Anime: Blood-C

When I first heard of Blood-C I did the one thing I always do before watching any Anime, looking for images of that Anime. What I found was a group of eerie, dark, bloody images with a black haired girl in almost every one of them. I decided not to be taken aback by them and watch the Anime anyway.

I didn’t realize back then, that I stumbled across a genuinely fantastic Anime.

(I will try my best not to write any spoilers so bare with me alrighty?)

Back to our subject. I downloaded the first episodes on my VAIO and began watching Blood-C a week later. Through the first episode, I was surprised to see that things were different from what I expected.

I was initially confronted by philosophical questions regarding “what makes humans from the inside?”, “can the things inside a human change?” and “what will happen if they changed?”

O_O Weird enough.

Then I felt that I accidentally started watched one of those “Slice of Life” Animes where the main character, Saya, is a cute klutzy school girl who’s also a shrine maiden, she happily serves her duties in the shrine with her father then rushes to have breakfast at a neighbouring café (Guimauve) where she happily chats with the owner, then on her way to school she makes up a cute song about how nice the weather is that day and her daily life and sings it happily. Afterwards, she’s late for school and everyone teases her about always being late, then they all have a good laugh with their homeroom teacher. Such a lighthearted happy town and nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Then at the end of the day, our cutie protagonist heads back for the shrine.

And that’s when things get ugly….

You see, there are these dark creatures called the “Elder Bairns” that come out during the night to feed on humans. That’s where our little hero steps in to get rid of them. And by “get rid” I mean slashing them to death using a sword referred to as the “sacred sword”, the only weapon capable of terminating an Elder Bairn.

Wait, wait, wait. Let’s look back at the things that happened so far.
So we know from the synopsis that Blood-C is a bloody, gory Anime.
The main character is a school girl, klutzy, cute, timid and is a shrine maiden who loves eating breakfast at the café next door.
Then all of a sudden she carries a sword and starts slaying monstrous beings that show up at night.

“It doesn’t add up!!” You might say.
“This is complete non-sense!!” You might think.
“I am so not wasting my time on this childish garbage” You might yell.

But let me tell you this:
Things aren’t always what they seem.

A lot of people might get sick of not being able to relate between Saya’s character duality, she’s a normal student during the day, then a skilled swordswoman at night. It’s a sad thing to see people dropping this Anime out of their lists and giving it harsh reviews with low ratings. I’m not saying that these people shouldn’t write their reviews in the first place, I believe everyone should express what they thought freely, but I’m saying that I wish they gave this Anime a fair shot rather than harsh ratings.

Anyway, let’s go through the basic pointers now shall we?

(Story)
The setting is an isolated quiet town, where there’s hardly any entertainment, and the street signals go on and off without a single car passing by (that creeped me out!). You will get familiar with some places as the story moves on, for example: the shrine, school, Guimauve.

A little piece of advice: Don’t let the altering genres of “Slice of life” and “Action” confuse you. Mark my words: Anything, and I mean anything, that you are provided with to build your speculations about the plot will be COMPLETELY demolished during the last three episodes of the series. I won’t say how, I don’t want to write any spoilers down so that’s as much as I can say. Also, as you watch more episodes, you will notice that the story picks up speed. It’s easygoing and relaxed in the beginning, then there’s a little tension, then a lot of tension, then…..well you’ll have to watch it to know :P

The director also throws in a few clues during the episodes to help viewers prepare for the grand finale in the end, which I found absolutely unexpected and terrifyingly mind-blowing.

The reason why I gave it a 9 on the story section is because there are certain moments where Saya is slow in reacting and you’d wish to yell: (MOVE!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!!!)

(Art & Animation)
Blood-C managed to combine both beautiful scenery and fantastic character design. The art is not extremely gorgeous and flashy, but there’s a certain beauty to it that will let you enjoy the Anime to the fullest.

As for the animation, it’s very smooth. You can easily notice that during the fighting scenes, which where skillfully designed to make Saya’s movements elaborately powerful and agile.

The character design is also wonderful. The girls’ uniforms are cute, each character has a distinctive style and appearance, and nothing seemed out of place.

However, if you don’t like seeing blood gushing out in your Animes then this might not be the right show for you….There are times when Saya would stab the Elder Bairn and a huge fountain of blood would spring out. Even when a human is killed, the moment a wound opens, blood would splash out, literally. I found that quite funny rather than gross, but I guess everyone views it in a different way.

