Have you ever watched an anime about parenthood and thought, “Golly, you know what this anime needs? Vampires. Vampires would really spice this up.” Or, similarly, have you ever watched a vampire anime and thought, “If only they would talk about the highs and lows—the many joys and struggles—of parenthood.” After all, if other unconventional combinations like chocolate covered potato chips and dungeon crawler rhythm games can find an audience, then why not a vampire parenthood anime? Thus, filling this hyper-specific niche is Delico's Nursery: an anime that seems to take place in what you could describe as the TRUMPiverse about a group of aristocratic vampire dads who are taking care of their young children together while they investigate a series of murders.

Yeah, okay, real quick, let's address the elephant in the room: Delico's Nursery is inspired by Kenichi Suemitsu's 2009 vampiric stage play series called TRUMP (although to be clear: if the series' website and trailer is indicative of anything, it does seemingly take place in this universe). And in the TRUMPiverse, “TRUMP” stands for TRUe of vaMP—at least in Delico's Nursery (although I'd presume it's like this in the stage plays as well, though I don't know that for a fact) it's the title used to refer to the mysterious vampire god from which all other vampires are said to descend. In any case, that's why the word TRUMP often appears both in this anime, and in conversations about this anime. As for Suemitsu, he's credited in Delico's Nursery for series composition, original creator, and the script for the first six episodes.

Actually, there's two elephants in the room when talking about this anime, and the other is production woes and how long it took the series to wrap up. While there don't seem to be any available specific details, this anime was originally supposed to premiere in July, and was pushed back to August due to production issues. Then, mid-airing, there was a weeks-long break between its first and second half. So that's why, despite its 13-episode count, it didn't finish airing until considerably later than the rest of its fellow summer 2024 anime.

And actually watching it, it's not hard to guess that it suffered from substantial production issues. The backgrounds look like they were photos that were all put through the Umineko visual novel background filter—which, for those unfamiliar, means little more than perhaps messing with the color settings a bit, adding a blur, maybe some slight texture for good measure, and calling it a day. These stand in sharp contrast to the people/vampires, who are pretty heavily stylized and look great. Indeed, not since Shiki have I watched a vampire anime with so much cool hair.

And while we're talking about this anime's production qualities, as far as the voice acting goes, while both dub and sub are good, I found myself mostly preferring the dub. Everyone in the main cast brings an extra level of snooty-ness to their performance, making the dad division sound even more pretentious—which, for a group of vampiric aristocrats, feels correct. Everyone does a great job. Although if I had to pick a particular favorite performance, it's probably Kieran Flitton as Gerhard Fra.

It'd be remiss, however, to talk about the dub, and to not bring up how this is quite possibly the last anime David Wald, who was the original voice of Juras (following Wald's departure from Crunchyroll, the role was then taken over by Reagan Murdock, as per a social media post by Nick Huber), recorded for Crunchyroll. When asked on Bluesky if Delico's Nursery truly was the last anime he recorded for Crunchyroll, Wald replied that he “honestly [doesn't] remember LOL. That last day in got pretty heavy.”

It's also worth mentioning that the soundtrack is pretty good. Shunsuke Wada has created a beautifully ambient soundtrack that brings a cool and creepy vibe to the anime. I'd be curious to learn whether or not any of the tracks were repurposed and/or inspired by the stage plays. As for the intro and outro songs, which are by Mika Nakashima and Anonymouz respectively, I don't feel strongly about them one way or the other; they're okay, I guess, but I've heard much better from them both.

In any case, all this aside, the anime itself isn't terribly fun to watch. For better or for worse, it's not lying about being an anime about parenthood: throughout the whole series, you're constantly bombarded with the loud screams and cries of young children. And when it's not the kids crying, the other central part of this series—solving the mystery, and stopping whoever's behind it—isn't terribly engaging either. This anime is far less interested in solving the whodunit, as much as it is the why, and what the big picture of the culprits is. The only problem is that a lot of those answers are wrapped in thick layers of world building that often feels at best under-explained, and at worst, downright convoluted. I presume (or rather, hope) that a lot of this stuff is explained in the stage plays, but still—it adds a level of confusion to the viewer experience that I could do without. And it also makes it really hard to get invested in what's going on, making for a pretty boring viewing experience overall. This is compounded by what feels like a disinterest, on this anime's part, in actually being a mystery series. Rather than show the viewer a really engaging mystery solving process, Delico's Nursery instead seems to prefer just handing its viewers the answers. The time is instead largely spent watching the dads dad-ing, and the culprits culprit-ing.

Speaking of the characters, some of them are good. Key word: some. This anime has a large central cast: the four dads, their collective six children, and the five culprits. These are just the main characters. And the kids end up with way too much screen time relative to how much (or rather, how little) happens in their storyline, and it completely throws off the balance of this series. The culprits, for example, don't get nearly enough screen time despite how important they are, and it makes a lot of their decisions feel completely out of the blue. You might hear that and worry that it means the pacing in this show is probably way too fast, but surprisingly, you'd be wrong about that. Almost impressively, this anime has found a way to both have trouble giving a large slice of its main cast enough screen time, while also being incredibly slow-paced more often than not.

Maybe I'd like this anime more if I were already familiar with the TRUMPiverse, but alas, this was my introduction to it, and it didn't end up leaving a great impression. For that reason, I'm not sure I can accurately gauge whether or not this is a good entry point to the TRUMPiverse for people potentially interested in the stage plays. But if nothing else, taking the TRUMPiverse out of the equation, I can at least say that this anime is nowhere near as fun to watch as it sounds like it could've been—it's incredibly underwhelming. But hey, to its credit: in the absence of any competition, I can at least still honestly say that in spite of all this, it's still the best vampire parenthood anime that I've ever seen.