© 1998 HIRANO Office/JVC_AMG_SOEISHINSHA Inc.

Vampire Princess Miyu. V.1, Initiation. V.2, Haunting.
V.3 - 6 (titles not yet determined). TV series (25 episodes), 1997-1998. Director: Toshiki Hirano. Price & format: V.1, 3 episodes/75 minutes; V.2 - 4, 4 episodes/100 minutes each; V.5 - 6, 5 episodes/125 minutes each. Video dubbed $19.99; DVD bilingual $29.99 each. Distributor: TOKYOPOP Anime.

Almost ten years after its OAV incarnation, Vampire Princess Miyu was re-adapted into a 25 episode TV version. Director Hirano and music composer Kenji Kawai ably performed their same roles. Kakinouchi advised on story and art, though actual character designs are by Megumi Kadonosono. American rights to the TV series have been sold to a different anime specialty company, creating confusion as to what extent differences between spellings and names are due to different American translators and to what extent they represent actual changes. The distinction between "Larva" and "Lava" (the name of Miyu's silent pretty-boy Shinma assistant; resonances to the English word "lover" may be inferred) and "the Dark" and "the darkness" are presumably translators' decisions. The distinction between director Hirano's first name is actual; American fans learn to get used to Japanese filmmakers adopting and dropping nicknames and pseudonyms. To increase the confusion, AnimEigo lists the credits in Oriental name order (e.g. Kakinouchi Narumi), while TOKYOPOP lists them in Occidental name order (Narumi Kakinouchi). And both series are titled simply Vampire Princess Miyu.

The TV version is specifically aimed at young adolescents. In the OAV, one episode is set in a high school where Miyu impersonates a student while she tracks down the Shinma on the campus. The whole TV series is set around a middle school which she uses as a home base as she searches for Shinma throughout the surrounding large city, while entering the school as Miyu Yamano, a 13-year-old transfer student. Chisato Inoue, a bubbly young teen, invites Miyu to join her girls' clique. Miyu accepts to improve her disguise as an ordinary student, but is soon drawn into genuine friendship with Chisato, Yukari and Hisae. Larva is transformed from a probable offstage older lover into a helpful big brother, and Miyu gains a cutely grotesque Shinma talking bunny-rabbit pet (with blatant plush toy potential). The OAV was deliberately vague as to Miyu's personal feelings about humans. The TV series turns this into a definite conflict by splitting Miyu's personality and giving the callous half to Reiha, a second Shinma hunter who appears in Episode #4 to assist her. Reiha is only concerned with finding Shinma and sees nothing wrong with using humans as disposable bait. This crystallizes Miyu's determination to put the safety of humans above their job of returning Shinma to the darkness, making her a clear heroine and protector of her school chums from Reiha as well as the Shinma. Miyu's personal need as a vampire for blood is essentially forgotten. The TV series has more action scenes than the OAV (to appeal to teen viewers), which makes the limited animation (again by A.I.C., in cooperation with Group TAC) more obvious. Despite being tailored for young adults, the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series ended up in a Tuesday 1:15 a.m. time-slot, October 7, 1997 through March 31, 1998, where few saw it. This was a pity, because the TV series is quite a good Young Adult fantasy thriller; certainly more intelligent than most of the anime adolescent T&A fantasies about air-headed super-endowed sex toys or lust-demons out to ravish all the coeds. Both the OAV and the TV versions have their merits, and neither is a pale imitation of the other.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s.