Bloodivores

It’s unfortunate when you come across a show of any kind that’s this jumbled and incomplete but it happens every now and then and Bloodivores happens to be high on that list of “wtf did I just watch?”. This show could use a lot more than just a bit of work. For starters, the first and most important thing to point out about this anime is that there’s no clear plot whatsoever; you just don’t know what’s happening the whole time. There’s no clear intentions, no story clarification and no objectives for the characters other than what the plot immediately forces upon them (like survivinga monster attack or escaping a room). Honestly I couldn’t explain this anime to someone if I tried. The story starts off in one place and really goes nowhere. You don’t know what the characters are trying to do, where they are, or what’s happening; they just seem to be wandering around the entire time and there are no story elements that tie anything together. I can’t even say there were plot holes in this anime since there isn’t even a plot. All the events feel unrelated to each other and insignificant, and the lack of any overarching story makes the whole thing boring to watch. Moving onto the next factor: characters. There’s not one likable character in this show. No backstories, no motivation or goals, no endearing personalities and absolutely no character development. All of the characters just seem to exist for the sole purpose of carrying on the atrocious excuse for a “plot” which still goes nowhere. The character design is as bland as it gets as well; there are background characters in other anime who are more interesting than the entire main cast of this show combined. In fact, there are some characters who are completely useless and unnecessary to the entire show, the only piece of information you get about them being their name; they don’t even help to move the story along. There are so many smaller elements in the show that are brought up once and never touched on again; you get no explanation for them and they only seem to exist for the convenience of whatever the plot is supposed to be. Blowing through any possible potential for its plot and characters, you’d think that this show would at least have some impressive artwork/animation to show off, but in all honesty the quality of the visuals was just about as bad as the rest of it. The animation is below average and just cringey to watch. There were a few moments where the audio didn’t line up with the animation and far too many moments where there were just still frames without sound, making for a very boring watch. With crappy animation, no outstanding visuals and even a mediocre to poor soundtrack, this show also failed in displaying any impressive art. In all honesty, the first impression I had when getting into this anime was that it’s a low budget show; poorly made and lacked any thought or hard work that could have been put into it. Any potential for any aspects of it actually being interesting was squandered by the lack of explanation for the heck what was going on the entire time. The whole thing was confusing and boring to watch. It was uneventful, unclear, unamusing, and just mundane. I forced myself to get through the whole thing in hopes of some phenomenal ending acting as salvation for the nightmare that I just watched but was also disappointed by a nonsensical and abrupt conclusion. Honestly, there’s not a single thing I can pinpoint about this show that was well done.

I decided to watch this anime based on the plot listed on CrunchyRoll, and seriously regret that decision. The plot, from the description, seemed fairly interesting, but boy did they drop the ball on this anime. ~~~ SPOILERS POSSIBLY~~~ Lets start with the characters; Mi Lui: Generic "badass" with a winning personality. He's so predictable its sad. He also seems to be able to make these leaps in logic that make no sense unless you were the writer of this character. Anji: The tits of the operation. That's it. She has large tits and is almost entirely useless. Chen Fong: Doesn't wear a shirt. Cries a lot.Looks like a girl. Lee Shin: An assassin who's afraid of women? What? Yaya: Introduced to be... cute? I think? Nothing cute about her. She's annoying and unnecessary to the plot. The plot: What even is a plot? That's the question I assume the creator of this dumpster heap asked himself before penning this trash. He takes elements that COULD be interesting and then ignores what MAKES them interesting. Magic holographic computer that has info about where the characters are? Used twice. Only used the second time to ham-fist the ending into place. Bomb collars that detonate if you kill another person but give you one more day to live if you kill a monster? Never really touched on. The MC's trying to save the orphanage they grew up in by robbing a bank? The orphanage has been closed for a while now and the director died. But whatever. The prison is a destroyed city displaced in time? MC figures that out in the first day. Also; no explanation why. Vampires? Lets make them less interesting than Twilight's vampires! The quality of the animation is fine, I suppose. Its pretty much what you'd expect of an anime from the 2010's + time. There are moments when it seems the animation is 'off,' like they just could get the animation to match the scene properly. In the end, don't watch this anime. Just, don't. Save yourself the time and watch something that's worth it. I hope and pray this anime dies in with the first season.

