Blood+

Way back in October I talked about the anime, Blood-C. In that review I briefly touched on my feelings towards its predecessor, Blood+. Well, apparently that snippet caused some curiosity and I got a request to review it. Blood+ was inspired by a film, Blood: The last Vampire. Now, I can't really tell you what I thought of that film since I've never seen it. This anime, from Production I.G, the same company that produced the film by the way, was my introduction to the series. Now, it has been a while since I watched this, so, because I care about giving you all the ... most informed opinion possible, I'm going to re-watch the entire thing for review purposes. Let's take a look at Blood+.

The story is pretty basic. There's a girl named Saya who gets attacked by a blood drinking monster. She's rescued by a mysterious stranger named Haji who gives her a sword and feeds her his blood. This causes something to awaken within her that she doesn't understand. The first half of the story follows Saya's quest to learn about her power and her past. The second half is about her previously forgotten mission. Sorry for being vague but, as usual, I'm trying to refrain from spoiling anything. One thing I do like about Blood+ is the pacing. It gives you enough time to acclimate to the characters and circumstances while keeping things moving at a good pace. There's very little that feels superfluous or like it drags. That being said, there are some unnecessary flashbacks that really only serve to go over information you already know or that they've already given you huge hints about. To be fair, most of the flashbacks are used to hint at information they haven't revealed yet and may, arguably, work but there are some that do act to the detriment of the series since you already know what happened or have a really good idea from the not so subtle hints they like to drop. One major issue I have with the story is at the very end. I won't go into details but there's a complete deus ex moment. They try to justify it through exposition after it happens but it really doesn't work since it comes out of nowhere. Which is odd coming from a series that likes to repeat important plot points and give lots of hints before they happen.

My major issues with Blood+ come from the characters. I've mentioned this before, but Saya annoys me. She spends virtually the entire series being mopey and depressed even when her immediate circumstances are pretty happy. She's even kind of mopey before her circumstances start to get tragic. Admittedly, she does go through a lot of pain and heartache but it doesn't make for an interesting protagonist when she's perpetually gloomy. It might work in a twelve or thirteen episode anime, but it gets really grating when you have to deal with it for fifty episodes. The antagonists aren't any better. Most of them have really lazy motivations like just being jerks or being complete nutters. There is one antagonistic character who moves beyond that but he's typical in a different way. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's say he's a chivalrous gentleman. The main antagonist is the worst. She starts out fine with a backstory that gives her the potential to be a sympathetic character, but then she gets one of those turning irredeemably evil scenes. They try to pull away from that towards the end and make her sympathetic, but it doesn't work since the method they use is really stupid and she's already pole vaulted over the point of no return. Frankly, trying to make her sympathetic after that is pretty gross. I'd tell you what she does, but it would be a huge spoiler. Some of the supporting cast are interesting, particularly Kai, but most of them just lack depth.

The art in this is really strong. The characters are well designed with the only major issue being that their eyes frequently go crossed for no reason. The backgrounds are well constructed and the action scenes have a good level of intensity while being well constructed. Although the amount of blood that breaks the laws of physics to gush out of wounds can be pretty ridiculous. Oh and, like Black Lagoon, there's a character in this who inexplicably never removes his sunglasses even when it's dark. I can kind of understand it in this case since they aren't good at drawing eyes, but that just makes you wonder why they only do it with one character.

The voice acting is pretty good. The biggest issue is that most of the characters don't have a lot of emotional range so the seiyu tend to use the same general tone for most of the anime. They still do well though. Particularly Yoshino Hiroyuki and Saito Chiwa since they do get to demonstrate quite a bit of emotional range. The music varies. Some of it is kind of bland and some of it is really good. To give some examples, the music they use for victorious moments is excellent and the music they use for suspenseful scenes is overdone. It sounds more suitable for action scenes than suspense.

The yuri factor is a 3/10. Saya and Kaori's relationship seems to go beyond friendship, but their relationship is only really explored in the first few episodes. They do get to interact a few times after that but there's not a lot of it. It would probably earn a higher rating if Kaori had a bigger role, but she doesn't.

Now we move to the final rating. There are some interesting ideas here, the story is good, albeit flawed and the art is really well done. On the downside the characters aren't very well done, most of them are just lackluster, Saya is kind of obnoxious and the story does end rather weakly. My final rating is going to be a 6/10. It's decent enough but it's not anything special.

Watched this after I ran out of shows to watch and read all the superb reviews about it.
I was a little disappointed ngl; would've definitely dropped it if it weren't for Haji.

First half of the series is so insanely boring/awfully slow paced even watching it at 2x speed. It did have a good initial setup that made me curious about Saya's past, but I'd recommend just skipping around after the first 2 episodes to get the basic gist of what happened afterwards since the execution isn't that worthy to waste time over (it's another one of those mandatory tragic backstory to prep for the character ... development later). Second half is pretty ok personally since Haji felt more relevant. The compositions/panelling of the scenes are also dull in my opinion; it didn't really do its job to enhance the ominous atmosphere the slow pacing seems to try to get at. With that being said, if you wanted to watch it over the battle scenes overall, I wouldn't; it's bland in the entirety of the show.

