An underground vampire society, a ragtag group of vampire hunters, impending revolution, and a dash of detective work. Sounds like a recipe for disaster or maybe a possible hit?

Sirius the Jaeger follows the Jaegers, a group of vampire hunters chasing the vampiric elite Kershener. Their pursuit takes them to Japan where a series of gruesome murders have the police and civilian populace on edge. The premise and setup aren’t remarkably unique, but the setting of Japan during the 1930s is quite uncommon. It’s refreshing to see an anime take place during that time period of old school cool, with early model cars and tommy guns.

Our protagonist is Yuliy, a blue haired vampire killing machine. He doesn’t have too strong of a personality as of yet, being mostly defined by an extreme sense of smell and a classic case of aloof yet capable main character syndrome. The other members of the Jaegers are also barebones since it’s only episode one, but Phillip’s distaste for Yuliy’s aloofness and lone wolf nature will likely boil over in the future. Fallon plays the role of kind giant of the group while Dorothea can’t be described with any word other than cool. Akimoto the Professor seems to keep the entire team in check, but I have an eerie feeling about his survivability on the show. 

A couple other characters we meet are Ryouko, the esteemed daughter of a wealthy Japanese family, and Major Iba who will likely be our third party wild card throughout the battle between the Jaegers and the vampires. Ryouko seems quite well off and I find it a bit unbelievable that she’s developed a crush on our lone wolf Yuliy after making eye contact through a window for two seconds, but hey the show has already set the sails for their ship. Major Iba on the other hand represents the will of the Japanese police, and I can easily see him unknowingly jumping into this war between the vampires and the Jaegers.

On the vampire side we’ve only met Agatha and Kershener, along with a mystery ally at the end of the episode. Unlike the animalistic vampire fodder of the first sakuga fight, Agatha is higher up on the vampire hierarchy. She retains her human appearance, but her nails extend into giant spikes. Considering she’s an underling of Kershener, it wouldn’t be surprising to see that Kershener is an absolute beast of a vampire. The mystery ally that shoots Yuliy at the end of the episode is called Mikhail according to character design sources, and his interruption of Yuliy’s hunt may likely be the beginning of a rivalry of sorts between the two. We don’t even know if Mikhail is a real vampire, but he saves Agatha from certain death, insuring that the Jaegers will not be kind to him during their next meeting.

Speaking of Agatha’s fight with Yuliy, she was outclassed! Yuliy does some crazy stunt work to latch onto her vehicle and ends up solo’ing it into flames. Luckily for Agatha she’s a high vampire and not a beast, so she puts up a decent fight. But surprise surprise Yuliy has secret powers! I’m not too hyped about our protagonist having untapped powers that give him an edge against the vampires, but I sorta expected it anyway. Oh well, hopefully it doesn’t Deus ex Machina him out of impossible situations in the future.

The story isn’t anything special but is a solid foundation. This can easily turn into the season edge lord shows with little to no substance, but there’s always the chance that it becomes something great. It’s pretty hard to go wrong when your show looks so good and there’s vampire hunting sakuga, but I’ve seen it happen. If I were to make any predictions based on episode one, it’d be that Yuliy gets the number one spot on the vampire hit list due to his hidden powers that Agatha saw, the progression of Ryouko’s crush on Yuliy that literally no one asked for, and that Yuliy will have a wake up call about doing crazy, hot headed things during missions instead of cooperating with his team. 

Animation is superb and art is great, the combat scenes with Yuliy are a blast to watch as he swings his weird weapon around. Music hasn’t stood out too much so far, but certain character themes have been quite a bop. The pacing of the show is well done and I never felt bored during the first episode. I suppose this is expected of pilots, which are duty bound to keep the viewer coming back for episode two. I think my biggest worry about the show is that it bites off more than it can chew. It’s not easy to juggle revolution plotlines, vampire hunting, Yuliy’s secret powers, and police detective work. If P.A. Works manages to strike a balance between all the threads, binding them into a cohesive whole, I could see the show being quite good.

Chance of Watching: 100%

Chance of Blogging: 98%