Blood-C

First things first. Don't you dare talk about this series if you didn't see until the last episode. It's not just about plot twists or anything, you simple don't know anything if you didn't saw. Story with no progress? Dense characters? I really want to spoil a ton of things to those who said those craps about this serie but i wont. Ok it's my first review and i'm not fluent in english but i'll try to do a decent work here because I just can't stand people talking anything they want about this anime when they dropped after two episodes. Story: 10/10 The problem here isthat I can't tell anything about the true story without spoil a lot of important things. I admit, i thought it was going to be about nothing more than a girl with a sword and tons of blood, and if you didn't see at least to ep. 10 you'll think that too. In the first episode you'll see Saya doing her routine, going to school, and in the last third of the ep she receive a sword from her father and is send to fight a monster. It's no just any fight, like you see in any shounen with background changes, a lot of useless conversation and lot of explosions and effects. No, it's like a real fight (if you don't mind the monster), you got fluid moviments, incredible sword techniques, i just can't explain, youtube it if you want to know. Art: 10/10 It's beautifull, simple beautifull, backgrounds, characters, fights, everything. Too bad there is no lolis, but we can get over it because everything is so well done. Sound: 8/10 Well, i don't really pay too much atention to sound, if the op or ed are too bad i'll just skip it. Nothing to talk about here. Character: 7/10 Here is a problem. I know, the characters are just dense, stereotyped and don't show any progress. But again, if you say that you simple didn't see everything to the end. I can't say too much, in fact, I can't say anything, because you simple don't know anything until the end. But believe me, if you watch until the last episode, you'll understand that those dense and stereotyped characters fit their roles in the story and I can tell you that every single one of the characters is important, even those strange twins. Enjoyment: 10/10 You may think it's painfull to watch an anime that just start to clear things after the tenth ep. But know what, i didn't even noticed it was already at the end when they started to reveal things. Each episode was so good that i still don't believe they all have 24 min, seriously, i don't remember how many times i've gone "Eh? End? Already? Seriously?". And hell, I could watch a full 200 ep of Saya fighting Elder Brains without getting tired. That's how increadible the whole thing seems to me. Overall: 10/10 If you just watched two~three eps and are going to drop this anime, fine, you really, seriosly don't even start to having a clue of what you're losing. I know, if you just value plot over incredible fight scenes, waiting until the very end to know anything is just painfull. But believe me, it's worth enduring it (watch a girl covered in blood with a sword fighting giant monsters, painfull, really). Well, just try it. But please, if you didn't watch the whole thing, stop talking nosense, you just don't know anything abou the plot, seriously, absolutelly nothing.

Soooooo, how do you like your revival of a popular franchise? Ruined or half assed, story wise? STORY: Years ago there was an unfortunate case of assault, the victim? Blood the last vampire, a popular movie that spawned an even more popular over-hyped anime series: Blood+, the perpetrator had no motives, it was a cruel and brutal assault in form of a live action, and ever since, Blood has been hospitalized in a vegetative state and was never heard from again... Until... In the year 2011 however, a famous group of manga creators, CLAMP, visited Blood in the hospital in order to try to revive it fromit's vegetative state, in form of a new Blood, Blood Clamp AKA Blood C AKA Blood Crap AKA Blood Crazy... That's a true story, I swear! Anyway, I'll cut to the chase and out right say what we all said: What the fuck happened Clamp? I know we can't trust you girls to make a decent ending for your manga anymore (Tsubasa for example), but now we can't trust you girls to do a remake of popular franchises as well? To be fair, lots of people fuck up remakes, but a lot was expected. Alright I'm riding Clamp too hard here, it's not all their fault for this failure (I'm being as lenient as possible here), Production I.G. shares some of the blame as well (The series creator is supposedly overlooking the creation of Blood C, but apparently he's letting Clamp do what they want and not paying attention to what's going on). Where do I begin with whats wrong with Blood C, the beginning? The beginning? Or the ending? A beginning that drags on for way too long, which isn't a problem... for a 20 something or longer episode anime, Blood C, however, is 12 episodes long (And with a movie coming up too? They'r clearly over estimating their new series)! With 5 episodes of some of the worse character pondering I've seen in a while, in a supposedly action anime fulled with irritatingly dull cliches and Clamp cliches... Which all of it is even more frustrating towards the end with quite a dumb plot twist. While Blood C isn't afraid to waste your time (Some of the characters act like they're self aware of the nothingness that occurs at one point, I guess that's clever, but it ends up more obnoxious than clever