Another thing I’d want to point out is the mature content in Blood-C, which bothered me the most, being a person who despises Ecchi and nudity. Unfortunately, you’re bombarded with a stream of nudity in the opening song.

How did I know, you might wonder. Well when you watch an Anime for the first time the first thing you sit to watch is the opening sequence. That’s what I did, and I spent most opening song covering the screen (LOL), then I just kept skipping the opening for good. There’s also a scene in episode 8 of Saya in the shower. You won’t get any good info watching it, so I’d say you skip it best. (unless you’re a perv).

(Sound)
The soundtrack is AWESOME, just awesome.

It’s relaxing and cheerful when Saya’s with her friends and having a good time at café Guimauve, tense when Saya’s deeply pondering or when a new enemy appears, energetic and powerful when Saya’s engaging in a battle with the Elder Bairns.

The opening theme is quite rapid and boosts your excitement and eagerness to watch the episode, and the ending also has a quick rhythm but quick enough to make you think about all that happened in the episode.

(Character)
There aren’t many characters even though they are quite different and original, but they are all that you would need to comprehend the story and they’re quite memorable. Roll out the red carpet!!

[Kisaragi Saya]
The protagonist of Blood-C. A kawaii (cute), high school girl. She’s tall and has long pig tails, black hair, an innocent look on her face during the day but a dead serious look at night. A funny fact about Saya is that her school uniform is what she wears for battle, even when given a chance to switch her wardrobe, she’d still choose it! Saya is always pleasant at school with her friends and sometimes unaware of what they’re talking about. There was even a hint of a love triangle involving her, Tokizane-kun and the class rep, but ofcourse, she was unaware of their feelings towards her. Saya is a fantastic fighter, even with her tiny flaws, she can manage to survive. I really loved Saya-chan, I wished I could be friends with her!

[Kisaragi Tadayoshi]
Saya’s father. He’s responsible for telling her where and when an Elder Bairn might appear and for giving the sacred sword to Saya. Calm and collected, sometimes too cold.

[The twins Nono-san and Nene-san]
Adorable twins! The only difference between them is the direction they wear their braids. There’s just this teeny tiny annoying thing about them: they talk in unison, most of the time. Cute and a bit childish, they’re the comedians of Blood-C.

[Yuka-chan]
The kill joy of Blood-C, whenever Nono and Nene try to lighten up the others’ mood, she has to ruin it with a tide of sarcasm.

[Tokizane-san]
A cool, mysterious guy. He’s always late for class, even though he apologizes for it, the homeroom teacher doesn’t seem to buy it.

[Tsutsutori- sensei]
The homeroom teacher of Saya’s class. She likes telling jokes and having a good laugh with her class. Quite easygoing for a teacher I think!

[Class rep. Tomofusa]
He’s a bit irritated when Saya calls him class rep. instead of his name, and seems like he has some feelings towards her. His attempts of winning her approval always fail, though. Poor guy.

[Fumito- san]
The owner of Guimauve café which Saya is a regular customer at. As far as Saya says, the food he makes is exceptionally delicious. He likes cooking for Saya and treats her and her father as his special customers, he even brings food to them at home, now isn’t that sweet?

(Enjoyment)
I certainly enjoyed Blood-C. To be blatantly honest, I have always looked for a show where the protagonist was a girl my age, had a lovely personality, and slayed evil beings swiftly with a sword. Oh and had a cute name as well, like Saya.

Blood-C was like a reward to me, I enjoyed every moment of it and got caught up in the well written story and animation. The running time and number of episodes was perfect too, Blood-C wasn’t a long boring anime, nor a short incomprehendable one, it could elaborately deliver its point and tell an interesting story in a 12 episode frame.

I didn’t get bored watching Blood-C, not even during the “Slice of Life” part, which is certainly a plus.

(Overall)
Blood-C is surely an outstanding anime, it’s definitely anything like what I’ve seen before. I have great expectations for the sequel and the movie. Blood-C, it’s bloody, it’s gory, and it has a mind-blowing twist that will leave you wanting for more.

It’s truly a fantastic work of art, so don't just watch the first episodes and go “aaaah I'm already sick of this” cuz you'll be throwing away a precious gem.

Blood-C fails to live up to its namesake in every respect, unless of course gushes of blood were the only requirement. If so, congrats Blood-C, you've taken arterial splatter and made it comedic.

