Back in September 2025, when I reviewed the first volume of this anime's source manga, while I wasn't overly enamoured with it, I stated, “I think Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right is likely to translate well to anime.” Was I correct? Kind of. It's a very close adaptation, which means it replicates all of the manga's strengths and flaws equally faithfully. It's also a fairly bare-bones production, meaning that often there isn't a whole lot of… animation… in this anime.

As a gently amusing slice-of-life comedy, it doesn't need to be a steaming-hot-saukuga-drenched animation tour-de-force to impress, though it probably would have helped if it were. Apart from one or two very brief examples of surprisingly nice animation sequences here and there, the presentation is incredibly staid. There's a slow-paced, low-stakes, soporific vibe to proceedings that means Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right is best imbibed in small portions to avoid losing consciousness. At least in my experience, watching more than two episodes at a time led to my mind wandering to anything except what was on my television.

Compared to that other prominent vampire-themed slice-of-life show, Call of the Night, this is a far inferior product, much less interesting both thematically and visually. It's like comparing a fillet steak with a McDonald's burger. The burger is cheap and cheerful, and will suffice in a pinch, but it's nowhere near as satisfying as a myoglobin-dripping rare steak so juicy and enticing that you can almost feel its pulse as you sink your incisors deep into its yielding flesh, enraptured in the sensation of its life becoming one with your own... (I should probably stop watching vampire shows. They're making me come over all peculiar.)

Part of the issue is that protagonist Tatsuta is such a doormat. That's kind of the point of his existence, and his pathological agreeableness becomes a plot point in a later episode (not that identifying this flaw leads to any lasting change in his actions or temperament). He's so willing to help anyone, and at great detriment to his own well-being, that he ends up volunteering himself to be Luna's portable blood bag. Even being bitten repeatedly (because she's so useless at vampirism) doesn't faze him at all. His classmates think nothing of piling all of their work onto him, so what's one more little thing like daily exsanguination?

For some reason, about ninety percent of the time, Tatsuta is drawn without a mouth. It's really weird, and makes me think he's wandered out of that disturbing Harlan Ellison short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. There's no such existential horror here, though; he's presumably drawn this way to highlight how he rarely speaks up for himself. It's so weird, though, and honestly makes it kind of hard to empathize with him. He looks barely human half the time.

Then there's Luna's frequent bizarre devolutions into super-deformed chibi style. She does this when tired, or hungry, or when feeding off Tatsuta, or one of the other female characters she befriends later. She frequently equates this with breastfeeding (to the point Tatsuta is frequently referred to as her “mama”), and sometimes Luna fantasizes about actually feeding from female characters' breasts. It's really uncomfortable.

It would be okay if the unfunny mini-Luna gags were kept to a minimum, but they're so prevalent that there are entire episodes where we barely see her teenage form. This makes the supposed romantic tension between the leads really creepy, when one of them seems to be a toddler most of the time. Not that there's a whole lot of romance in this. Tatsuta and Luna often blush when interacting, and they're clearly into one another, but it never develops beyond that. There's almost as much blushing between Luna and the two female friends she feeds from, too, but I don't think there's meant to be anything romantic between them.

Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right is a just-barely-passable comedy anime that's disappointingly anemic in terms of both laughs and any plot or character development. It's nice that we get to meet Luna's weirdo parents towards the end of the season (and it's easy to see where she gets her personality quirks from), but the show's overall repetitiveness and lack of substance become wearing. It's just not very interesting, or even very funny. There are so many other shows in both the vampire and slice of life genres that there are few compelling reasons to sink your teeth into this one.