The Winter 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar

Welcome to Riverfield, where the most popular boys at two rival schools happen to be vampires and werewolves. When a mysterious new student, Sooha, transfers to Riverfield, the rivals find themselves inexplicably drawn to her. As horrible incidents start to shake the town, the boys' forgotten pasts slowly start to unravel... and their world turns upside down.

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is based on HYBE and ENHYPEN's Dark Moon: The Blood Altar webtoon. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

This isn't a particularly innovative episode, but like its source material (or at least the manhwa version; I haven't read the original novel yet), this gets major points for one thing: it's not hard to tell the many pretty boys apart. The English dub certainly helps with that; not only is it good, but it's dubbed in the UK, or at least using UK voice actors, so there's no reliance on the typical “red guy voice” to dub the cheery perky one. (Who's actually the blonde here, but I digress.) But the characters' designs are also easy to tell apart by more markers than their signature colors. I never once felt the need to think of main boy Heli as “the blue one,” and after you've consumed a lot of reverse harem series, that's a triumph. How much of this is due to our lovely vampires being based on members of the K-pop boy band ENHYPEN isn't clear to me, a person utterly unfamiliar with the band, but I'm not complaining.

The story itself feels at least a little like Vampire Knight. Sooha has recently transferred to a new school, the “night school” Decelis Academy, where classes inexplicably begin at nine at night. She's chosen this school because vampires can't enter, and she loathes vampires with every fiber of her being. We don't know why yet (although the opening theme provides a clue), but she's relieved to be at Decelis because, among other things, no one will be able to accuse her of being a vampire anymore. The reason for these accusations is that she has super strength, apparently a trait common (or more common) among vampires. We don't know how she came by this power, but it appears to have caused her plenty of grief.

Of course, she's fully unaware of what's pretty clear to the audience from the get-go: that her new buddy Heli and his brothers (not blood-related; they grew up in the same orphanage) are vampires. What makes them different from the ones who can't enter the academy isn't yet clear, but like Sooha, they each have a special power as well. They're also inexplicably drawn to Sooha the minute they see her, which presumably has more to do with Heli showing up at her room than looking for a lost book. Solon, the heterochromatic grump, is hysterical at the fact that his brothers have suddenly become obsessed with her – but he can't help moving to protect her when a “nightball” (which looks like rugby) comes flying at her. Is Sooha also a special vampire? Could she be without being aware of it? That's not clear, but the boys have all obviously known for their entire lives, so maybe no one bothered to tell her…?

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar isn't breaking any molds – we've even got werewolves coming in next week – but it's a good take on an old favorite. Reverse harem fans, take note: this is going to be fun.

If the earth-shattering success of K-Pop Demon Hunters is anything to go by, we'll be seeing plenty of horror-tinged K-pop adventures in the coming years, which I'm all for. A little bit of vampire bloodshed is just the thing to give some much-needed grit to the normally sanitized and overpolished boy-band genre. Yes, I know that nothing about Dark Moon: The Blood Altar indicates that all the characters based on the ENHYPEN members will actually be singing and dancing, but you know what I mean. This show has idol-anime vibes, and those vibes can only be improved by a regular injection of Vitamin Spooky. What's more, this show comes complete with an English dub, and it should go without saying that alluring men that we're dealing with are instantly ten times hotter when they sound like they're just as apt to invite you for a spot of tea as they are to sink their fangs into you.

Kudos to whoever made the decision to cast actual UK voice-actors for this one, because as shallow as it might seem, the mere presence of that Received Pronunciation lilt in the dialogue immediately makes Dark Moon more interesting to watch. This isn't because I'm some kind of redcoat loving freak who dreams of popping down to Wellington with his mates from uni after a ride on the tube; it simply that, after so many years of hearing the same identical five or six vocal archetypes in both Japanese and American English, it's nice to treat the ears to something a little more novel. They also really do sound attractive to these Philistine ears, too, which is a good thing, since this show is all about a girl who finds herself attending a school filled with a bunch of sexy bloodsuckers who are all innately attracted to her. If we're not as down bad for the boycandy as Sooha is, then Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is dead on arrival.

Thankfully, the boys are all cute and likeable, even if it is incredibly easy to slot them into the usual boy-band cliches as you'd expect from a cast that is literally meant to represent a real-world boy band. It's not like this is the kind of show we're meant to take exceptionally seriously, though. Most of this premiere is dedicated to Sooha goofing around with the decidedly non- threatening vamps as everyone - including Sooha - shows off their goofy superpowers. For as much as I like the idea of a horror-themed spin on this sort of reverse-harem setup, this is not a horror anime. Whatever mysterious secrets Solon and the others have going for them, I don't predict that any one of them is intended to be scary or threatening. To be honest, KPop Demon Hunters has more horror cred going for it, at least so far as this first episode of Dark Moon is concerned.

Still, I don't deny that this was a decently charming and perfectly painless first episode to get through. I don't think I am wowed enough to keep watching the show on my own, but I can see fans of the genre (and fans of the band) having a lot of fun with Dark Moon. I have to give ENHYPEN credit for those opening and closing credit songs, which are pretty darned catchy.

On this week's premiere episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Buffy enters a new school—one that totally doesn't have any vampires masquerading as students. But not five minutes in, she accidentally reveals her slayer powers! Oh no! But luckily, all the boys she meets have superpowers too. Will Buffy finally make friends with people like her—or could they be something different entirely (but again, totally not vampires)? Joking references to '90s TV shows and sitcoms aside, this first episode of Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is far from the worst reverse harem introduction I've ever seen—especially among those also involving vampires. In fact, I found this episode perfectly watchable.

The big reason for this is Sooha herself. There's just something about a person putting themselves out there when they've been let down again and again. She's not crushing on all the boys, nor is she acting the part of the too-good-to-be-true heroine. Heck, she wears her racism against vampires on her sleeve.

She's just a girl who's made a major change in her life in the hopes of reinventing herself. Humans are social animals, and she wants friends so badly, but her super strength has always set her apart. She wants to be normal—to be accepted for who she is underneath. She sees her time at Decelis Academy as her last chance for that. It's easy to empathize with her—and the whole setup will no doubt lead to lots of drama as she works to overcome her own personal issues with identity, trauma, body acceptance, and racism. Is it predictable? Sure. But I can see why this particular webtoon was popular enough to get an anime.

Speaking of the animation, TROYCA delivers some great stuff as usual. The quality never seems to drop, even in the in-between frames. But my favorite part? While the whole series may be set at night, the color balance always allows us to see what's going on—even in the less well-lit areas.

Will I be watching next week's episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? No. But I'm happy that anyone needing their fix of reverse harem vampire goodness will be eating well this season.