Even if you are well out of your Anne Rice/Twilight phase, sometimes there is just something to be enjoyed about vampire romances.
The vampire, as a creature, is designed to be innately sexy as they swoop in and suck on a notoriously erogenous zone to drink your life blood. Anime doesn’t always capitalize on making vampires quite so alluring, but they are rather fond of using them in romance anime as seductive, albeit it dangerous lovers.
If vampires are the sexy creature of the night that has enthralled your imagination, then check out these vampire romance anime that shows them off in their finest forms.
Vampire Romance Anime
Vampire Knight
For those accustomed to the sexy vampire melodrama that dominates Western vampire media, Vampire Knight provides probably the most similar experience in anime form.
Vampire Knight takes place at an elite school where the students are separated into Day and Night classes. Now, instead of being GED-seeking adult burnouts that go to school at night because they have to work during the day, the Night class is all vampires who only emerge after the sun sets.
Vampire Knight follows the headmaster’s daughter who mediates things between the Day and Night classes while also knowing the secret of the Night class. However, she gets caught up as “the rope” between two boys in a tug of war for her heart. One is a mysterious vampire, and the other her childhood friend who hates vampires.
It is, for sure, a familiar tale, but just as effective with its strong drama and seductive representation of vampires.
Rosario + Vampire
Rosario + Vampire follows a human that is forced to go to a supernatural school where he has to hide his status as a human. There, a vampire discovers his secret humanity and they bond over the shared secret and how delicious his blood smells.
While Rosario + Vampire starts off about just one vampire girl, this series is a harem anime. The main character gathers himself a whole heap of ladies that are all different supernatural creatures. However, even though it is a harem, the series makes it abundantly clear that the vampire girl is the main girl in the progressing romance.
Call of the Night
Call of the Night is one of the rare vampire anime that dares to modernize vampires. They are no longer clad in the haute couture of the 1800s or seductively swirling wine at you, instead vampires are just wandering the night full of whimsy and picking up random strangers for blood-sucking foreplay.
In Call of the Night, a boy stricken by insomnia wanders the empty city streets at night in awe of the freedom night provides. There, he meets a female vampire who intrigues him. So much so, that he desires to become a vampire himself, but that can only be achieved by mutual love between the vampire and the human.
Actually, I Am
If you don’t need your vampires so serious and brooding, Actually, I Am provide a light, more comedy-focused romance – although it does come in a harem package.
Actually, I Am follows a very normal boy in a very normal. However, he discovers that the most popular girl in school is a vampire. By her father’s rule, now that she is discovered, she has to leave school and go back to home. However, the boy proclaims that he will keep her secret and help her hide her status.
As these things go in harem anime, this of course mean he attracts a series of other girls who also may have their own supernatural secrets. However, like Rosario + Vampire, Actually, I Am never lets you forget that the vampire girl is the main girl.
Devils’ Line
Vampire media all tends to keep vampire lore somewhat intact, and never really even tries to play with the concept. Devils’ Line is a vampire anime that dare to play, or at least modernize – and that is what makes it interesting.
In Devils’ Line, vampire don’t need to drink blood to live. However, the temptation of human blood can become overwhelming and force their hand. Essentially, human blood to vampires is like taking the best drugs and having the best sex, driving those who drink blood into a hedonistic, uncontrollable spree of murder and sexual assault.
To stop these rampaging individuals that got lost in the literal bloodlust, but still have super-human abilities, the police established a special police force of vampires to help take down other vampires.
Devils’ Line follows the romance between a self-loathing, half-vampire member of this police force and the college girl he saved and unwillingly grew very close to. While the romance moments are very sweet, this anime is full of intrigue and presents a lot of discrimination against vampires to keep it from being “just” a vampire romance anime.
Karin
Karin offers a lighter glimpse at vampires by following a girl who is essentially a “reverse vampire.”
Unlike her family of actual vampires, the titular Karin goes through phases where she produces too much blood. Too keep it from affecting her health, she gives it away to strangers, noticing that when she does, it makes them livelier and happier.
While going about giving away her anti-depressant blood to strangers, Karin attracts the attention of a recent transfer student who had taken note of her suspicious behavior. As things often go with romantic comedies, her blood starts reacting strangely to this boy as well.
Kurozuka
When looking for vampire romance, I don’t think there is a high expectation for deep storytelling beyond the heart-throbbing moments. However, deep storytelling is what Kurozuka offers.
This unique anime series follows a samurai who, after the death of his brother, is forced to flee into the forest. There, he meets a mysterious woman who turns out to be a vampire. Falling for her, he desires to become her immortal lover by turning into a vampire himself.
When his transformation is interrupted, he is sent through time to the future where he fights to discover what happened to the woman he loved.
While that sounds straightforward, Kurozuka feeds you very little information, and this has led to quite a few diverse interpretations of this story. However, while it is lighter on romantic moments, Kurozuka does make up for it with great action and a legitimately unique story.
Dance With Devils
Bursting with beautiful boys, Dance With Devils offers a reverse harem tug of war between vampires and devils.
In Dance With Devils, a female student is pulled into the secret war happening at what she thought was an elite, but normal school. It turns out that vampires and devils are both looking for a grimoire that will allow the wielder to rule the world. Furthermore, she is somehow connected to it, forcing both factions to want to keep her close.
While the reverse harem is more devil-focused, the vampires gets plenty of time to play with the main character of this series too.
Fortune Arterial
In what will be a familiar premise by now, Fortune Arterial follows a boy who transfers to a prestigious school on an island. Once there, he discovers that a girl he is growing close to is a vampire.
