Sometimes a minor detail sticks with you. What happened to the vampire in the submarine?
In Vampire in the Garden, the daughter of a human coalition leader, Momo, and a vampire queen, Fine, travel in search of a place where humans and vampires could live in peace. In their search, they find a place that markets itself as a paradise for humans and vampires. There is just one minor detail, and it is a spoiler, so go and watch the series before coming back here.
The detail is that the electricity in that village is provided by an unwilling, captive vampire. They don't go into a lot of explanations on how the electricity is produced, but they do go out of their way to show that the vampire is unhappy with his fate. He lives alone in the depth of a half-destroyed submarine and is forced to stay there for the good of the rest of the people and vampires in the village.
This trope of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few is not uncommon in media. For example, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story that depicts a utopia, a perfect place that is powered (somehow) by the suffering of one child. Everyone in Omelas knows about it, and many stay in this utopian world, but some walk away from it.
Momo and Fine are looking for a paradize, and they know nothing about the forsaken vampire, which is probably because Fine is supposed to soon become his replacement. Fine never quite trusts the village, and that makes the anime similar to Omelas, where the narrator speaks to an unseen audience that does not trust a paradise without a catch.
Unlike the Omelas, the suffering of the vampire from Vampire in the Garden is justified quite well; he is there to produce electricity. However, a lot of things remain unclear, and they are mostly things you do not have answers to. Why is the vampire forced to do it; surely, if it is done with sufficient care, a number of vampires would agree to sacrifice themselves? Or, possibly, they would not have to sacrifice themselves at all; why not develop a method that keeps the vampires alive? Why does the vampire who saves the whole village remain just a captive in solitary confinement? Bring him something to do, at the very least, so that he enjoys playing music if he cannot be around people! Also, the little vampire girl going after Momo with a gun and promising to make them eternal friends in the paradise village was a little intense. Although it could explain some things if that girl was in charge of the electricity production.
All those questions are not real questions, they are just here to show that the premise of the Omelas-like paradise powered by a tortured creature is often weak. The story is not about that vampire in the end; it is about Fine and Momo having no place in the world where they can live together. But you still want the settings to be believable, even if foreign, and this case of the needs of the many looks a little too flimsy.
Sometimes a minor detail sticks with you. What happened to the vampire in the submarine?
In Vampire in the Garden, the daughter of a human coalition leader, Momo, and a vampire queen, Fine, travel in search of a place where humans and vampires could live in peace. In their search, they find a place that markets itself as a paradise for humans and vampires. There is just one minor detail, and it is a spoiler, so go and watch the series before coming back here.
The detail is that the electricity in that village is provided by an unwilling, captive vampire. They don't go into a lot of explanations on how the electricity is produced, but they do go out of their way to show that the vampire is unhappy with his fate. He lives alone in the depth of a half-destroyed submarine and is forced to stay there for the good of the rest of the people and vampires in the village.
This trope of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few is not uncommon in media. For example, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is a short story that depicts a utopia, a perfect place that is powered (somehow) by the suffering of one child. Everyone in Omelas knows about it, and many stay in this utopian world, but some walk away from it.
Momo and Fine are looking for a paradize, and they know nothing about the forsaken vampire, which is probably because Fine is supposed to soon become his replacement. Fine never quite trusts the village, and that makes the anime similar to Omelas, where the narrator speaks to an unseen audience that does not trust a paradise without a catch.
Unlike the Omelas, the suffering of the vampire from Vampire in the Garden is justified quite well; he is there to produce electricity. However, a lot of things remain unclear, and they are mostly things you do not have answers to. Why is the vampire forced to do it; surely, if it is done with sufficient care, a number of vampires would agree to sacrifice themselves? Or, possibly, they would not have to sacrifice themselves at all; why not develop a method that keeps the vampires alive? Why does the vampire who saves the whole village remain just a captive in solitary confinement? Bring him something to do, at the very least, so that he enjoys playing music if he cannot be around people! Also, the little vampire girl going after Momo with a gun and promising to make them eternal friends in the paradise village was a little intense. Although it could explain some things if that girl was in charge of the electricity production.
All those questions are not real questions, they are just here to show that the premise of the Omelas-like paradise powered by a tortured creature is often weak. The story is not about that vampire in the end; it is about Fine and Momo having no place in the world where they can live together. But you still want the settings to be believable, even if foreign, and this case of the needs of the many looks a little too flimsy.
