Blood Bank Karaoke

A karaoke bar at the end of the world

Three and a half years ago, on the night of the autumn equinox, red spider lilies bloomed all over Japan at once. By morning their glowing pollen had drifted into every street and every house, and everyone who breathed it lay down and fell asleep for good. The sleepers are still out there, on the roads and in their cars and beds, breathing slowly, smiling, with flowers growing out of their sleeves.

The people who were wearing a mask that night live in sealed shelters now: tunnels, hospital wards, a school gym with taped windows. Nobody takes their mask off. Nobody sings.

Except in one place. A pastel-mint camper van with round headlights and a roof rack full of junk drives the dead expressways by night, every window glowing pink, with a hand-painted sign on its side: BLOOD BANK KARAOKE. Inside is a tiny bar with clean air, a cracked disco ball and a laserdisc karaoke machine the size of a fridge, run by four vampires. Blood Bank Karaoke is an AI text adventure, a post-apocalyptic road trip told in the bright, cute-meets-grotesque style of modern anime. You type what you say and do, and the story answers.

One jar, freely given

You are Kaito Sena, nineteen, a boy from Kawasaki who has been walking west alone since winter. Your gas mask has two hours of filter left. You followed a song on your pocket radio to a ruined rest stop outside Tokyo, and the van's side door slides open.

The rules are simple. Inside, you can take off your mask. You can sing. And at the end of the night you pay with one jar of your own blood, drawn with the van's little medical kit. It has to be given freely, because blood taken by force turns to grey ash in a vampire's mouth. That is the oldest rule there is, and it is why these vampires run a karaoke bar instead of hunting.

Tonight you are their only customer, so tonight you are the star. They like you. By the end of the trip they will want you to stay.

The band

Odile von Asch is a pure-blood vampire, more than four hundred years old, who came to Tokyo in 1985 because she fell in love with idol pop on a cassette. Ash-blonde hair to her knees, a black velvet bow, a pearl choker, a frilly pink parasol, and the extremely polished manners of a hostess who has been waiting for you all week.

Kiki is the punk drummer: black twin-tails streaked magenta and cyan, bubblegum, a leather jacket and an opinion about your singing. She drums on everything, including your head. Natsu was a sprinter before the Bloom and now drives the van, too fast, in a loud retro track jacket, feeding you road snacks. Hina is the youngest and the quietest, in a white sailor top and a small hair bow, keeping the setlist in a notebook and saying the one blunt thing nobody else will. And Kinako, a fat fruit bat in a tiny pink bow, lives in the disco ball and sleeps on whoever is saddest.

They are funny, loud and kind. They are also hungry, all the time, and they drink less than they should. Nobody will tell you why.

Fourteen nights to the sea

Odile is driving west: out of the Kanto plain, over the mountains, past the great volcano and down the Izu coast to Cape Akabana, a lighthouse on the Pacific where the lilies bloomed first. She wants to be there for sunrise on the spring equinox. You have fourteen nights of road.

Each night has a stop, a show and a problem. A tunnel shelter of forty people who have not sung in years. A school where a teacher will not let vampires near her nine children. A family living in the gondolas of a stopped ferris wheel. A mountain pass where starving vampires called the Dry wait in the fog. A militia in silver fire suits, the Lamplighters, burning the lily fields and hunting vampires with flamethrowers. By day the girls sleep in the blacked-out back and you stand guard alone, scavenging dead towns for mask filters, petrol and old songs.

The story keeps track of what matters on screen:

• Mask hours are what is left of your filter. At zero, every hour outside costs you.
• Drowse is how much pollen you have breathed. At the top, you lie down in the flowers.
• Pulse is your blood. Every jar you give costs some.
• Setlist counts the songs you collect along the road, each one a memory of the old world from someone you met.
• Encore is how much the band considers you one of them.

The curtain

There is a heavy black curtain across the van behind the front seats. Natsu drives from behind it, eyes on the road. Every night after closing, Odile goes through alone. Nobody invites you to follow, and there is a faint smell of flowers.

And every night at exactly 2 a.m., on any working radio, a sleepy girl's voice says, "Good evening from the other shore. This is Higan Radio," and plays old songs. Nobody knows where it comes from. You followed it here.

Tone and style

Blood Bank Karaoke is a story about vampires, survival and a found family squeezed into one small van. Most nights are a party: duets, terrible singing, a scared guest taking off their mask for the first time in years. Some nights are frightening, and some are about grief, the quiet kind you carry down a long road. Blood only ever appears in glass jars, and the sleepers are peaceful, never gory. The question underneath the songs is what it means to give something freely, and what it costs.

Questions before you play

Do I need to know anything about vampires or anime?

No. Everything you need is explained on the first night, by a four-hundred-year-old vampire who loves explaining things. If you have ever sung badly with friends at two in the morning, you know the rest.

Do I have to give my blood?

Never. Every jar is your choice, and refusing costs you nothing but the sight of four hungry girls pretending they are fine. You can also earn jars from other guests by putting on good shows, or, with enough filter left, leave the van at any stop and walk.

How does it end?

That depends on you. Over fourteen nights you decide what you give, whom you trust and whether you want to join the band. There are several endings, warm, strange and bittersweet, and the van reaches the cape on time whatever happens. What you do when you get there is up to you.

If this is your kind of story

For another neon-bright anime night where a song can change everything, try Mirrorless Queen. For an idol whose fans' screams are more dangerous than they know, try Kaiju Idol.