Even in Japan, originality is a rare thing. From the inordinate amount of magical girl series out there to the sheer number of Slayers rip-offs, even a series that takes old ideas and explores them in a slightly new way are valued treasures. Such is the case with Master of Mosquiton.

The series' namesake is a 17-year-old brat named Inaho, descendant of a family that's quite familiar with magic and the like. Upon finding her grandmother's ancient spellbook, she discovers that her family is hiding a unique treasure: a human with a quarter of Vampire in him, sleeping eternally and guarded by two spirits: one of ice and one of fire. Of course, she can't let sleeping vampires lie. One drop of blood, and he's good as new!

Mosquiton is unique among vampires in that he's not evil. Well, neither is Inaho, although she's selfish enough to qualify. Her quest is to find the O-part, a legendary device that will grant her eternal youth. She enlists his help in her search through the 1920's supernatural landscape, and enevitably uses "Mosqui" and his servants as her tools. In short, she's a bitch.

Whenever she's really in a pinch, however, she has to let Mosquiton drink her blood -- who then becomes a crazed homocidal maniac. The only way to stop him, in fact, is to kill him again. No matter, one drop of blood and he's back to his usual wimpy self.

In these two episodes, an Egyptian pyramid has mysteriously appeared right in downtown London. Inaho is convinced that it's the harbinger of the O-part, and so off she goes, across the world, into the pyramid, and exploring through every dangerous crack and crevice. At this point, she's willing to believe any glowing piece of oddly-shaped stuff is the O-part, at which time, she'll run after it screaming like a maniac, Daffy Duck-style.

The animation is very good, even by OAV standards, without being flashy. The music is typical 20's big band (except for a fairly lame ending theme), and ADV's English post-production is, as always, second-to-none.

The dub, however, isn't. Don't get me wrong, it's not a BAD dub (certainly nowhere in the ballpark of USMC's regular artistic trainwrecks). It's well-written, well-cast, and for the most part, well-acted, but is rather sloppily directed. Some of the comic timing is thrown off, and some lines sound a bit forced (like Matt Greenfield's earlier works). This is better in the second episode, as the crew seems to get used to the show's style a bit more.

Overall, Master of Mosquiton is a worthy candidate for anyone's buck.