I’m disappointed in this most recent addition to the Blood franchise. I loved Blood the Last Vampire and the Blood + series. What was so great about Blood + was its dedication to grounding the bizarre and supernatural in reality. It required a suspension of disbelief, but it never became laughably ridiculous. The characters were real, unlike the bubbly over the top clichés found in Blood-C. This new series starts off ridiculous and keeps going. The monsters are laughably random. The “old ones” are nothing like the mutant killers Saya battled before, where human lives were at stake with every fight. In this anime, she fights giant flower creatures and gooey globs with tentacles. No explanation is given for their appearance or purpose. I felt like I’d walked in halfway through the season and missed the entire build up, when in fact there was never any build up. It feels like a sad excuse for watching Saya jump around in a short skirt. I can usually ignore the stereotypes infused into animes, but when a strong female character like Saya becomes a big breasted bimbo, it kills the anime and my hope that animes will ever extend the hand of equality to women.

The series sets this Saya up to be a bubbly, oblivious, sheltered, naïve young woman in gothic attire. Her character attributes are wildly out of place and unbelievable, which makes it impossible to actually become invested in the anime or enjoy her character. It’s as if the creators couldn’t decide what type of girl they wanted her to be. Unless she’s been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, there’s no excuse for such dual personalities. The serious, competent fighter known as Saya only comes out during battle. The rest of the time, audiences are left with a singsong annoyance of a girl. And even during battle, Saya isn’t the badass chic she used to be.

Worse are the supporting characters. It’s as if the creators of this remake actively pursued every cliché they could. The stern father with a soft spot for his daughter. The mysterious bishounen café owner. The standoffish boy at school who catches Saya’s attention with his stoic and taciturn nature. The kind boy falling over himself to make Saya notice him. The best friend who needs to see a hairstylist and acts like a protective big sister. The twin classmates who kill the mood at every turn with their superficiality. This cast fails to provide comedic relief because every moment is already laughable (in a bad way).

The women in this anime are reduced to tight clothes, cleavage, and suggestions of lesbianism (not a bad thing if it’s not being used as some fetish for a man’s wet dream). I suppose it's par for the course in a lot of animes, but the film and previous series didn't succumb to cheap cliches and tight clothes to boost interest. The guys are all pretty boys reduced to cultivating a sense of potential romances with Saya. Not that it wouldn’t be great for Saya to have a boyfriend, but the haphazard way this anime goes about throwing these different elements together ruins all credible character relations.

Between the cliché ensemble of supporting characters who are only there to fill the creator’s lolita fetish and thrust Saya into as many romantic entanglements as possible, the gothic outfits that simply don’t exist in actual schools (especially in small towns), the fetish for glasses that Saya shouldn’t need, and the nonexistent framework for a plot that still hasn’t revealed itself by episode 5, I’d give Blood-C a -C. (Bad pun is bad, forgive me).

Blood-C is the remake of Blood+, which is a remake of Blood the Last Vampire, which was a rehash of the old chicks with swords routine in half an hour. I have nothing against remakes, if they are done once every 20 years and try to offer something new to the table. Yet look at this; three iterations of the same premise in less than a decade? This is plain overkill and on top of that it was becoming worse with each new entry.

The bait of the show is that the drawings are done by CLAMP, the team of women who are famous for their spicy premises, taboo relations, and skinny tall pretty characters. It is present here as well, making the series 300% more kawai and anorectic than before. Everybody looks so cute and all; they even included a pair of identical twin girls, like those in xxxHolic in an attempt to sell more. Down to it, it’s a visual gimmick that does not add anything important besides a weak lure of the sort ‘Oh, hey, CLAMP artstyle with twins’. Another bait is that they named it Blood just to attract the fans of the previous versions, which is another cheap trick since all three entries have close to no relation with each other.

These baits ended up backfiring, since most of said fans were disappointed by the very loose relation. They ended up comparing it all the time with the previous versions and other CLAMP works, instead of just seeing it as an individual show. Which is a bad thing since a show must be able to stand on its own two feet instead of needing earlier works for support. But it’s ok since it still managed to find a way to be remembered for something. Blood the Last Vampire is a cult movie for its weird animation. Blood+ is famous for its dark themes. Blood-C will forever be remembered as THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY GORE FINALE OF ALL TIMES. Further analysis on that later on, let’s focus on some other aspects first.

The first thing that made an impression on me is the heroine’s looks. In this version, besides looking as a typical anorectic CLAMP character, she also has very long hair and glasses as extra accessories. Both combined with her being absent-minded and you have an excuse to make fun of her silliness. She is also a miko priestess assigned to kill monsters from the very start. And if we are to take something out, NO RED LIPS, a detail that made her previous iteration annoying to look at.

