Karin



"It's so embarrassing!"

a.k.a. Chibi Vampire (English title of the manga, the anime is being translated using the original name.) Created by Yuna Kagesaki.

Karin Maaka is a bubbly, slightly ditzy, cute sixteen year old girl, dealing with many of the problems faced by girls her age. Her family doesn't understand her. She's easily embarrassed. The new guy at school makes her feel funny. And she seems to have a condition that leaves her out of sorts about once a month...

OK, maybe it's not that simple, when you factor in that most of the above is related to her -- and her family -- being vampires.

To make it worse, Karin is a very strange little vampire. It turns out she is a "blood-maker"; instead of needing to drain the blood of others, she has to inject her excess into someone. If she doesn't, it builds up and eventually, she gets a nosebleed that puts one in mind of the elevator scene from The Shining.

Karin is understandably put out by this state of affairs. She doesn't have any real special abilities to keep this under wraps, relying on her little sister to cover up any mishaps. Even in temperament, her sunny but easily flustered demeanor does not a creature of the night make. This puts her at odds with her family, who despite caring for her, call her "mutant" and "failure", and make her work to pay bills; after all, she's the only one who needs electricity or food in the house.

But she makes the most of it all, until life sends her a new delivery of trouble in the form of tall, creepy-eyed, earnest Kenta Usui, the new student. One look at Kenta and her considerable store of blood starts racing. The reason, of course, isn't hormones - it turns out that vampires have "tastes" in blood related to a certain emotional quality. Karin's mom Carrera craves the blood of liars; her father Henry, that of prideful people; her little sister Anju, of either lonely or envious people; and her eldest brother Ren, the blood of stressed women. Despite her condition, it turns out Karin has a taste too, and Kenta is apparently Flavour of the Month. Being around him puts her at risk of painting the town red, literally. Too bad they share a class. And a route to school. And look who just got hired on at Karin's part time job....

For all the hijinks and strange setups, Karin is a remarkably natural boy-meets-girl series. The relationship between Usui-kun and Karin is never rushed, developing smoothly from the admittedly supernatural set-up and arrangement of convenience into understandable affection. The secondary characters are generally well-rounded and, if not deep, consistent. The notably grating exception is anime-only Winner (pronounced "Weiner") Sinclair... and even he manages to pull off a little sympathy near the end.

Not to be confused with the Magical Girl series Kamichama Karin, or the character from the Dragonball or Naruto franchises.

This show provides examples of:
"Editor: I reined you in too much. Make it a bloodbath.
 * Absurdly Youthful Mother: Kenta's mother had him at the age of 16 and his father was 19
 * A Cup Angst - Yuriya from the manga who goes into this on occasion (No thanks to ANJU of all people calling her "flatty").
 * Adaptation Distillation: Not so much a 'distillation' exactly, since the manga doesn't have extra bits to prune out. But the anime veers off the manga plotline rather quickly, especially when Winner is introduced.
 * Applied Phlebotinum: Bats. Anything beyond one's normal capabilities, particularly memory manipulation, wide-range surveillance, and, somehow, restraining persons, is done via bats, which appear to be magical creatures rather than natural. Possibly a vague reference to or misinterpretation of Batman's bat-themed bat-gadgets stored in the Bat-belt or Bat-Cave, which may or may not be kept in Bat-shape by Bat-Alfred. Bat bat bat bat bat bat bat.
 * In a side story in the additional issue "Karin Airmail", a relative of Karin forms bats into a WEAPON!!! (Used somewhat like a two-handed sword but still very visibly a swarm of bats.)
 * Anything That Moves: Kanon. First time we see her, she's trying to wake up her father with a kiss. When her mother tries to stop her, she tries to give her a kiss. And when said mother mentions that Kanon's grandmother is coming over, Kanon clearly starts fantasizing about kissing her. Probably justified, due to her nature.  I'd feel like spreading love around in her position.
 * Armor Piercing Slap - Carerra Maaka, Karin's mom, is an evil shot with a slipper, up to and including charging it with a Battle Aura. And since she's never wearing slippers, it's apparently a Hyperspace Mallet as well.
 * Author Appeal--High Pressure Nosebleeds. Seriously, reading the author's notes at the end of each volume of the manga is...kinda creepy.

