Noblesse

NOBLESSE -ノブレス-

6.9(140,790)

MAL Score

Ranked #5356

Popularity #858

Action
Supernatural
School
Vampire

Episodes: 13
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 8, 2020 to Dec 31, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Cadis Etrama di Raizel—known as Rai and bearing the title of “Noblesse”—is placed into Ye Ran High School by his loyal servant, Frankenstein, to keep him out of the Union’s reach. Trying to blend in as an ordinary student, Rai begins to learn the rhythms of human life and grows close to his classmates. The calm doesn’t last long; when the Union kidnaps his new friends, Rai is compelled to step in to save them without exposing who he truly is.

During the rescue, a Union operative named M-21 breaks away from the organization and later takes a position on the school’s security staff at the offer of the director—Frankenstein himself. Though he appears disciplined and professional, M-21 remains haunted by his past and the consequences of turning against the Union. As nobles Regis K. Landegre and Seira J. Loyard enroll to investigate the Noblesse and the Union hunts for answers about its missing agents, Rai must stay hidden while protecting the people he’s come to care about.

Otaku Consensus

Production I.G’s Noblesse lands as a stylish but compromised webtoon adaptation: the Shunsuke Tada and Yasutaka Yamamoto-led team gives the urban-supernatural action a clean audiovisual finish, and fans consistently latch onto Rai’s cool restraint and the sound quality. The verdict is mixed rather than dismissive, because the 13-episode TV structure rushes source-material context and opens confusingly for newcomers, leaving adaptation quality as its central weakness despite an easy-to-watch shounen-vampire appeal.

Why You Should Watch

Noblesse is easiest to recommend to viewers who want urban-fantasy power escalation with school-life breathing room, not a lore-dense vampire epic that explains every faction upfront. It scratches the same itch as the polished supernatural brawls of Blood Blockade Battlefront and the silent-overpowered-lead appeal of Hellsing, but filtered through a cleaner shounen ensemble and a Korean webtoon sensibility. Production I.G gives the fights a crisp TV-action finish, while the sound work and voice performances were repeatedly singled out even by mixed reviews. The catch is structural: the anime expects tolerance for a cold-open feeling and compressed adaptation logic. If you can accept that tradeoff, the 13-episode run is a compact watch built around cool entrances, faction pressure, and the strange comedy of ancient power trying to pass in modern classrooms.

Key Characters

C
Cadis Etrama di Raizel
Rai is discussed less as a talkative lead than as a deadpan power-fantasy presence, with his silence and formality turning ordinary school routines into character comedy.
F
Frankenstein
Frankenstein is the series’ pressure valve: a polished authority figure on the surface and the character whose loyalty gives the supernatural hierarchy its sharpest edge.
M
M-21
M-21 gives the adaptation its most grounded tension, because his disciplined exterior is constantly set against the trauma-coded fallout of cutting ties with the Union.
S
Seira J. Loyard
Seira’s composed noble bearing makes her a useful contrast to Rai’s unreadable restraint and the more volatile human-world tensions around M-21.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
This is a 13-episode Fall 2020 Production I.G TV adaptation, not an OVA-length sampler; its weekly run from October 8 to December 31, 2020 gave the webtoon a full season while also exposing how much setup had to be compressed.
2
The direction is split between chief director Shunsuke Tada and director Yasutaka Yamamoto, with Sayaka Harada handling series composition; that staff structure reflects a one-cour project trying to juggle school comedy, faction lore, and action escalation at once.
3
AniList’s tag profile frames the show as more than a vampire title: Urban Fantasy sits at 86%, Super Power at 78%, Vampire at 71%, and Werewolf at 60%, signaling a broader supernatural-faction action identity.
4
Its reception footprint is larger than its score suggests: on MyAnimeList it holds a 6.9 from 140,790 votes with a popularity rank of #858, while AniList lists a 66/100 score and 1,710 favourites.
5
The most repeated criticism is structural rather than visual: reviews point to a confusing start and rushed pacing, while still crediting the series with enjoyable action, a cool central presence, and strong sound quality.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime credits Jae-Ho Son for the original story and Gwang-Su Lee for the original character design, preserving the core authorship of the Korean webtoon source in the TV production credits.
Fun fact 2: The visual production credits are unusually detailed in the provided staff list: Hiroumi Yoshida is credited for prop design, while Akio Shimada, Takanori Tanaka, and Yoshiki Matsumura are all listed across art direction roles.
Fun fact 3: Critical discussion of Noblesse: Awakening already flagged runtime as a problem before the TV series, so the 2020 adaptation’s pacing complaints were part of a broader franchise adaptation issue rather than a one-off complaint.
Fun fact 4: AniList’s lower-percentage tags include College at 30% and Basketball at 26%, odd little metadata traces that point to how much school-life texture surrounds the supernatural action labeling.
Fun fact 5: The series finished airing on December 31, 2020, making its final episode a New Year’s Eve endpoint for Production I.G’s one-cour adaptation.