In spite of the R17+ cause of the blood/violence, the story itself is probably better oriented for around 14 yr olds. I would've definitely enjoyed it more at a younger age, as it would be more difficult to guess the plot. If you decided to watch this after watching shows like FMA, boku no hero academia, one punch man, attack on titan, tokyo ghoul or code geass, it's best not to watch this; it'll be way too boring. (On a flip side though, I was a lot more motivated to work painfully trying to finish this series lol.)

I watched this some years ago and rewatched recently because I didn't remember the story very well. I guess this show is not worth rewatching if you're not as forgetful as me.

The series' enviroment is good and the soundtrack is also good. I loved almost all the openings and endings (there are 4 each). But the plot... oh boy, that could have been great. The plotline is: the main character has to kill all the chiropteans (vampires) and Diva, the main antagonist (also a chiroptean). Sounds really stupid but at some points this is very well played and really entertaining. Also, there's a little discussion ... about blood family VS non-related family, which is interesting but poorly executed. It could be a really good show if it wasn't for Saya, who is really tedious, and all this "humans VS chiropteans" thing, that mostly shows a self-centered mankind and a stupid and entirely avoidable fight (oddly, chiropteans noticed it quicker than humans).

The main character, Saya Otonashi, looks like a pretty good heroine at the beginning. But then you start discovering that she's just a really really spoiled kid who can't think about anyone except herself and some people she might befriend. For years and years, she keeps trying to kill Diva because Diva is supposedly bad. But that's not true. Diva is indeed something like a psycho but it's because she's been tortured and used her whole life. It would be reasonable (and tragic) to hunt Diva if Saya didn't know about this but she's given evidence about it ALL THE TIME. There's even a chapter where someone TELLS HER about it and stuff. And Saya does what??? Instead of saying "Ok, you guys are SO DAMN CRAZY and you TORTURED SOMEONE FOR YEARS and now you're trying to kill her, it's pretty obvious she would hate all of you. I'M OUT, I'm not killing anyone, you're all really crazy people, go get some treatment", she says something like "Ooooh, nooo, this all my fault, she's sooooo bad, she killed the bastard who tortured her because she's bad, she's naturally bad, nothing but bad, I will kill Diva because she's bad. Have I already said she's bad??? Oh, I hate Diva, she's bad, bad, bad". That's so spoiled I can't stand it. Saya is one of the worst protagonists I've ever seen because she's (em)pathetic with basically anyone except Diva, for just no reason (the only possible reason is: she's spoiled).

Diva, on the other hand, is a very interesting character and I dare to say she's the only reason you should watch this show. She one of the best antagonists I've ever seen and she has a great background story. She's MUCH MORE interesting than Saya even though the show doesn't focus much on her (at least, not compared with Saya).

Also, all that Siff stuff is really, really boring. The only good thing about them is that you can have some laughs since they look like goth teenagers (I found it really funny, sorry).

The end of the story is also pretty dull and foreseeable.

So some dudes made this short horror film titled Blood the Last Vampire which was instantly labeled cult. I don’t know why; it was probably the weird presentation of an otherwise simplistic premise. Some years later, some other dudes decide to make a series out of this and the result is Blood+. The tale of an apparently normal high school girl forced to take part in a sinister conspiracy that aims to make humanity food for vampire-like freaks.

To make a long story short, the series has a very good concept and interesting characters but its presentation lacks the stuff that would make it great. Here ... are the reasons:

1) Long duration / Slow pacing. The show lasts twice as it should; it is 50 episodes long yet it might as well be only 26. The reason is simple, many episodes feel like minor side quests or filler missions that in the longrun only manage to hinder the progress of the main story with characters and storylines that lack excitement and tire the viewer.

2) Passive crybaby main character. Very few like such protagonists. A dynamic character would have done the same things in half the time instead of constantly doubting and holding back or crying in a corner. Although the basic motto of the series is to portrait a normal girl as she steadily becomes more decisive and active, it doesn’t change the fact that the main heroine is going around in circles. One moment she is trembling in fear, then she suddenly finds the strength to fight, then she reverts back to how she was… 20 times in a row. It gets REALLY bothersome. It is excused the first few times but when it keeps happening over and over, then it pisses you off.

3) Lack of focus on secondary characters. Saya and her nemesis get all the spotlight, leaving all the rest as almost unneeded background decorations. Although it is true that a great deal of characters are fleshed out throughout the series, none of them does something overly important to affect the story. Imagine an entire secret organization of supposed elite agents who in the entirety of the series didn’t manage to beat the weakest monster, while Saya an otherwise simple-minded schoolgirl has slain a mountain of brutes. Why were they in the story then? Just to pay her traveling tickets and giving her a quest list? Nice NPCs they were… Her family ain’t better either. Her step brothers keep interacting with her and are even willing to fight for her, but eventually don’t do anything to affect the battles or the result of all this mess. Do you know how irritating it is to have epic level fighters who do nothing while the rookie squire kills the dragon?

4) Boring battles. Although there is a lot of action in the anime and most problems end up being resolved through fighting, almost none of the numerous duels and spars are exiting. Saya will just use her super blood to instant-kill any monster she cuts with her sword, after a simplistic battle choreography. And if she gets injured in the progress? Big deal; she immediately heals like Wolverine. In the meantime, all the rest of the supernatural people around her will be flying and shooting and blowing stuff up, usually with zero importance to the plot. And as I said, elite agents are completely useless at beating even the weakest of foes. Where is the interest in all this?

