REVIEW: ‘Delico’s Nursery’ Episode 4 — “A Curse Called Love”

The plot propels forward on the TRUE OF VAMP, aka TRUMP case. Delico’s Nursery Episode 4, “A Curse Called Love,” is finally speeding things along with the Vlad Agency investigation. More and more vampire deaths are pressing Lord Johannes Vlad, Dali Delico, and his band of fathers to a breaking point with running the nursery so much that Dali struggles to discipline his eldest son.

Delico’s Nursery Episode 4 begins with all four central vampire men seeing a bunch of vampire civilians hung up in a tower in the middle of the town. Of course, they suspect this is the vampire terrorist group Pendulum. This is a great scene showing the amount of artistic details on the town buildings for this anime, keeping accurate to the gothic and children’s book drawing style.

Delico’s Nursery Episode 4 cuts to Lord Johannes and Sir Maurice visiting Dali at his mansion. Lord Johannes bonds with Dali over child-rearing and its importance. Meanwhile, Sir Maurice is not impressed and scolds both of them, trying to get them back on the topic of the investigation. The banter between Dali and Lord Johannes is very comical, the classic trope of two people who vibe with each other, and the third person is just there, not matching their energy.

However, Delico’s Nursery Episode 4 then takes two separate turns. The first is that Dali is learning from the other fathers that his first-born son Raphael is going through his “no-phase” as he backhands his baby brother Ul without apologizing. Dali almost instinctively slaps Raphael but holds back. Holy cow! Dino and Gerhard explain that Raphael is going through his first rebellion stage by saying no to pretty much anything. Funnily enough, Gerhard is the one to pipe up, saying he read it in a book somewhere.

As Dali contemplates his parenting style, the other significant development in the episode quickly turns to the Pendulum members (Keith, Julas, Catalina, Abraham, and Kiki) gathered in their little cave hangout. Shockingly, Sir Maurice shows up in the enemy camp to reveal to the audience he is not very demure since he’s the traitor! It turns out he’s under Keith’s initiative, compelling him to feed them information and provide them with dance entertainment.

Much like the League of Villains in My Hero Academia, Pendulum is stumped on the information to find the TRUMP. Even though Sir Maurice is under Keith’s initiative, Keith deduces that Lord Johannes must’ve already had all Vlad Agency members under his initiative to prevent leaks. Ultimately, Pendulum sends Sir Maurice back to try to get more information for them because they can’t get any more crucial intel from him.

In the least interesting scene for Delico’s Nursery Episode 4, Professor Klaus returns to staring at the sky in a daze—similar to what he was doing back in Episode 1. The show is really hinting that Klaus is 99% the TRUMP, mainly due to one of the last scenes, too.

Lord Johannes storms into the Delico nursery with the shocking news that Sir Maurice is the traitor since he was caught sneaking the Vlad Agency roster list out of the headquarters. Lord Johannes fears that the nursery is compromised since Pendulum now has all their names and probably their locations. Simultaneously, Delico’s Nursery Episode 4 shows Sir Maurice killing himself with a pen after Lord Johannes tries to interrogate him. Strangely, a pen could kill a vampire?, but I guess vampires in this world don’t have a healing factor, and the vampire status is all aesthetic. It is unclear what vampire tropes they’re going with and which don’t exist in this world.

Lord Johannes suggests that they must nurse the TRUMP, much like these vampires nursing their children, because an incident where the TRUMP had suicidal thoughts caused Vampires around the world to die. This shows how powerful and fragile the TRUMP must be for Vampire society. As all of the Vlad Agency men discuss this, a shadowy figure of TRUMP appears that resembles Klaus’ body shape. I’m not sure if this is a red herring or not.

By the end of Delico’s Nursery Episode 4, Henrique’s twin daughters Lucia and Elena try to convince Dino that his son Theodore should join them in playing pretend. It is unclear where this sub-plot is building up to, as the last shot shows Theodore’s mental state consumed with the fact that he has to live up to his father’s expectations for being a good aristocrat.

Delico’s Nursery Episode 4 is out now on Crunchyroll.