Baban Baban Ban Vampire: Farce, Blood, and Moral Panic

Baban Baban Ban Vampire (2025)
Director: Shinji Hamasaki
Production Year: 2025
Country: Japan
Genre: Supernatural Comedy, Romance, Fantasy
Running Time: Approx. 110 minutes
Cast: Ryo Yoshizawa, Rihito Itagaki, Nanoka Hara, Gordon Maeda

A few nights ago, the Film Society at my school had a Japanese night. Most of the offerings were the usual sweepings of the industry, clearly assembled with an eye to what Western festival audiences like to applaud. I was on the point of tossing the leaflet aside when I noticed the final screening: Baban Baban Ban Vampire. I had followed the anime with some amusement, and curiosity was enough to extract £7.50 for a temporary membership. It was money well spent.

The plot, such as it is, proceeds with cheerful indifference to European moral sensitivities. Ranmaru Mori, played by Ryo Yoshizawa, is a four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire who has taken up residence in a provincial bathhouse after being rescued years earlier by a small boy. That boy, now fifteen (Rihito, played by Rihito Itagaki), is the object of Mori’s long-term culinary ambition. He intends to drink the boy’s blood. But not yet. The flavour, we are told, improves with age and continued virginity. Until Rihito is eighteen, he devotes himself to what might be called a regime of “protective interference,” ensuring he reaches adulthood in a condition he considers optimal. There is lots of nudity and some hugging.

Complications arise when Rihito starts noticing girls.

This is the basis of the comedy: a centuries-old predator behaving like a jealous governess, intervening in adolescent romance with increasing desperation and decreasing dignity. Around this central absurdity gathers a collection of subplots involving rival vampires, confused admirers, hunters who fall in love with their quarry, and the general chaos that attends any narrative unwilling to respect genre boundaries.

The tone is farce, but farce handled with technical competence. The production is polished. The pacing, while occasionally hurried, rarely collapses. The special effects are not lavish, but they are used intelligently, and the film never allows them to overwhelm the performances. Which is fortunate, because the performances are the reason to watch it.

Ryo Yoshizawa is excellent. He understands that the humour lies not in exaggeration but in sincerity misplaced. Mori is ridiculous, but he does not know he is ridiculous. He carries himself with the composure of a man who has outlived empires, even while fretting about teenage courtship. Yoshizawa moves easily between elegance and absurdity, and the film depends on that balance. Without it, the entire premise would collapse into noise. It is also worth noting how well he occupies the frame. There is a kind of quiet authority in his presence, a sense that the camera finds him rather than the other way around. This gives weight to scenes that might otherwise feel disposable.

Gordon Maeda appears in a supporting role, and again demonstrates an ability to suggest interior life without display. The rest of the cast are uniformly competent, and there is a general sense that everyone involved understands exactly what kind of film is being made. This is not always the case with adaptations of manga and anime, which often mistake energy for coherence. Here, even when the narrative threatens to fragment, the performances hold it together.

I was struck, as I watched, by the reaction of the audience. Ten minutes in, there was a cold stillness, followed by a scattering of departures. Near the end, the fat boy who stinks of sweat and imperfect bottom hygiene began a theatrical sobbing, and was helped out with much scraping of chairs. Afterwards, the chairman of the Film Society delivered a panicky and self-exculpatory lecture on film as allegory. As he trailed off, someone at the back of the room trilled that he had been left “physically sick.” There was a muttering or agreement. Since the Chairman is a Green and an Ozempic junkie, I was pleased to hear he has been called before the Head of Year for a roasting. Obviously, no one had looked beyond the headline description of the film as “romantic comedy.”

My own view is simpler. I am constantly told that we must respect cultural difference, and avoid imposing Western moral categories on other societies. As applied, this principle is just an excuse for looking the other way when shops get looted or white girls prostituted. It is never extended to the real but alternative civilisations of the East. Just because the people there look like us – well they have slanted eyes and look rather better than most of us, me excepted: but you get the idea – does not mean they have any respect for our announced moral sensitivities. At least they are not ruled by the Epstein Syndicate.

As a piece of cinema, Baban Baban Ban Vampire is well made, well acted, and consistently entertaining. It does not have the depth of the best Japanese films, and it occasionally rushes material that would have benefited from space. But it succeeds in what it attempts. It amuses without pleading for approval, and it treats its audience like intelligent beings. I admired it more than I expected.

And I suspect that is recommendation enough.