5) Huge mystery build up / disappointing revelation. For most of the show Saya will have amnesia (which is a bad trope on its own but I felt generous enough not to make a different topic about it). She will keep traveling and fighting and investigating and having flashbacks in order to remember what had happened in her past. And we are kept teased with these vague images and hints and weird stuff, making us expect an amazing revelation. And when the revelation finally comes, you go all “WTF, after all this waiting that was all of it???” Seriously, the explanation of the grand mystery behind her past is simple as frakk, yet they make you think it will be something unimaginably epic.

6) Clean CGI. Although the animation is quite good and the sceneries are great to stare, the anime just doesn’t feel “dirty” enough. The textures on objects like clothing or rocks will look sparkling clean, even when they should be worn-out from weather, bloodshed, dust, mud or generally affected by their surrounds. Even the wind blowing on the characters’ faces will feel more like a fan. It is as if the entire thing was shot with a blue screen and thus feels fake. 3D effects weren’t as well developed back then, so everything feels more artificial than hand-drawn.

7) Ever-present school uniform. Saya wears one most of the times, even when she is not going to school. Pander the otakus too much and you end up making it look too ridiculous to care about her personal drama.

8) Red lips. Saya has them. ALL THE TIME! They stand out. She is the only one with so much RED. They are annoying…

That’s pretty much all of it. The finale may also feel corny as frakk, but I am generous again and leave that alone. Corny doesn’t mean bad; just unimaginative. It is otherwise good corn quality.

And now the few things I can praise:

1) Gore. Buckets of blood and some deviant things here and there.
2) Shadows. Good use of lighting by … not using it. Makes things pitch black and scary by being just black silhouettes with glowing red eyes.
3) Soundtrack. Exceptional use of violin and musical instruments; very good in building atmosphere. Too bad most of it gets wasted on a boring plot and silly story. And the lyrics are pop shitz. What in blazes is pop doing in a semi-horror anime? … Oh, right, it has a schoolgirl in it.

Although the general idea, the basic character design and even parts of the story looked promising, i can't bring myself to really like Blood+.

The layout for most of the characters is well done, they contrast each other nicely and cover pretty much any attitude known from modern animes/mangas. Ranging from egoistic, funny, morally over desperate, lovable, childish, weak to downright evil, fanatic and insane.

And there are a lot of characters, by covering any major concievable aspect, the anime fails to give each of them a compelling background-story or enough "prime-time" to fully develope. Most of them dont have necessary influence on the main ... story.

The first part of the story unfolds the background of the main protagonist Saya in a lengthy of "The Twelve Kingdoms" reminding stilistic way, the later consists of a standard apocalyptic scenario carried by the antagonism of Saya and her counterpart Diva. By the time the anime ends over a dozen substories have been created and most of them wont be finished. The end is horribly designed and features "deus ex machina" in all its glory. Also the entire story could have been told in around half the episodes, without any noticable loss.

But my main problem with the anime is not it's story. Blood+ is completly, fundamentally illogical. Each anime has a set of rules under which it operates.

Like "vampires burn if they go into the sun", "Shinigami can't die, they just go back to the realm of dead" etc. Blood+ violates his own set with a to me yet unkown consistency.

The entire story is based on a fundamental rule "The only one beeing able to kill the vampire-like-creatures is Saya", it adheres to this rule for just a few episodes, than ignores it, states it again (and keeps stating it until nearly the end), gets proven wrong (severing the head/burning works just fine), but ignores this by saying humans are not able to do this, although they have already done it. This continues by proclaiming those creatures can't kill each other, which gets also silently changed. New rules are introduced, old ones are forgotten, reawakend and changed just to proceed the storyline. In my oppinion unacceptable.

One Word: Disappointing

Short Review: When I read the story line and character bios for this anime I had high expectations for Blood+ but sadly they weren't met. The art and sound were the only two things that I thought were pretty good but everything else was lacking. The love triangle between Saya, Haji and Kai was plain annoying with these two guys chasing after a girl who constantly second guesses herself. The story felt like it dragged on and could have definitely been told better in 20-26 episodes. Lastly the action scenes were painful to watch because usually a character gets stronger after facing multiple ... obstacles and trials which enables them to be strong enough to face their final problem. In this show, however, our main character starts off at her peak and gets weaker throughout the entire show winning her battles through pure luck. This is definitely not worth the 50 episode commitment.

Sigh. This is another anime that has been sitting on my "I need to finish watching it some day" list for years.

How should I put it.

Have you ever seen series where you could see an amazing potential, then just had to watch the show to fail to reach the full potential, despite trying very very hard? Well... this is this kind of show.

I've rated it 6/10, and 6/10 Story, 6/10 Art, 6/10 Sound, 5/10 Character, 5/10 Enjoyment, 6/10 Total.

This is probably the closest there will be ever be to properly realizing full potential of Saya's story from Blood the Last Vampire. Unfortunately, it is ... not good enough to be considered a masterpiece, it fails to reach its full potential. Watching this anime is very, very, frustrating.