As Fortune Arterial is based off a visual novel, it is a harem anime where multiple girls are fleshed out and given a viable path to romance. However, as is common with anime adapted from visual novels, the series chooses to present the vampire as the main girl.
Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase
Tsukuyomi follows a photographer that has been asked to go take pictures of paranormal activity in a German castle for his friends’ occult magazine. However, inside this allegedly haunted castle, he finds a tiny girl in cat ears who offers him a kiss.
Instead of a smooch, she bites and attempts to turn him into a vampire’s thrall, but he is unaffected. Realizing she can’t change him, she instead simply asks for his help to escape the castle so she can look for her mother.
Narrowly dodging the girl’s possessive butler, the girl makes it out and leaves. However, when he returns home, she is there and asking to stay there with him. Of course, as an important figure in the vampire world, multiple other vampires have been dispatched to find the girl.
Diabolik Lovers
Diabolik Lovers starts the way any reverse harem does – a girl gets dropped off at a big creepy house full hungry, handsome men.
Diabolik Lovers is a seductive vampire romance anime about a girl who was chosen to be the sacrifice to a family of six vampire brothers, each more handsome than the last. They are to use her to act out all their carnal desires to keep the rest of the world safe from their impulses.
And that’s what they do!
Yes, there is no tender, wholesome romance here, but rather Diabolik Lovers takes the sadistic approach to vampires where there sexily torture the poor shoujo protagonist into submission.
Strike the Blood
While most vampires are technical “made,” Strike the Blood has a previously human main character spontaneously combust into not just a vampire, but one of the most powerful vampires to ever exist.
To prevent any calamity, an organization dispatches a (cute and female) warrior to watch this (bumbling and horny) teenage boy with clear instructions to kill him if he becomes threat. From there, the pair team up to fight other threats that appear around the city to target him.
While Strike the Blood is often most focused on action, like any good action anime should, it also has a strong romance plot blossoming on the side as the main duo overcome obstacles together and grow closer with each other.
Blood+
If you enjoy vampire romance, but definitely don’t need the series to be all about the romantic relationship, Blood+ provides a thought-provoking and broody vampire action tale with a strong relationship.
In Blood+, a teen girl with amnesia and anemia lives out her mundane life until she is attacked at school one night by a creature trying to drink her blood. She is rescued by a mysterious man who forces her to drink his blood, awakening her latent power to slay the creature.
After the event, she is brought into an organization that kills these bloodthirsty creatures and learns of the long relationship she once had with the human man that saved her.
Dance in the Vampire Bund
Dance in the Vampire Bund follows a noble vampire queen as she tries to found a nation for vampires, called the Vampire Bund, in a portion of Japan after paying off the country’s debt with her family fortune.
This mission is told through the lens of a human boy who does not believe in vampires right up until this vampire queen tells him that he is her werewolf bodyguard that previously protected her until head trauma made him forget.
Now, he must adjust to serving a vampire queen who has a busy schedule of nation-founding while also learning to utilize his own supernatural powers to protect her from threats.
Blood Lad
If you don’t mind romance playing second fiddle to an otherwise shounen action-comedy plot, Blood Lad can be a fun, albeit short romp.
Blood Lad follows a high-ranking vampire in Hell who is also a huge otaku for human culture. When a human girl wanders into his realm accidentally, he is excited to meet her! He is even more excited to help her navigate Hell back to the human world, if only because it is an excuse for him to go there too.
Vampire Dormitory
Smash together Ouran High School Host Club with Vampire Knight and you have Vampire Dormitory, a cute little romance that dabbles in a lot of shoujo anime tropes.
Vampire Dormitory follows a boy who is struggling to find work because every place he goes is swarmed with women that come to admire his girlish beauty.
While applying at a cafe of beautiful men, he cuts his hand where soon after a handsome member of the waitstaff licks the blood away and calls it disgusting. From there, he learns the waiter is a vampire who cannot drink the blood of women and is determined to make the main character his thrall, providing him with all the affection he can in order to make his disgusting blood that he finds alluring taste better.
However, the main character is secretly a girl.
Thus begins their new life at a prestigious all-boys’ academy that is stuffed with handsome male vampires.
Bakemonogatari
The Monogatari series isn’t immediately recognizable as a vampire romance anime. In fact, watching the first season, you will realize that you actually just watched a supernatural harem anime about the main character helping various girls with their supernatural problems – but it was hidden so well under a blanket of dense, fast-paced dialogue and surreal visuals that it is remembered as art more so than harem.
That said, the main character is – or perhaps, was – a vampire and still has some of the latent abilities that he uses to help various girls with their supernatural ailments. The first season follows him primarily in his developing romantic relationship with a singular girl. Later seasons in the long and complex Monogatari series also detail his time as a vampire as well.
Sengoku Night Blood
What if all your favorite Japanese warlords were either vampires or werewolves and feuding with each other in a “fictional, but distinctly aesthetically similar to” Sengoku Period Japan?
Well, toss in a shoujo heroine with a mysterious power and little agency for her own actions and you have yourself Sengoku Night Blood.
Based off a visual novel, Sengoku Night Blood bombards you with a reverse harem of famous names who are all made handsome and supernatural. It isn’t particularly deep in plot, but it is wealthy in handsome men.
Do you have any more good vampire romance anime recommendations for bloodthirsty – or just plain thirsty – fans? Let them know your recommendations in the comments section below.
Please make another Rosario to Vampire series please.
he did not make the anime
ive seen all these
diobolik lovers is not romance its horror
No it is not.