Well I haven't done one in awhile so I felt I might as well. This review is based on the anime Karin which a friend recommanded to me. I normally shy away from this friends recommandations as they are often so 'normal' that they just don't catch. This one managed to catch and hold my attention, enough so that it made it to my want to buy list when I can afford to buy it.
The anime itself by plot summary seems like another simple comedy and romance with supernatural mixed in. This mixture is REALLY nothing new, in fact I'm pretty sure I have seen this twice over already.
If you don't already know, if I can predict the movements of the characters early in a show I generally DO NOT like it. This is cause its coming off as predictable and therefore not very interesting. This one broke my predicts and therefore got my attention.
The main character 'Karin', is a vampire, who unlike most gives blood instead of taking. She is a 'blood maker', she bites people to get rid of the excess blood. If she doesn't it comes out, normally in the form of a nose bleed. Despite this very clear setup of her needing to bite people to give blood... it is not the focus nor is it abused in the show. I felt this obvious plot device was going to be abused. I found that it became more of a 'after thought' in the main plot.
The 'real' plot is the obvious romance between her and the new transfer student. Now normally I hate it when the character can't figure out they 'like' each other, I find that as an over-used plot point. I didn't mind them using it this story. It was nicely done as she had trouble figuring it out because of her strong urges to get rid of her extra blood.
I also like the fact that despite you could have had a clear point where she didn't want to bite people for whatever reason or to be more human or whatever, a plot point I've seen used and abused, they didn't. She in reality was more worried about getting caught then the part of biting in fact, at some points she went out and bit someone for the obvious need to get rid of excess blood and had no person issue just finding a random stranger.
Now of course after biting them instead of them becoming drained they often became temporarly ADHD was a much funny source of comic relief.
I didn't mind her have issues with biting people she knew or having a second after thought when finding out she bit someone that was a friend of a friend. The growing romance was easy for us to pick up on and she was very slow on it, mostly cause of her growing 'taste' issue in the storyline.
I like the romance plot cause the male lead kind figured it out pretty early that he liked her, instead of them BOTH being clueless. (Another stereotype that annoys me). She even figures it out by the mid-point of the seris and they aren't fighting over 'admitting of feelings' (ANOTHER plot point that I tolerate but find displeasing), but more of the complications of the relationship.
Now I like romance but what about the comedy? I must say I love Karin's family who provide plenty of comic relief. Karin's mutate-like nature compared to the rest of her family is a running joke that both her family and the male lead make fun at. Karin's sister Auju, my god for the win her reactions are priceless.
I won't go into much futher detail cause I don't want to spoil it for anyone that may want to watch it. The intro suggests 'fan service' but in truth the intro becomes the 'only' source of fan service as the anime... (besides the required 1 hot bath scene that almost exisits in ALL animes in general).