In essence, it starts with interesting premise, produces decent first season, then things start deteriorating, and devolve into some sort of melodrama with characters occasionally spending time stating "moral statements", almost in shounen-like fashion. Fairly convincing fights from the first episodes are then displaced with almost comical abilities that on the level of superpowers. For example, very early you'll get characters that can move very far away at blink of eye without triggering a shockwave somehow. Compared to the first episodes that looked like they were trying to be realistic - to the extent it is possible wit ht he premise - this is very odd.

So, what we have is an oddity. Nice core idea. Nice art. Good music. Characters are mediocre, however, a lot of them with wooden acting. There's a large variety of locales over the course of the show, which doesn't happen often. However, it lacks some sort of "punch" that would make it great, and sluggishly and slwoly drags out for 50 episodes, reaching.... not very interesting conclusion.

Sigh. I'm not sure how this could possibly have been done better, but it definitely doesn't reach the potential, and this is frustrating.

Detailed breakdown is below:

Story: 6/10: The reason why it is 6/10 is largely because of scope, and because of occasional nice moments it has. The story has a problem, because it starts with interesting premise, but then slows down to crawl, and throws many pointlessly melodramatic moments that were supposed to trigger some sort of response, but usually don't. As I also mentioned, there's inconsistent level of "powers" throughout the anime. At the beginning we get more or less realistic depiction of the world, but later there are peopel with magical abilities. Closer to the end, or to be more specific, past the first season, the story largely looks like collection of backdrops, and resembles some sort of not very convincing theatrical play. But still... it is ambitious you can give it that. And closer to the end it has one nice moment that adds some redeeming values to it that shifts it from 5/10 to 6/10... Still... I can't think of how it could've done better and more believable. Something is definitely amiss with it.

Art: 6/10: It is surprisingly detailed for a TV show. Clean detailed style, characters are realistic. Nobody is ever going into chibi mode here, characters are adult proportioned. Basically, they pretty much wanted to make it look realistic as possible, when it comes to visuals.Character designs are fairly good as well.... I mean monsters aren't interesting, but visuals of characters themselves are unique enough and interesting enough.

Sound: 6/10: Soundtrack is nice, but the same tracks are played many times over course of 50 episodes. At some point they nice music starts leaving next to no impact.

Characters: 5/10: Character interaction is not good, and same goes for character portrayal There's a lot of instances of somebody pointlessly talking baoaut something. Some cliched interactions. Melodrama. Many attempts to overdramatize something. Basically... I think there was maybe one moment total where I felt sympathetic towards someone.

Enjoyment: 5/10: It is simply too long and drag out for too long. By the 30th episode the show loses all of its initial momentum and moves slowly towards the ending, while events that happen in it become less and less and less plausible. The world fail to react to catastrophes. The powers of characters become more and more magical. People act oddly. This... gets annoying.

Overall: 6/10: I'll rate it 6/10 for trying but... the thing is I cna't recommend this anime. As i said, this is probably one of the best attempts to retell saya's story (and it is SIGNIFICANTLY better than the abomination called BloodC), but the anime doesn't achieve its full potential and this is frustrating.

Maybe if you have a ton of time and absolutely nothing else to watch you could give this one a try, but after finishing the anime myself, I could only think that idea behind Saya could use a much better story.

I'm glad I have finally finished this anime. This anime was really just meh, it had it moments but for me, it could of have been better.

Story: For a story, it can be described in one word, OK. The story at the beginning, is fantastic, but for it being 50 episodes, I should expect what I would call filler. The last episodes really made up for it. The story I give a 6.

Art: For a 2005 anime, it did it job. The art is what it is, the art I give a 6.

Sound: For intros, and endings, they were a lot ... that they went through, and I'm not going through all of them. As for watching the dub/sub, I watched the dub. I honestly did not care for the dub, it had some great actors, like Steve Blum, but that it. The sound I give a 4.

Characters: As for characters, they were good. You do have to have, a great villain to build up to, and it was what it was. The characters I give a 7.

Enjoyment, and Overall: For enjoyment I give it a 6, I honesty was into this but was like need to get through it. Overall score is a 5, I honesty will never go back to this.

Blood+ is an anime about vampires and one special vampire hunting them down. I can’t say I haven’t seen that before. I have seen worse vampire anime and definitely worse vampire stories in general. However, at the same time, there are better vampire anime out there as well like Vampire Hunter D or Hellsing. Hell, why stop at anime. Watch stuff like the Blade movies. This series seems very much like Blade in a lot of ways. You have a main character, Saya (in this case a woman), who is a powerful and special vampire (supposedly) who wields ... a cool-looking sword and slays other vampires. I can tell you that Blade could kick Saya’s ass any day of the week. I would much rather watch Blade and Blade 2 than this anime. I would watch this over Blade Trinity but that’s not saying much. There will be some SPOILERS from here on so be warned.

Let’s get the good points out of the way. Firstly, the art and animation is good for the most part. For an anime that came out in 2005 the visuals are good. The animation during the fights was usually fluid and some of the action seasons are decent mainly ones involving the Shiva lies. The music is also good. All the openings are great and will get you hyped until you realize what you’re watching. The ending songs are okay and the score does its job.