and then there are scenes where a voice keeps talking about things don't stay the same forever, they make you want to tone out all the nonsense... Nonsense that is relevant however), it's also not not afraid to push irritating characters, as a couple of twins with no point of being there at all do all the annoying things you expect them to (I'm hoping that I'm not alone in wanting the twins dead... LOL), an emotionless father, and even the main character, Saya, herself! A clumsy school girl with stupid hair (The animators are either lazy or she uses countless cans of hairspray to keep her hair in place outside of the cool looking action scenes) that has a terrible personally swap between serious sword wielding warrior and cute clueless school girl. But while Blood C isn't wasting your time (with character pondering), it's showing you spectacular and very bloody (The one it gets perfectly right most of the time) battles. Every episode ends with a fight between Saya and a creature called a Elder Bairn or whatever, often ending up with a bloody shower. These fight scenes are the meat experience of Blood C, they're not battles that you can only experience in Blood C, but they are well animated and well choreographed (Especially the first episode). However, the blood and gore eventually goes over the top, like Fist of the north star or Devilman over the top. But it's so fucking crazy that it's really comical in a way, especially the final episode, it's one of those so bad it's actually kinda good episodes that makes you wish the anime was like this from the start. That's the real shame about Blood C, instead of production values, battles, blood, and gore, more time should had went towards crafting a better story or at least one that doesn't feel like a waste of time, especially for the fans of the Blood anime that came before it. While I am not a big fan of Blood+ or Blood the last vampire, there really should have been at least a little more for the fans that watched those series first. Of course that's a good thing that they aren't relaying on using the same elements from those series, apart from Saya, the creature she fights, and a of course the sword she has to use in order to kill the creatures, but at least throw the old fans a bone once in a while, most of the time it feels like Saya is conserving with absolute strangers, at least have one other recognizable character or element that veteran fans can latch on to. And there is one more thing to be said, the later episodes drop a huge ball. Let's just say Clamp has gotten extremely lazy these days and has decided to bring up a plot device from one of their previous series to advance the plot. So when I said that there's nothing for Blood fans to enjoy and be familiar with, there's actually plenty for fans of a recent Clamp title... It's actually kinda infuriating that Clamp would actually do something as lazy as that. The story ends up becoming a retarded fan fiction in a way... But never fully embraces it though, it just overlooks it in a way that it kinda has no point in being mentioned at all. Another thing that's pretty lazy is the character development and story twists. They are so uninspired that you'd think the creators are making it up as they go along. And the character developments... Let's just say that everything's so half-assed that CLAMP was actually making it proceed in that way just to waste even more of your time... ANIMATION: Like I said before the fights are well animated (Most of the time), and fans of clamp are treated to clamps distinctive character designs (Skinny, skinny teenagers with long limbs and perfect bodies), But a lot of the characters designs look bland, and Saya's new design looks just plain stupid. SOUND: Another thing that actually had effort put in it, the music. It's all great, the fight scenes have great background music to go with them, the voice acting is good, but there's one thing you may want to rip your ears out, Saya has a habit of singing, for a long time, about the most pointless stuff. It's hilarious at first, but later you'd wonder, "Is that really important for us to suffer through her American Idol try out practice?" But to kinda make up for it, both the opening and ending theme music are great (Leave it to the professionals to do the singing Saya), the opening theme song, Spiral by DUSTZ, will be the one good thing you'll look forward to each episode, and the ending, while not as good, is a great way to end each episode. At least this is one thing that Production I.G. cared about. OVERALL: The Good: + Cool battles, when they're animated well. + Great music and opening theme song. Mixed: +/- Good animation, and Clamp character designs/ Clamp characters designs, Saya's redesign. +/- The last episode/ the last and second to last episode. The Bad: - Terrible character pondering, such as Saya and her terrible singing. - Isn't afraid to waste your time with absolute pointlessness. - Annoying characters, especially the twins. - Nothing for even fans of the original movie or Blood+ to keep their interest. - Clamp relaying on one of their previous series for story development. - No point of the character developments of anyone not named Saya - Ludicrously violent scenes to the point of being cartoonish and comical. Despite what I said, I'm actually looking forward to the sequel movie because if the anime continues to go the way the last episode did, at least Blood C will become Blood Cult hit.