Kagesaki: YEEEEESSSS!"

"Boss: Are you sure you're okay taking an all day shift?
 * Partly justified in that Mrs. Kagesaki has a history of gory thriller comics, and even contributed to Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni.
 * Babies Ever After -
 * Badass Grandma - Elda Marker could be the poster girl for this trope. When Karin is kidnapped, one of her captors starts cowering in terror when he meets her, thinking she's Elda. Not that he reacts much better when he finds out that she's Elda's granddaugter.
 * Bait and Switch Credits - Karin appears naked more often in the opening possibly more often than she does in the entire series combined.
 * Banana Peel
 * Barrier Maiden:
 * Berserk Button - The whole Marker clan, usually a pretty normal vampire family, is not amused if you threaten their territory or one of the family members. "Did...Did he just throw a tree at us?!"
 * Then, there's Elda Marker... her default reaction to pretty much anything that slightly annoys her is an Unstoppable Rage, you so do not want to threaten one of her children/grandchildren.
 * Don't forget when she holds in her blood past her limit and goes completely blank, attacking and biting the first person she sees.
 * And the Manga has it too.
 * Bicep Polishing Gesture - Done by Fumio when she declares that she "has faith in her body!". She's referring to her work ethic, but thanks to her Hello Nurse qualities, it winds up being grossly misinterpreted.
 * Big OMG (Gratuitous English along with a Big No in this scene)
 * Bittersweet Ending - And how (manga only)!
 * Boy Meets Ghoul
 * Bumbling Dad - Karin's father Henry is totally whipped by his wife Carrera and mother Elda and his two daughters Karin and Anju. He stills shows a more willful side when he has to save any member of his family, and he won't hesitate to reign in misbehavior on Ren's part.
 * Cannot Spit It Out - Kenta and Karin, naturally.
 * Cute Little Fangs - Played straight with all the adult vampires -- Anju doesn't have them yet. Also subverted, since the fangs become frighteningly long prior to biting.
 * Crash Into Hello - Happens to Karin and Kenta Usui a few times in the first episode.
 * Cute Monster Girl - Karin and Anju, of course.
 * Dark Magical Girl - Anju and
 * Deadpan Snarker - Boogie-kun.
 * Did Not Do the Research - There is only 10 degrees of difference in latitude between Europe and Japan. The stars in Japan are really not that different than those in Europe, though they are slightly shifted and show a few more southern stars. Longitude-wise, it's about an 8 hour difference.
 * "The stars are in different places here, like there's a mirror in the sky." - Chibi Vampire volume 10, p 149
 * Does This Remind You of Anything
 * The biting. "It only hurt for a moment" indeed...
 * Or one where is forcing  to be burned by sunlight by bending her over and sticking her head out the window while he is bent over her from behind, grabbing her so she can't struggle. That doesn't seem like rape at all, right?
 * The bleeding. When Karin and Anju's respective first times at biting a victim are shown, both of them have the fronts of their white dresses conspicuously covered in "virginal" blood. Afterwards, both are referred to as vampires and adults.
 * Also, that certain time of the month where Karin's blood begins to multiply is reminiscent of... a certain other time of the month...
 * Lampshaded in the first chapter
 * Dojikko - The more excited Karin gets, the more likely she is to trip over something. In full panic mode, she might as well be wearing stilts on roller skates.
 * Driven to Suicide - Fumio, before Karin and Ren's intervention.
 * Education Mama - Koibuchi, one of Anju's suitors, has one of these, to his distress.
 * Elegant Gothic Lolita - Anju.
 * Emotionless Girl - Anju.
 * Enjo Kosai - One of Kenta's first encounters with Karin was seeing her in the park with her arms around a middle-aged salaryman, lips on his neck. Not knowing about her condition yet, he puts two and two together and comes up with squickiness.
 * Face of a Thug - Kenta, to the letter. A mundane version of the "Things aren't what people say they are" theme of the series.
 * An omake has it that Kenta's ancestor seven generations back had the same creepy eyes, couldn't make any friends, and became a murderous swordsman. He killed a man with kind eyes out of jealousy, who then cursed the males of his lineage to have the same creepy eyes for seven more generations.