One of the main issues I have with this anime is the characters. I find most if not all of them boring, uninteresting, or just whiny. If you like the characters that’s fine, but I was not invested in any of them. At first I was invested in Saya’s character but as the series progressed I became less and less interested. Many people think Saya is a great character and a very strong female lead, but I did not see that really. Saya would not be in my top 10, 20, or even top 30 lists of best female characters in anime.

She’s not badass. Her fights are honestly pretty dull. Plus, she almost always has to get saved by her Shiva lie Haji, her brother Kai, Solomon, or somebody else. Haji does most of the work in fights and Saya then has the finishing blow. She is also whiny and indecisive. I could forgive it at the beginning because she is still adjusting to everything. However, as the series went on her indecisiveness grated on me.

Diva is even worse. She is built up as the main villain and a massive threat, but she wasn’t really. She wasn’t that great of a fighter and her personality and motivation was really weird. At first she wanted to kill Saya, then she wanted Riku but then kills him,, then it seems like she wanted to sing, then at the end I guess what she wanted was a family. It is really confusing. Did the writers want us to feel sympathy toward her at the end? She tried to kill Saya multiple times, she killed Saya’s real father, killed Riku, and took on Riku’s appearance as a final insult. She gets no sympathy from me. If she did really want a family then that’s a rather weak motivation for the main villain.

Diva’s Shiva lies were more of the main villains than she was and they seemed stronger too. They are the ones with the grand scheme to take over the world and replace humans with Chiropterans, not Diva. Even though Saya and Diva are supposed to be the head vampires their servants seem stronger than they are judging by what I’ve seen each of them do compared to Saya and Diva. I know Saya and Diva’s blood is deadly to them, but from an ability and combat efficiency standpoint they seem better. The Shiva lies get all the good fights. I am never hyped to see Saya and Diva fight. I always wait for Haji or the other Shiva lie to come fight or fight each other. The final fight between Saya and Diva is pathetic. While that was happening you had Haji fighting Diva’s head Shiva lie and that was a much better fight.

Also, it is so boring. This anime is fifty episodes in length and it could have easily been half that if not even less. It really shows in the pacing, which is slow and tiring. There are some episodes where barely anything happens. The story isn’t big or complicated enough to warrant being as long as it is. The plot is pretty straightforward and there are really no twists or turns. Diva’s Shiva lies want to replace humanity with Chiropterans as top of the food chain and Saya and her group has to stop them. You could’ve easily resolved that in a 25 episode series or even a 12 or 13 episode series.

Plus, there’s the whole love triangle between Saya, Haji, and Solomon (Diva’s Shiva lie) which falls into Twilight territory. Okay, it’s not that bad but it does give off that Twilight vibe to me, which isn’t a good thing. People give this anime’s successor, Blood-C, a lot of shit. That series, while not perfect, is better than this. Blood-C is much shorter so the pacing is better, the action is better I think, the lead heroine does more, and there is no Twilight-esk love story in there.

Overall, Blood+ soap opera making as a vampire anime. The action scenes involving the Shiva lie are decent but the rest is just dull. It’s too long and the pacing is super slow. The main character, Saya, is boring, indecisive, and not that strong overall. The other characters aren’t any better. The villains are weak especially Diva. Her motivation is all over the map, she didn’t come off as this badass ultimate villain, and she doesn’t really do much. Her servants seem more like the main villains. They have more screen time than she does. They are the one that have the grand scheme in mind while diva just seems to be just going along with it. The only characters that are somewhat worth anything are Haji and Solomon. As I said previously there is much better vampire fiction out there. It is definitely not the worst but I’d skip it.

I must say that I did not like the original movie Blood the Last Vampire, and I seen it a few times trying to find the overall brilliance. Sadly for me, it was nothing more than an exercise in advanced animation techniques. I praised it for very sharp attention to detail in regards to the visuals. However, I thought it was very close to worthless in other areas. The story left a lot to be explored and when I heard about Blood+ being a 50 episode series based on Saya; I figured here goes that missing part to the story. Contrary to what some folks ... would have you believe. Blood+ is not a sequel to the original movie, and the creators made no attempt to tie the two together. This is a separate story that examines Saya from a different perspective and explores her origin.

The first area I must hit on are the production values. In regards to the visuals, Blood+ is very beautiful with some very fluid animation frame by frame. These visuals are very close to top notch for a TV series. The animation during the battles are very good with nice choreography at times and the scenes can be violent and brutal, with lots of sword play resulting in dismemberments.

The backgrounds are simply gorgeous as they effectively combine with the CG. The ocean, river, and snow laden backdrops are outstanding, and it's the little things that appealed to my senses like high speed trains going by in the night time.

The character designs are also very pretty, and I thought it was a plus that the old school girl uniform wasn't being used to death to give anime perverts something to constantly drool over. Saya is seen in many different types of clothes, and most of the time she is very conservative. The fan service is kept pretty low and this is not something you will hear me complain about ever. Some of the villains look great too with some of the more powerful chiropterans having freakish appearances.

The soundtrack is also very well composed with some of the dramatic scenes being supported by a slow paced, melancholic piano backdrop. The opening and ending credits have some pretty nice themes as well and they do change later on.

