I’ve been watching “Rosario+Vampire” lately, even though I have a lot of other stuff I really should prioritize in front of it. After all, it’s a show about goofy hijinks and panty shots, and I have Serious Dramas and Significant Movies lurking in my collection crying out to be watched.

On the other hand, I read an article recently that claims that it’s just human nature to put off doing things one Ought To Do in favor of What Seems Fun Right Now, and although the intent of the author was probably to make the reader reflect on his or her behavior and then change it, what I took home was that it was all right to stop feeling guilty about putting off watching, say, my DVD copy of Shawshank Redemption that has been lurking on a shelf since 2000.

Anyway, so.  Rosario+Vampire isn’t too different from Omamori Himari or To-Love-Ru or any of a thousand similar Shows For Guys going back to Tenchi Muyo and before.

By the way, there’s some spoilers coming up related to the end of the first series, so if you care about that sort of thing you might want to stop reading.

To continue: You’ve got your Perfectly Ordinary Japanese High School Student is who suddenly confronted with proof of a supernatural world (or, you know, aliens work too) and then winds up drawn into the machinations of said supernatural world as an active participant.  Generally, they’re surrounded by impossibly powerful (and occasionally immortal) friends who are also, you know, physically perfect and – for some reason – fighting for the main character’s affections even though there’s no real reason they should be looking at the main character as anything other than, say, lunch.

Anyway, there’s not a whole lot of Angst and Drama in Rosario+Vampire, but there’s a bit at the end of the first series where the Generically Nice Main Character is seriously wounded and his vampire love interest has to save his life with a transfusion and there’s all sorts of OMG WILL HE TURN INTO A VAMPIRE NOW tension, and that’s where I had a flashback to sitting in a theater with my wife watching Twilight where there’s a bit where the Generically Angsty Main Character is seriously wounded and HER vampire love interest is contemplating saving her life by turning HER into a vampire.

And then I realized that, if you swap gender roles and ideals of physical attractiveness (and let’s face it, ideals of fan-service) around, there’s not a whole lot of difference between the stuff I’ve been watching of late and the recent trends in Books For Young Ladies Featuring Love Affairs With Werewolves And So On and that I probably shouldn’t make too much fun of the next person I see reading a House Of Night novel on the bus.