Review of Phantom in the Twilight

This is a review of the anime only. I have not read the manga. For an otome adaptation, this one wasn't half bad. At least I didn't loathe the female lead. A little more romance would have been nice but I prefer the lack thereof to the forced romance in many otome. What I liked about it: 1. The female lead was strong in her own right and not whiny and annoying. 2. The male characters were believable and funny. 3. The story was intriguing if shallow.What I didn't like about it:

1. It moved awfully fast. There were times it was confusing because crucial information was left out.
2. There was a lot of kidnapping.
3. The characters weren't as developed as they could have been.
4. The vampire didn't drink blood. Kind of a penultimate aspect of being a vampire, and it wasn't there.

This is much different than the typical otome anime in that it's not about "which guy will she choose?" It really is just a group of guys helping her and her friend. That was refreshing but I would have liked a little romance at least. There was a hint that there might possibly be romance in the future, but that was it.

There could have been a lot more character development and it would have made the guys exponentially more interesting. I really would have liked to have seen some extended flashbacks of their lives. The hints we were given weren't enough to make me really get attached.

One thing that was really difficult for me was that once the main character found out "who she was," she suddenly knew how to do all this very powerful magic with zero training. They also never explained how or why the other female character had magic, what the heck it was, or how she knew how to use it.

The story itself wasn't well explained either. Some of the villain motivations were explained but they were so trite. It had the potential to be much more than it was. Overall, this wasn't a bad anime and for an otome, it wasn't bad at all. But it wasn't great.