Besides that, there definitely is a lot more moe in here, as well as a far better feel of physics. Blood+ was notorious for its serious looking characters and the badly done visual effects that made motions and backgrounds to feel artificial. Blood-C did far better in terms of fluid animation and a setting that feels alive instead of artificial (although in-story it’s actually the other way around). Production I.G. definitely improved the visual appeal and also turned Saya into a walking collection of fetishes, like klutz, athletic, wearing glasses and miko uniform on top of an already school uniform. The otakus are going to huff and puff heavily with her, unlike the one in Blood+ who looked and acted in a very plain way, and it was easy to get bored of her. On the other hand, her beginning as a normal girl and progressively turning into a monster slayer had a charm of its own. Too bad it took dozens of episodes and had numerous resets of progress because she was very indecisive.

So this new Saya is now a klutz, like any typical shojo character, yet during sports or battle scenes she kicks ass. Is this even possible? No it isn’t, it’s just there to make her look silly; later on a revelation proves that all that are just moe smokescreen for her real persona. So the core idea is still the same, as she again has no clue who she really is, she has a sort of amnesia, and the whole thing is finding out about it and dealing with it. In a way it improved her version from Blood+ where she was boring for being very passive and indecisive for a long period of time. She is not a crybaby anymore, who needs dozens of episodes to realize who she was, what her dark persona was, and to find the courage to start fighting.

This does not mean that the story moves faster because it is only a 12 episode series. Despite removing the slow build-up and beginning as an already full-fledged monster buster, most of the episodes are filler. And despite trying to make you think she is not passive and indecisive this time, she still freezes whenever a monster attacks her friends, a thing which results to a huge death toll that could have easily been avoided if she WASN’T FREEZING for no apparent reason. Thus, believe it or not, the old Saya, yes the boring one, made more sense since it was in her character to be inactive. This version has her freezing for no in-story reason and it’s done just so the monsters can kill people first, for easily avoided gore. Aka, it’s mindless entertainment.

The character roster is far smaller in this version, which doesn’t affect the plot since none of them were doing anything, but also make her far more isolated as a character. In the previous version she had several relatives, allies, enemies, even renegades, and all of them played an important role in her development, as slow as it was. It also did wonders in fleshing out of the setting. Here most of the characters are nothing but minor schoolmates and monsters with no personality, thus there is almost no fleshing out. The former are just doing silly cute stuff and the latter just kill people, thus you are not given enough reason to care about them.

The action part of the show is a hundred times more exciting that any battle in the previous version, which was simple and sluggish to the point of yawning. Here, the choreography is damn detailed and well played out… although hardly plausible. Saya’s veeery long hair doesn’t seem to hinder her at all. I mean at one point she is fighting in a lake where her hair must have absorbed water equal to a small pool. And her glasses never seem to fall off despite the very violent shakes and strikes. Are they sown on her ears or something? Does she even need glasses with those Chiropteran evil eyes of hers?

The action is also very inconsistent, since despite having some cool choreography, the power scaling is all over the place. Sometimes the heroine is faster than light, sometimes she freezes when the monsters attack and butcher people. Sometimes the monsters attack only at night, then for no reason they can attack at daytime. It is supposed to surprise you, although there is very little effort placed on fleshing out the characters, thus the result is hardly as shocking as the director may have intended. Hey man, I don’t know these people, why should I be shocked?

The show goes for a major plot twist in the end, in a last attempt to amaze us with a last moment revelation. Besides being far-fetched as hell, it also pretty much turned the whole show into a farce, not only mocking the heroine for being so oblivious all this time, but also the audience who expected something more serious from all that. Out of nowhere we get this huge exposition dump that feels like you were being trolled the whole time. And they made it as farfetched as they could, as if they wanted you to facepalm every 2 minutes. If the plot twist had taken place sooner and was presented in a slower manner instead of all at once, while bothering to flesh out the people involved, it could have been amazing. Instead of that you mostly get a monster of the week formula with dull plot and a rushed and messy revelation in the end. Yet, as sloppy as it was in this aspect, it definitely wins in a different one. I officially consider the final episode THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY GORE FINALE OF ALL TIMES. And that will probably be the only thing people will remember this show for. It made even Elfen Lied to look like a papercut.

Other than that, yeah it was pretty shit. It’s like the writers got bored of their own nonsense and like disinterested children they destroyed the sand castles they had spend hours in building. Cartoony characters, mindless violence, and trollish ending is all you get. Despite its numerous problems, Blood+ is the better series.