Let's be honest, Blood C is probably one of the most controversial animes I have seen in all of my time of watching anime. Never have I seen so much bitterness and hatred against a show. Well, let me be the first to present the opposite of the mainstream opinions: I loved Blood C (gasp!) Before you turn away however, please let me explain. Blood C is literally a creative liberation from the two sister series in the Blood franchise; the only connection (so far) is that they all focus on a girl named Saya who wields a sword and fights monsters. Blood + had 50episodes, and thus had plenty of arcs and time to develop its very large cast- Blood C, on the other hand, at the most, has 12 episodes, and thus uses most of its time to build up atmosphere. Which it excels at, at the expense of fleshing out the secondary characters. Before you rain on my parade, there are a few things to note; Blood C is part of the Blood franchise, which includes the movie Blood; The Last Vampire, and Blood +, the sequel anime show. Please, please stick this in your head now: Blood C has absolutely nothing to do with these two installments. It is a mere sister series with the shadow of the concept. Thus treat this as an entirely new show. That said, I will put it out forward: Blood C is either a show you are going to loathe or that you are going to love. Most people hated it, some people liked it. I loved it. It is not for people who are looking for interesting fabulous fleshed out characters (this is coming from someone who is the biggest sucker for character development). This is a show that focuses on atmosphere and building it. It is a horror series. It is not an action series, though the action scenes in this show are some of the most creative, well animated ones I have seen. It is literally horror at its best- I assure you that if you're a sucker for the type of horror which is more psychological than just pop-outs, this show is for you. If you hate slow build ups, move on. The first half of Blood C focuses on instilling the surreal setting and life of the show into your head. I won’t deny it; the first four episodes or so are pretty dull because they are monotonous; Saya sings a song to school, chatters with her buddies, and fights a monster. What you don’t realize is that this is all- and I mean all of it, pay attention to all the details- for a very good reason, which comes later. This is the part where I admit that there are some flaws; this could have been easily condensed into three episodes max. It still does a good job of developing a very eerie aura though; you have the constant feeling that something is very wrong about this town, and yet you can’t place your finger on it. There's an eerie tension consistently kept despite the seemingly innocuous events; a tension that's about to snap and yet you don't know when or how. So whereas the first half spends its time just fleshing the atmosphere and setting of the world Saya lives in, and the latter half spends the next half tearing that world down. Allow me to present you the latter half of Blood C, which absolutely shines like no other. Halfway throughout this show, you are literally smacked in the face. Repeatedly. In each episode. This is the real deal- you are given cruel reality of the situation; and goddamn, it is cruel. It is merciless. I am not just talking about the gore, which mind you, is on par of that of Narutaru, which has some of the most disturbing scenes I have seen yet. The gore is of course, censored (not the show’s fault, the network’s fault, something which will be fixed when the DVDs come out and dear lord then you can let your stomach churn), but that’s not what makes it horrifying; it’s the way the gore happens, the way no one is spared in this show, the sounds which are so gruesomely realistic. This is not a show for the faint of heart. But the gore is only the sprinkles on the actual cake. The cake is the series of red herrings and plot twists that wrench your heart. You will witness in horror, how everything in front of you, how every trope known to anime kind, is smashed and ripped apart. If anything, Blood C excels at building atmosphere and horror. The fight scenes are as fabulous as they are gruesome. But yes. Blood C's purpose and key to the show is how it builds up the plot layer by layer, paranoia by paranoia. The villains are completely ruthless, and there is no battle fought without someone dying. The characters are where things get messy. There’ s two very good reasons why none of the cast except Saya is fleshed out. Nevertheless, they are pretty stereotypical, and are very CLAMPish. But once again; you don’t really end up bothering about them for good reasons. Saya herself is very likeable; you come to empathize with her situation if anything and while you might get irritated with her….inepititude, at times, you have to understand what she’s going through. In the end, this show is about her for reasons you have yet to find out, so don’t be quick to judge! Which brings me to the last, and most important aspect of an anime; how it ends. I have two huge problems with anime, as someone who has seen more than enough for a lifetime. 