 * Fan Service - The anime has a lot more of it than the manga - nothing quite tops having suggestive naked poses of the title character thrust at you in the OP. Karin's cup size also seems to have increased.
 * The manga lampshades Karin's bust. She inherited her looks from her grandmother on her father's size, but her breast size from her mother. Grandma isn't too happy about this.
 * First Kiss - Winner. Sort of.
 * Friendly Neighborhood Vampires - The whole Maaka family, with one exception.
 * Fridge Logic: At the end of the manga,
 * Jossed.
 * Gag Boobs - Oh, Karin.
 * Gecko Ending: Oh dear. Most anticlimactic ending ever, filled with Disney Death and Wardrobe Malfunction. Sides a lot of Gecko Endings are like this.
 * The Gift - As opposed to her awakened-but-powerless older sister, Anju displays great aptitude for vampiric control over familiars and human memories, despite being unawakened. Naturally, this leads to negative comparisons from the rest of the family, and yet more embarrassment for Karin. Carerra and Ren remark that Anju will be "one of the greats" when she finally becomes an adult.
 * Good Parents
 * Gratuitous English - Mostly from Winner-kun.
 * Gratuitous Japanese - Or, Gratuitous Japanese idioms is usually how Winner starts a speech. They're usually sort of relevant, but it's an odd way to speak.
 * Half Human Hybrid -  in the manga.
 * Happily Married - Karin's parents get along fine, with occasional squabbles.
 * They Really Do Love Each Other - Despite Carerra having a tendency to belittle and clobber Henri, they are absolutely devoted to each other.
 * Hellish Pupils - All adult vampires have Eyes of Gold and these, though since the adults are typically drawn with smaller eyes, it can be hard to notice. Elda Marker's eyes are drawn larger, showing us that the adult vampire pupils remain circles but also gain vertical slashes ? a merge of human and feline pupils in one package. Karin's eyes appear completely normal unless she's surprised, angry, or really feeling the need to bite someone.
 * Hello Nurse - Kenta's poor mother Fumio suffers from this in spades. She's constantly sexually harassed, which results in her losing her jobs rather quickly.
 * Karin also gets this kind of attention from Winner... and Winner gets it from every female character apart from Karin.
 * Heroic BSOD: Manga!Karin has a HUGE one  She can't be blamed, since
 * High Pressure Blood - Karin's blood builds up if she doesn't bite to release the excess, leading to explosive bursts of blood from her nose. In the anime, to lower the gross-out factor, this appears as a shower of red flowers. But afterwards, there's still a bloody mess to clean up. The manga just has blood. Of course, the finale of the anime looks like it tries to make up for all that...
 * Hot Shounen Mom - While "Stacey's mom" may have it going on, she has nothing on Kenta's mom Fumio. Nothing. The poor woman keeps losing jobs because everyone wants her.
 * Karin's mother Carrera isn't hard in the eyes either. Same goes to her mother in law Elda, who looks just as young as Karin.
 * Ho Yay - The boarding school episode. So much.
 * In the manga, Chapter 24.
 * The gag strips towards the later volumes.
 * I Have No Father - Kenta, at first.
 * I Have the High Ground - Anju stands atop a lamppost to watch Karin covertly, Ren mounts a powerpole to give Winner the slip.
 * Identical Grandson - Sort of. Grandmother Elda and granddaughter Karin apparently bear an uncanny similarity to each other, differing only in Elda's hair colour and length, and Karin's taking after her well-endowed mother in the cleavage department.
 * And in the manga,
 * Winner's grandfather also greatly resembles him.
 * Identical Stranger - Karin and
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming - Episode/Chapter titles are "embarrassing!"
 * Ill Girl - Everybody in Anju's class believes that she has a terrible disease that keeps her mostly at home. It is noted that she only comes when it's cloudy or raining, though.
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes - Subverted in Winner's mantle; it simultaneously marks him as somewhat unbalanced mentally, yet he draws enough admiration from looks alone that it gets viewed as part of his charm by his groupies.
 * Irony -, one of the main people in her family who considered.
 * I Was Quite a Looker - The third manga special shows Carrera when she was younger--and she's cute!