Despite the heavy action feel of the original movie. Blood+ is actually a lot more character driven. Now don't get me wrong, there are several action scenes with some good sword fighting and heavy gore; but the characters are the main focus and I consider them a mixed bag for the most part. Saya is heavily developed as the story deals a lot more with her human side, and although she's a very flawed heroine in regards to toughness. She's difficult to truly dislike. Additional characters possess heavy potential for drama but most of the side characters are nothing more than mere stereotypes, and even though some may have a bit of depth it makes several of them no less annoying. Fortunately thanks to at least one key character death I can't say they were that bad.

The series features a great amount of suspense and the viewer would more than likely be gripped to the screen while waiting for the next revelation. The plot follows Saya as she begins to exterminate the creatures called Chiropterans. Along the way, there are certain factions introduced and the lead antagonist is of course revealed with this character playing a huge role in Saya's origin, as well as things moving forward.

Blood+ is decent at best and had potential to be far better. However, the series has some pacing issues because it juggles many side stories. There are way too many side plots taking place and finding time for all these events plus character interactions were a lot of times distracting. I think several characters and situations could have been left on the cutting room floor, and this would have helped the story move a lot more fluid. I understand that a lot of these things played into Saya's character development, but this was one of those cases of too much character development, and as a result, it gave away Saya's actions in the final cut. The foreshadowing was so strong to the point where it heavily took away from the "deciding moment".

I praised the series for its use of drama, but due to the obvious I felt that a certain dramatic moment wasn't as strong as it should have been. In addition, some of these elements began to repeat themselves over and over as if the point wasn't made clear the first couple of times. I think these segments will differ from person to person all depending on how much they bought into the characters. Since I didn't really care for all of them some of the segments really didn't appeal to me much.

I will give this series credit for tonal consistency. There are some brief moments of comedy injected, but it's not the least bit forced nor does it distract from the serious nature of the content unlike Hellsing Ultimate, which is heavily damaged by its shifts in comedic moments. When looking at the style of Blood+ compared to that I have to say it's well written.

Blood+ could have been an amazing anime. It's definitely far from a bad title, but due to several issues in its storyline it just comes off as an average title. I didn't feel like it was a waste of time, yet I wish back then I didn't buy completely into the hype and simply put it off for awhile. In closing, I recommend this to most anime fans, those whom loved the original movie, and even those that hated it.

Highs: Production values, some interesting characters, ending

Lows: Pacing issues that really hurts main narrative

For someone who has not seen Blood: The Last Vampire yet, it may seem a bit confusing as to the storyline, although the story is only loosely based off of it. For the idea of it being a Vampire show, this is not. It has no actual vampire although it has some variation of a ‘vampire-like’ monsters. It doesn’t really explain much about the main characters and why they really were the main characters in the first place. It starts out with Saya and her friend seeming to be way to close then just friends. Saya pretty much lost her memory and goes to blood ... transfusions often. As she does all this, she searches for her memories. Then all hell breaks loose that same first episode. WARNING! There is a little bit of spoilers in this review.

There is a saying that goes around the show of ‘whatever will be, will be’ but yet, the show does not really keep to this. Other interesting things is the fact that the monsters in this are similar to vampires and yet, they are not exactly like vampires. It actually feels pretty interesting in that sense for it gives it a feel all its own (and yes, I know there are a couple animes out there with almost the same feel. This one at least tries to be different though). Much of the story is rather sad and dark, with only a little bit of comedy what doesn’t stand out well.

We will talk about Saya first. Saya is just like a normal girl with a big secret. She is actually not human, but yet not like the monsters (Chiropteran) she fights. From the moment she tastes Hagi’s blood, she remembers things about her past that were sealed away when she fell asleep 30 years before. Its really hard talking about her and the other characters for it can really bring about spoilers for the show.

Hagi is her Chevalier and only person who have been alive almost as long as Saya has. He was bought from his parents as though he was a piece of livestock with the hope he would ‘breed’ with Saya like they were animals. I actually really do with that the two would get together and find happiness because they are a rather cute couple. He’s the rather silent type almost all knowing and truly cares about Saya.

There is a deep connection between Saya and her adopted family. It’s so great that when Saya leaves, they end up trying to follow her to help her as much as they can. It’s really heartfelt and will bring tears to your eyes if you’re rather sentimental about this type of stuff.

The animation is actually rather beautiful, looking like it was done almost perfectly. At times, the scenes are rather dark and give a rather horror based look about the show, and then it will actually lighten up to make it a little more cheerful. As the story gets going, the darker it gets and the more fight scenes happen. I know this is a little strange to say, but in Anime terms, Saya actually does look a lot like a Korean. Other characters are a bit interesting, though there really wasn’t much that stood out. I love how they created Hagi in the rather quiet and mysterious type of character. He has a very Victorian feel about him everywhere he goes.

The music is beautiful, mostly orchestra related and captures the sad moods rather well. The voices are actually pretty good, though some of the supporting characters sound a bit off. They made the perfect voice for Hagi as Crispin Freeman. He’s perfect for the mysterious style of guy. Saya on the other hand sounds a bit whiny at times though, and it gets a little odd.