1.) The ending is rushed. You have no idea how frustrating this is. This is not a tv drama in which a season’s ending can be bad and can pick itself off the ground later on. This is a conclusion and nothing is more irritating and annoying than loving a show only to see the worst plot holes and resolution possible. 2.) Animes that build up to a movie, or huge series, tend to be terrible. Let’s look at two prime examples; .hack//ROOTS was the buildup to the game series, .hack//G.U Trilogy, and it just failed as an individual series because it only left us with very little to deal with and just a fancy commercial to buy the games. Higashi no Eden had wonderful, wonderful potential but got axed by the fact that it was nothing but a mere leg for the two movies to follow. As individual series, these tend to absolutely collapse. Blood C completely surpasses these two typical faults and succeeds. It paces itself extremely, extremely well; the finale was fantastic and does not leave any open ties that cannot be answered by a movie sequel. The buildup to the finale itself is wonderful, for the most part; while the first part lags a little, it’s not a huge problem and hell, once you’re in, you are stuck in for the biggest ride. Not only does it separate itself as an individual show, and actually solve most of the problems raised in the show and leave a resolution (or many) for it to be complete on its own, but it manages to still raise questions and leave some unanswered so that it can tie itself over with the movie. You are left with a feeling of excitement and resolution; you want to go back and rewatch the series again, but at the same time you’re excited that some big questions are going to be answered in the movie installment. What's even greater is the subtlety- you can go back through this series and catch on the really tiny moments and dialogue that what were once usually tasteless random things, are now essential ‘oh!’ moments where you realize there’s two (or more) things being said. I’m a huge fan of subtlety and I guess that’s why I’m such a passionate fan of this show, and I’m really glad they’re doing stuff like this. Basically, Blood C was fabulous for me. It had the layered buildup of Shiki, the horror of Ghost Hound and themes of Jigoku Shoujo, and gore of Shadow Star. If you like horror, and well paced ones, then totally go for this. It’s not for everyone though, and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. It takes huge, huge risks, risks that most series would not go for, but it manages to complete the leap and land with a very solid and steady landing. I personally, I believe Blood C is a remarkable show that pushes the boundaries of the Blood franchise and creates horror by clashing it with the mundane, ordinary life- only making it more frightening than ever.

This is a spoiler free review. Also this is my first review, so be nice. And English is not my native language, so sorry if there are some mistakes. Ok, So this is the third installment in the Blood franchise by Production I.G. Which is a great studio that had done some amazing things, but at the same time it's no stranger to failing miserably, as demonstrated by this particular anime. *Story* Well, if you're familiar with the previous 'Blood' installments, you'd know that the premise is about a schoolgirl with a sword who fights vampire-like creatures known as 'Teropterids' in the original movie, and 'Chiropterans' in Blood+.In this version she fights creatures that are nothing like vampires, but basically just man eating monsters. Which is actually a pretty cool change that I'm okay with. Anyway, Since this is a remake, it goes without saying that the premise nothing new, but to its credit, at least it tries to change it a little bit (though it doesn't pay off, unfortunately). The story itself is very weak, because it lacks actual content and a lot of the episodes are semi episodic and they don't reveal any significant clue about what the monsters are and what's underneath the surface here. That is except for the last two and a half episodes. That means you can basically watch the first 9 episodes and be none the wiser about what's taking place than you were in episode 1. In fact, you'll only have more questions (though not many since hardly anything happens that seems important). All you have happening in each episode is some boring slice of life/school stuff.. which hardly has any bearing on the plot (and very little on character development) and then it goes straight to the next monster battle. It has a weak presentation and despite being a much shorter series it's pacing seems worse than Blood+'s pacing. At least in Blood+ you had 50 episodes in which things actually progress through out them, even if it was a little slow.. Here you have a pointless monster of the week formula, boring dialogue and some minor clues here and there for 9 1/2 episodes and only the remaining 2 1/2 have the meat of the story (which makes it very rushed and badly planned). So it probably could've worked (slightly) better if it was just a 6 or 7 episode OVA instead of 12 episodes + a full length movie. Speaking of which, this series might remind you of some bad Gore OVAs from the 80s, but with modern moe girls and pretty boys etc'. Anyway, I won't spoil anything, but in the last 2 episodes