 * Karma Houdini - Glark and the other Brownlicks  They fail, but the worst punishment they receive is Elda Marker staying at their mansion for a few years as an uninvited and very unwelcome guest who allegedly beats them all black and blue as a regular thing.
 * This is escaping karma? It's Elda! I would have preferred getting staked!
 * Laser Guided Amnesia - Vampires wipe the memories of their victims to prevent panic, being caught, etc. Naturally, Karin does not have this power, and her family frequently has to do this for her so she can keep living her normal life.
 * Leap Day - Kenta was born on 29 Feb 1988. Elda threatens to wipe his memory back to his fourth birthday, not realizing that she is doing so on his fourth birthday.
 * Lethal Chef - Carrera and Anju nearly killed Karin and Maki making a normal human meal for them. More or less understandable when you recall that Carrera can't really taste human food and doesn't cook or eat it, and that Anju is like, 12.
 * Likes Older Women- Kikuchi (a side character) falls in love with Fumio in a side story. Then again, it's Fumio.
 * Little Miss Snarker - Anju.
 * Luminescent Blush - There is lots of blushing in this series, and Karin does a ton of it. As Boogie-kun snipes at one point, "Her body is 98% embarrassment!"
 * Magic Skirt - Somehow, busty breasts and nudity are okay but panty shots aren't (allusions to them are as far as it gets). Go figure.
 * Nosebleed: Subverted - Karin's nosebleed is caused by her "blood maker" nature. But the situations in which it happens are still very similar to the standard usage.
 * Played far more seriously in the manga. Karin lets out far more blood than any mortal safely could, and had to be hospitalized the first time it happened.
 * Noblewomans Laugh - Carerra Marker, and later Elda Marker as well.
 * Not What It Looks Like - The scene where Karin and Kenta are discovered in a closet together with their clothes off. In reality, they were hiding from a vampire hunter and Karin had one of her nosebleeds, hence the removal of garments. Everybody else who saw them (including said vampire hunter) had different ideas.
 * Older Than They Look - Fumio, who looks to be about in her twenties (and at one point is able to pass as a high schooler) despite having a son in high school. She got pregnant near the end of high school herself, but this would still put her in her thirties.
 * Omake -- lots of it in the manga, including the Mangaka's travails in getting that particular tankobon volume out.
 * Our Vampires Are Different - Spun twice for good effect. The vampires of Karin don't suffer from most of the lesser-known traditional vampiric weaknesses, and they are noted for having a particular "taste" in their victim's blood related to emotions. Karin, on the other hand, is different even from other vampires, as noted above.
 * Among the traditional weakness normal vampires of the series do have is an aversion to garlic - but it's because they can't stand the strong smell with their acute senses. They also burn in sunlight, and apparently this was a popular method for vampire executions at one time. And they sleep in coffins, though whether or not they need to do this or simply prefer it is unclear.
 * In one of the manga omake stripes, Carerra enumerates to her human-nosed daughter the sorts of strong-scented vegetables she is not allowed to bring home. Karin realizes with a start that they are all vegetables that cats are allergic to, and wonders about a possible connection.
 * Holding up a cross for protection means nothing. In the anime, it's because Karin's an atheist. In the manga, they just plain don't work.
 * Driving stake through their heart works too, although as Karin's parents comment that it would work on anybody.
 * Overprotective Dad - Henry, who's not exactly thrilled about Kenta's effect on his daughter's life.
 * Papa Wolf - Henry uproots and throws full grown trees at some other vampires when protecting Karin. And he planned to burn to death with them under the dawning sun if necessary. There's also the time that he had to rescue Karin from well-meaning human emergency-responders before they got her to the hospital and learned what she was. He flew through the sky in broad daylight and suffered some truly nasty full-body burns.
 * Paranormal Romance
 * Phenotype Stereotype - Winner-kun is a foreigner with blond hair and blue eyes. He also has a rather strange accent.
