incisive commentary on the chew-em-up, spit-em-out nature of modern celebrity, Fukada’s oblique approach has all the rhythm of a popsong’s intro stuck on a never-ending loop: all filler instrumental, no catchy hook.

Happyfanfare is a hard-working five-girl outfit, who have been together for four years. They have risen to the top of the middle, and are eagerly eyeing their promotion to the bottom of the top. The establishing scenes of “Love on Trial” do a decent job of instantly de-mythologizing this milieu of artifice and shiny surfaces, as we watch the band hustled onto a small stage to perform their...

Vampire and witches are some of the most popular supernatural creatures in anime, right along with demons and yokai. They gained even more popularity in the early 2000s when anime series got pretty creative with creature lore. Some series have different categories of witches with specific powers and strengths, from elemental abilities to cast curses.

Some titles experiment with vampire lore, weaving together traditional sun-fearing vampires and formidable dhampirs. Witches and vampires are also perfect characters to incorporate into dark fantasy and gothic anime. Dark fantasy and gothic are ancient subgenres, but audiences were drawn to new takes on them in the early 2000s.

Princess Tutu Pairs a Whimsical Art Style with Heavy Themes & Evil Sorcery Series Years: 2002-2003; Streaming on Prime VideoImage via Hal Film Maker Studio.

A magical girl anime inspired by classical ballets, like Princess Tutu, doesn't seem like it would be a dark fantasy at first glance.

The Vampire Diaries is an eight-season-long TV series about immortal vampires and historical doppelgänger lovers. The paranormal romance is based on a series of books of the same name by L.J. Smith. Elena Gilbert's story centers around a love triangle between her and two vampires.

As The Vampire Diaries continues, Elena discovers even more paranormal creatures, like witches and ghosts. The series has an almost soap opera-style tone. Vampires are among the most popular anime creatures, and they go hand in hand with paranormal romance anime. Many vampire anime titles share many of the tropes and tone in The Vampire Diaries.

Related10 Badass The Vampire Diaries Moments Fans Still Love 8 Years Later

The Vampire Diaries has romance and heart but also more than a few badass moments that fans still talk about and can't get enough of.

The Case Study of Vanitas Retells European Vampire Tales with an Ensemble...

Japanese anime and manga often feature fiendish, blood-sucking vampire characters as dark antiheroes or terrifying villains, while others portray vampires as charming, surprisingly relatable and likable people, including cute vampire girls here and there. Vampires are more popular than ever in media, and anyone who loves stories about the occult or the supernatural are encouraged to try a handful of great vampire anime series.

While the powers, weaknesses, and origin myth/stories of vampires can change over the years according to each creator, vampires are always instantly recognizable as fanged children of the night, and anime fans can't get enough of them. In anime, there's plenty of room for reinterpretation of vampires or even desconstructions of them, from half-vampire antiheroes to vampires who have more in common with high school students than with the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu.

Update on March 11th, 2024 by Chelsea Steele: Vampires have always...

Overprotective boyfriends and girlfriends are a popular character type in romance anime, and bodyguards are the zenith point of that trope. Bodyguards are assigned to guard a person who is powerful and precious, or someone who is related to a person in power. They need to be careful because they have a target on their back, and characters like Hagi from Blood+ and Yona Of The Dawn's Hak take their jobs seriously.

The forced proximity is the perfect setting for some great romantic tension. Often, a romance is taboo or forbidden between a bodyguard and the person they're assigned to protect. But there's something about someone who is strong and protective that makes it all too easy to fall in love with them.

Updated on February 26th, 2024 by Chelsea Steele: Bodyguard romances are a popular trope within the romance genre throughout media, and anime is no exception. Over the years,...