of the series an insane twist is revealed that was supposedly in plain sight the whole time (which to its credit, was cleverly foreshadowed). But be warned since it is very farfetched and poorly excused, so you'd most likely be left scratching your head... Yes, even with the poor amount of story it has, it fails to make sense of it. The twist is just a bad excuse for every absurdity in this anime. I did like the basic idea behind it, but it was done very poorly. Oh and it ends with a cliffhanger, so you have to watch the sequel movie for the conclusion (which was so boring, slow and mostly predictable, I nearly fell asleep watching it). So In a nutshell, the story has little quantity, no quality, a corny and anti climatic conclusion. So yeah, I'm gonna say the story is pretty bad. *Characters* The main character's name is Saya and she has different personalities in each Blood installment. One thing they have in common though is that they all have a badass monster hunter mode and a normal girl mode. In the original movie Saya was actually pretty bland, but that was only a 50 min movie, so there's not much time for fleshing out characters. In Blood+ Saya had a great personality that was fleshed out properly. She was kinda cute, but I'm sure nobody would argue that she was a moeblob. Besides, she behaved in ways that were very believable and realistic. Pretty much what you'd expect from a teenage girl in that situation. In this version on the other hand, she IS more of a moeblob that panders shamelessly to the otaku base. No attempt for realism here. She's a cute and sensitive klutz who's good at sports.. So you're probably wondering how a klutz can be good at sports? does that add up? Though I might be wrong here, I really don't think it does.. But who cares!? she's a fetish for fanboys! But regardless, even the part about her being "sensitive" and "caring" which is established quite clearly in the beginning of the series, is thrown out the window later on when she doesn't even flinch at the sight of her friends and others who live in her village being brutally slaughtered by monsters (and notice that this is not when she's in badass mode). Not to mention that she recovers way too fast after witnessing these horrible deaths. Some of which she could've prevented, but didn't for no reason whatsoever (or rather, the reason is just to show gorey deaths). So the little character development it has is laughable. On top of that, Saya is the only character with a backstory and even the one she has is very lame and vague. The rest of the cast isn't even worth mentioning. They're all familiar cardboard cutouts you won't care about, and/or just there to die. Oh and the monsters have no personality either. No surprise there though. The characters are horrendous! *Art* I'm personally not a fan of Clamp's artwork and though I know some people are, I doubt even they will claim that Clamp's skinny + moe + bishounen + bright colors art style fits an anime as grim and Gorey as this. To its credit however, the animation is fluid and certainly an improvement over Blood+. Also the monsters have pretty creative (scary) designs and each monster is unique and fights differently. Much better than the Chiropreran in Blood+. And the monster battles themselves are very well done and with extreme Elfen Lied-style exaggerated gore (actually this is even more Gorey than Elfen Lied). The only problem I have with the battles is that Saya could've got a little more injured to make most of the battles less one sided. The art's really good overall though not really my cup of tea. *Sound* Not much I can say about this department. The opening sounds nice, but it has a lot of engrish, which is kind of annoying. The ending song is ok, I guess. The sound effects are good, but they sometimes feel out of place. For example when Saya clashes with a monster with her sword, it sounds like the monster is made out of metal. Can't say much about the OST, I guess it's pretty forgettable. Even though I don't know Japanese, I guess the voice acting's ok, nothing special though. The sound as a whole ain't bad. *Enjoyment* This is a very subjective part of the review, so let's put it this way: if you Like Gore, you will enjoy this. If you like a little bit of moeness and Gore combined you'll enjoy this even more. That is of course if you can overlook the quality of the storyline and the characters. Personally? I didn't enjoy it much. The whole thing just felt unnecessarily mean spirited and unpleasant. Don't get me wrong, there are some nice battles that were fun to look at, but they also felt empty because there isn't much context behind it, and you don't care about the characters involved. In fact, you might end up rooting for the monsters at some point. *Overall* 4/10 It's not the worst I've ever seen, but overall it's pretty damn bad and it takes the franchise a few steps backwards instead of going forwards. I'll give this series some credit though - it's among the most violent anime I've ever seen (it's insane!). Though the violence in it is stylized differently, it should still be up there together with Genocyber, Violence Jack, Shigurui, the Hokuto no Ken OVA and others.

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