Blood+ is vampire anime with a solid mix of action and mystery.

However before you get into watching it, let me just warn you that unless you love a main character who is incredibly dumb, naive and a straight up wuss, you're better off watching something else.

Honestly, everything else this anime does great is dragged down by the incredibly unlikeable main character and even some of the supporting cast.

Saya is a main character with off the charts powers, but she decides it's better be a scared damsel in distress who gets manipulated by literally everybody because she's as naive as can be and without any ... sense of rationality. Episode after episode you want to say "do something you potato" but instead you're treated for another scene of her falling to her knees and randomly sobbing for no good reason.

Imagine if you find out you have superpowers. Super speed, super strength, can heal from any wound, and oh yeah, you need to get random blood transfusions every other day. Would that make you question something? Probably, yeah?

No Saya though. To her none of those things are ever worth asking any questions about. You'd think she'd be curious about all her superpowers, where they come from, what do they mean etc. But nope. She doesn't bother to ask a god damn thing, just does what some random creepy dudes she met 5 minutes ago tell her. Until she runs into a vampire who tells her a bunch of nonsense and she's like: "oh yeah, that's totally what it all means, I never cared to ask but now that you evil bloodsucking monster tell me some stuff I'll instantly believe everything"

It's mind blowingly absurd.

Her two brothers are no better. One who happily rushes off to kill himself for a stepsister he's known for a year, and the other who's primary reason for existing is to be a useless kid who drags everyone down. Like seriously, imagine you just ran into a vampire monster who ripped someone's head off and punches straight through walls and shrugs off bullets. Is your first reaction like: "I'mma go and beat the shit out of that thing with my bare hands and maybe a gun I can't really shoot"? Fuck no, that would be idiotic. Yet he keeps doing shit like that, constantly butting his head into everyone's business as if his 1-year of stepbrother relation is somehow grounds for being an annoyance to literally everybody.

It's just dumb.

Unlike many other shows, there's really no "connection" between the main characters either. You don't develop feelings for any of them. In fact, I spent most of the anime wishing they'd just kill them all off and introduce someone more competent. The characters just lack any in-depth personality and emotions. It's like you're watching animated cardboard figures.

I've seen anime develop a better emotional connections between family members within 10 minutes, than Blood+ does in 5 hours.

Failing in this regard removes a huge emotional impact from the show.

Art and sound are good. The overall story pretty good. But god damn if the main character and a large part of the cast just doesn't take most of the joy out of watching this anime.

Still, if you can tolerate poor characters, the rest of the show is good. Lots of blood, great action, mystery to figure out etc.

My heart is torn in two when it comes to "Blood+"... I definitely loved Saya. She really grows in you and by the last episodes, you truly care about her! This also applies -in a smaller scale- to some of the other characters, such as Haji, Solomon, and even Diva. If you're into character development, you'll like this aspect of the series! That said, in the other hand: There are some serious pacing issues and the sci-fi military sub-plots end up taking you nowhere memorable. Add that to the "a little too much" romantic intents and well... :-( When "Blood+" is at its best, it's ... BRILLIANT! There are moments of absolute exquisite cinematography, very high production values, and you can bet your heart is gonna get wrenched... but I can't help to think that with more focus on the strong elements of its universe (vampires, promises, destinies...) and around 20 episodes less, we could've had a modern classic. I hope someday "Blood+" gets the "Brotherhood" treatment, if you know what I mean. In the meantime, give it a chance, but don't expect a a hidden masterpiece.

I'm not quite sure what the story is trying to follow but, there must be a line between common sense and fluency. I really detest the main characters because of lack of growth and clarity between the other characters in the series. If they did show more details on the Kyropturins and how they've grown throughout Earth for more detail in the series, I would've watched it. But, Saya and Diva's story is lack luster. I don't mind people's opinions when it comes to Blood+ and Blood C but there needs to be a line between story plotting and understatement. They don't have none of ... those comparisons. I want less of the Red Shield and more of Diva's group. Saya is such a boring character. Saya in Blood C had more character than her when it came to personalities and finding one true-self. I feel as if the battles are useless and pointless because the characters doesn't know what they're fighting for and why. It's so boring and dry. I do like the soundtrack but, that's so consistent and dry that it irritates me that the editor made wrong choices of using them at certain times. There's a lot of consistent error animations. I don't care how it is, I've seen better animation done in 1979.

Blood+ follows Saya Otonashi, an average Japanese schoolgirl who finds out she's a millenia-old Vampire and must do battle with her sister, Diva. Unfortunately, what should have been a simple "find x, fight, tropes, repeat" is a weird mix of drawn-out subplots and some slippery sliding. What should have been a decent shounen/shoujo series accomplishes that, but finds it difficult to do much else.

The director for the series is Junichi Fujisaku, whom wrote a for xxxHolic, Tsubasa, and even tried his hand at a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode. That last one is especially notable being that 1) it was the ... second episode of the series, and 2) it wasn't all that good as a GitS episode. What could have been in that respect is thankfully never brought over to this series. Unfortunately, my limited experience with Junichi's work hampers my ability to properly evaluate the series and his influence, so don't expect it to be talked about beyond this.