 * Please Dump Me: Karin can't get Dogged Nice Guy Winner to understand that she's not interested in him. So she tries going on a date with him and being a total demanding bitch so he will lose interest. It doesn't work.
 * Pragmatic Adaptation - The anime was created before the manga series finished, so well...
 * Quirky Household
 * Red Eyes Take Warning - More like Red Sclera, but you know when you're in deep shit when Karin has this.
 * Rich Bitch - Carrera loves playing with this trope, although she's rarely downright malicious.
 * Right Behind Me - In the manga Maki spots Karin giving a lunch to Usui. She and the other girls then demand that Karin tell them all the "juicy details" of her love affair with him. Karin insists that He is Not My Boyfriend -- without success, given her Luminescent Blush. Finally she yells "I Don't Have Feelings for Usui-kun!", just as Usui comes around the corner Right Behind Her.
 * In a splendid subversion of the usual awkward-teenage-romantic-comedy dramatic plot point,.
 * School Festival - Culture festival.
 * Secret Keeper - Kenta, partially of his own free will, and partially because Karin's family threatened him with Laser Guided Amnesia (and possibly worse) if he doesn't.
 * Shipper On Deck- Maki towards Kenta and Karin. Though she almost always helps and encourages Karin, the few times she helps Kenta with his feelings toward Karin are the times that really stick out. Probably because.
 * Skinship Grope - The manager at Karin's second job
 * Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Friendly.
 * Spell My Name With an S - The Marker/Maaka family name. There is a definite change from the original "Marker" (used by the parents and Elda), and "Maaka", written with the kanji that means "crimson" (and used by the naturalized Japan-born children). However, subtitling for the anime has been known to be inconsistent even from this.
 * Also, Carerra, Carrera, or Calera? You'll find all of them on this page, but the manga sticks with Calera.
 * What about Carola or Carla?
 * So Beautiful Its a Curse - Fumio, and Ren's boarding school roommate in his anime backstory.
 * Spoiler Opening: Subverted - the only character that doesn't show up in the first episode is represented as a black silhouette in the opening until after he is introduced to the storyline.
 * State the Simple Solution - Karin's family suggests early on that Karin just bite Kenta to keep her multiplying blood under control.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial- Maaka is the victim of this on many occasions. Here's a memorable one with her(and Kenta's) boss
 * What about Carola or Carla?
 * So Beautiful Its a Curse - Fumio, and Ren's boarding school roommate in his anime backstory.
 * Spoiler Opening: Subverted - the only character that doesn't show up in the first episode is represented as a black silhouette in the opening until after he is introduced to the storyline.
 * State the Simple Solution - Karin's family suggests early on that Karin just bite Kenta to keep her multiplying blood under control.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial- Maaka is the victim of this on many occasions. Here's a memorable one with her(and Kenta's) boss

Karin: Yeah, it's fine.

Boss: OH! You're working for that! (he means christmas bonus)

Karin: I'M NOT DOING IT BECAUSE USUI-KUN IS THERE!!!!

Boss:............eh?"


 * The Unfavorite - Karin's family can be pretty hostile about her condition.
 * In a subversion, it's just a Jerkass Facade. They are later shown to be very sympathetic towards, and protective of, Karin. So much that
 * Vampire Hunter - Winner Sinclair, and the rest of the Sinclair family.
 * Victorious Childhood Friend: Maki and another classmate, Kikuchi, are shown getting together and later married in a side story. Although it isn't what one would call the perfect relationship.
 * White Haired Pretty Boy - Ren. They have a lot of fun with this trope, especially with his bishie aspects in the special boarding school episode.
 * White Sheep
 * Why Couldn't You Be Different
 * Your Costume Needs Work - Karin's vampire impression for the cultural festival gets rejected.
 * Your Vampires Suck - There's a montage of Winner setting numerous vampire traps based on traditional vampire lore, accompanied by an explanation from Karin about how useless and silly they are.
 * Karin's parents point out with horror that anyone would die from having their hearts staked.