The Series (2.5/5)

    I will admit to not having seen the first series of Diabolik Lovers before this one, but the series catches the viewer up pretty quick. The series follows Yui, a young woman who was basically the drinking fountain for a group of 6 vampire brothers known collectively as the Sakamari Brothers. One night they are out for a drive, and get into  a car wreck, in the chaos that ensues she is kidnapped by another group of vampire brothers, the Mukami Brothers. These 4 brothers also need Yui for their feeding, but also to help fulfill a prophecy that Yui has been dreaming about regarding the name Eve and a tree, and helping one of them transcend their vampiric state and become Adam.

   I will admit I am always up for a horror anime, and at times Diabolik Lovers II certainly hits the spot. It has a nice creepy atmosphere that works well in its favor, but that is not it's primary purpose. The series animation was stunning, crisp, and well done, and I could pretty much throw this in the background to watch, in fact at times I almost wanted to just do that for a handful of reasons.

     The narrative for the show is all over the place, it never decides exactly where it wants to go. Also, we are lead to believe that the original vampire brothers are the "good" guys, but when they get Yui back, they victim shame her.  That leads into one of the most massively difficult issues with this anime is that Yui is treated like a piece of meat throughout the thing, and narratively speaking she is, it’s just very hard to watch this behavior.  Fortunately, each episode is about 12 minutes long so the whole series goes by in a flash.

Audio/Video (4/5)

    Sentai Filmworks presents the series in a quite nice 1:78:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer. The Blu-ray looks crisp and well detailed, colors pop, and blacks are nice and deep.

    Audio options are DTS-HD MA English and Japanese 2.0 tracks. I primarily stuck to the Japanese tracks, but both are solid and convey the dialogue and score nicely.

Extras (1/5)

    The usual a clean opening, clean closing, and trailers.

Overall

    Occasionally a decently creepy anime, it is bogged down by narrative and social issues that should be obvious in 2017. The Blu-ray looks and sounds quite nice, but has the usual lack of extras. NOT RECOMMENDED.