Vampire in the Garden is a beautiful but anemic horror romance

polygon.com:

There’s no shortage of anime vampire stories. From classics like 2000’s Blood: The Last Vampire or Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust to more recent fare such as the Kizumonogatari film trilogy and last year’s slapstick comedy Vlad Love, all of these anime to some extent tap into the drama inherent to the conflict between human beings and their predatory supernatural counterparts. That drama, of course, arises from the tension between their incompatible existences and their uneasy, undeniable attraction to one another.

Vampire in the Garden, the Netflix original series produced by Wit Studio of Vinland Saga and The Ancient Magus’ Bride fame, attempts to tap that same vein in service of an apocalyptic melodrama of star-crossed love and friendship — to mixed results.

Directed by Ryōtarō Makihara and Hiroyuki Tanaka and written by Makihara himself, the five-episode series is set in a world several generations after a prolonged and bitter war between humans and a race of immortal vampires has ravaged the planet. Vampire in the Garden tells the story of Momo, a human woman raised as a soldier in one of the last fortified human cities. She meets Fine, the begrudging queen of the vampires, and the two run away together in search of a better way of life apart from the conflict, if not an outright paradise.

Makihara and Tanaka are no strangers to horror, with the former having previously directed 2015’s The Empire of Corpses and the latter having worked as an episode director and storyboard artist on 2006’s Hellsing Ultimate. That familiarity is apparent, albeit unfortunately in the case of the roteness of Vampire in the Garden’s story beats and characters. There’s very little in the way of genuine surprises or twists, with the premise