I'm not opposed to strong, female leads in any medium. The entire cast are well-written and behave as you would expect, which is to say that they're about as "real" as anyone can get in this series. Saya starts off naive and unsure about things, but transitions into a brave, lone-wolf type before the end. When she finally re-joins the good guys, it becomes clear that her motivation is purely selfish, even if it's for a good reason. Her support, unfortunately, is such a creepy, unhelpful twat that you end up wondering why he exists.

Kai (Saya's not-blood-related brother, because incest isn't incest when we're not related, right?) serves as one-half "brave onii-chan" and one-half brother-with-fixation-on-sister. While I want to ride the "creepy brother is creepy" train, his character isn't just driven by the mad boner he has for Saya. He starts off as a truly loving, caring brother who wants to look after his family and, failing that, vows to at least save the remaining family he possesses. The character is a well-blended mix of powerful motivation and what happens when a regular person is pushed into a situation he wasn't built for.

I could go on about the characters, but you want to know the goodies. The sound is good and all of Diva's singing scenes are well-done, if only because they need to be. The OST are a decent blend and fit the scenes, though I can recall maybe once or twice their use being a bit much. In terms of animation, Chizu Hashii helms the series. I couldn't find much on the individual, but from what the series offered, I'm somewhere between unsure and moderately interested in their other works.

What the series suffers from isn't anything obvious at first. The story is decent if generic and while the characters and their motivations make sense, there are times when a simple sit-down and hash things out approach would make more sense. Saya's motivations are purely selfish and while they are good, it comes off as her not really listening to what everyone else is saying. Kai is also a bit pushy and rather possessive and while Haji works as a butler, his fixation and lack of DOING ANYTHING makes him feel like a convenient tool to push Saya into the next subplot.

There are a few subplots at work, too. The overarching plot is often shoved aside and it feels like the director wasn't sure he wanted to carry on with the main plot at times. I enjoyed the subplots more than the overarching one and want to see these characters in their own series. Unfortunately, the series also suffers from "kill everyone who isn't a main character" syndrome and does so without so much as properly building them up.

It's an overall decent series, but suffers from its shortcomings in the long-run. Check it out if you're even halfway tempted, but otherwise miss it.

Blood +

The same applies here, even if the protagonists have the same names and they are extremely similar, Blood + and Blood C are two very different anime. And this is clearly the better title.


Blood + doesn’t have a great new or promising concept, but one that has been implemented quite individually. To my surprise, the actual storyline was quite solid and the main story was presented satisfactorily. There were also some interesting twists.

The characters were also positive, they had subtle backgrounds and ambitions. However, they lacked depth of character.


What clearly set Blood + apart was the dark and serious atmosphere. If you are looking ... for colorful and lively work, you will definitely find yourself in the wrong place.

Unfortunately, the anime had two massive drawbacks. The first is that the action dragged on and took off slowly. Many events dragged the whole thing out, whereas the final came up and resolved very quickly.
The second point is undoubtedly the tension. There were actually one or the other episode that the viewer will remember. For the most part, the tension was very flat, and not even essential scenes like character deaths could even come close to being authentic. I would say that the implementation of the adaptation was the problem here.


Story

The background to the story is interesting and solid. The origin of the story, as well as the prelude to the end. Unfortunately, what has been an issue here is both tension and length. You could have thought much more story-relevant to the plot, instead of dragging some individual events out enormously. This act is not good for any work.

Animation

Mostly subtly animated, regarding the environment and fighting. There were a few glitzy moments where the animation was turned up.

The representation of the atmosphere is very well done.

Characters

Most of the characters are mature and realistic. Although they are stubborn, they could still convince. Their ambitions and goals were set and the role they played had been kept well to the end.

Unfortunately, they actually had little depth of character and despite everything, it was difficult to feel something for them. Whether this is due to the characters or the adaptation is difficult for me to say.

Music

Intros and outros are subtle and solid. Some of them are very recognizable.

The Osts here attracted particular attention, although they have been used very rarely, they are musically excellent. Among other things, Divas Opera Ost and others that really impress.

Conclusion

Blood + is without a doubt one of my personal favorites, even if the anime adaptation did very poorly in some areas. I would watch the title for the third time sometime. Unfortunately, the weak tension thread is a bit daunting.

This is my first anime review ever (I'm not a very dedicated watcher or anything) but I felt like reviewing the series is a nice way to reflect on it.

I just finished watching all 50 episodes and to summarize, I think it's pretty mediocre overall. The thing is that the drama gets forced on you all the time. The writers don't seem to pick their moments and push in entire character speeches, even in mid-action, about the characters motivation for fighting yada yada yada. Buzzlines like "you're still our family" and "I will protect you" get thrown around a lot. It isn't bad in itself ... but they should pick their moments better.

The story is pretty neat, telling the struggle of two immortal sisters, one raised in a caring environment, the other only knowing hatred and bloodshed. Sometimes the characters are a bit flat (mainly due to those continuous speeches) but at least some episodes are dedicated to put some more life into them.

The action and animation are of a good level. The action is a bit repetitive, and the characters don't seem to get that shooting immortal creatures isn't going to help (even when doing it for the 20th time). The sound is decent although there's a lot of material being reused all the time.

So that wraps it up I think. Thanks for reading.