To be honest I’m not too sure where to start with this review so I guess I’ll just dive in. Bloodivores is, in my opinion, a beautiful work of half-assed animation that either tried to hard or didn’t try hard enough. Personally, I like the landscapes and inane amount of detail regarding small insignificant things, like the intricate cracks in the cement and old buildings. It makes it feel like someone really worked hard on this series. Sadly, I think that was the only thing they worked hard on. I will say out right that the concept and ideas behind Bloodivores is intriguing to me.It’s your typical survival game but with quite a few twists. There’s some possible ‘in game’ stuff going on. Some apocalypse feels going on, fantasy, and supernatural all bundled up into this one little package. Had it succeeded, I think it would have gotten an 8 or at the least a 7 on MAL. Sadly, none of these were looked into in depth during the 12 episodes. In fact, the whole thing kind of feels like a mega long series with how slow it develops but it is developing, just, in creepy crawly standards. Now, for what you’ve all been waiting for- the good, the bad, and most importantly, the ugly! (Totally kidding, but I just had to say it.) First up – Story/Plot As I stated before, this series had some serious potential hidden beneath the ridiculous layers of ‘WTF is this’ and other nonsense. Had the time been given to the actual plot and not to the animation (which still pretty much failed in my opinion) I think we could have bumped this series up a few points on the MAL Scale. It pretty much feels like something that got a huge budget but then they didn’t know what to do with all that money so they were just like – “Landscapes?” “Landscapes.” “Spend all the money!” Lots of stuff is going on in Bloodivores and I like that a lot of information is just there and there isn’t a narrative (though I do like those). Sadly, with a hundred theories and ideas going and none actually being proved right or wrong you just end up with this huge ball of possibilities but nothing to honestly work with. There are a million little mysteries in Bloodivores and once you think you’ve figured one out they either drop it like a hot potato (in which you never get an answer) or your theory is completely shut down. There really isn’t an in-between for Bloodivores. You know, you think you know, and you don’t know. End of story. Number 2 – Art Moving on. The landscapes and scenery in general were pretty meticulous so it felt like it was a good high quality anime at times however, art is only one small part of an anime and thus just because you have awesome art doesn’t mean you have an awesome anime. Everything else was pretty half-assed. (Spoiler warning!) For instance, that lovely scene with what’s his face walking around with a freaking sword in his shoulder! I cannot even begin to describe my dismay when half the scenes didn’t show any blood on him. Like “whoops guys we’re running out of time here!” “Skip the blood, no one will notice!” “Are you sure, I feel like they’ll notice?” “I’m positive.” (I swear it must have happened.) So, let’s be honest here – no one gets up with a sword in their freaking shoulder and just walks the F around without any grimacing or hunching over! Doesn’t happen! And another thing! I feel like the monsters from this series had been taken from somewhere else, I’m thinking Blood + or something like that, so they weren’t surprising to me (though I suppose occasionally leaving behind a small human shaped concentrated crystal of blood is interesting). Fight scenes could be a bit on the lame side but I felt they were decent enough. Champion number 3 – Character Ho, Ho, Ho WTF! I’m all for a good hysterical cry once in a while in a SOL anime or one of those heart-wrenching tragedies like Tokyo Ghoul. As long as I can understand why the hell a character is crying and I can feel that pain with them, I have no qualms. (I mean who doesn’t want to cry when they see beautiful Kaneki carrying Hide down the street, ya know?) Anyways….whopsies…carrying on. The characters are really generic and while there’s a small amount of backstory for one or two there’s nothing for anyone else. You don’t understand what motivates them to do what they do or why they act the way they act. They’re complete strangers that you’re simply observing as they survive this death like game. The MC at least looks and acts a little cool however, I do prefer assassin dude since he’s actually badass. Anju…bitch please…stop crying all the time. The hysterics…OMG no. Just no. Way too much. Helloooo, check for a freaking pulse before you give people up for dead, yeah? Tch. Needless to say, she was a pain in the ass the entire series and honestly I don’t see how the series could have felt her loss, in fact, I know they would have been just fine. I was ecstatic when she died…and then she was no longer dead (seriously you’re worst choice this whole series guys). There is ZERO character development. Anju seems to make a comeback in episode 12 but honestly, she was just as annoying as she was before and since there was no progressive development it feels fake and being the last episode didn’t help matters. It was just an utter fail. Numba 4 – Enjoyment Eh. Ehhhhhhh. EEEhh. I can’t believe I just wasted all that time on one series that mounted to a handful of WTFs and an ‘Oh, that could have been cool.’ It was pretty to look at sometimes but overall it was more frustrating. There are lots of ideas and theories going on in the background with Bloodivores but sadly none of them are expounded upon so you end up with a whole lot of possibilities but nothing solid. And seriously, what was up with that after credits BS? You planning on making a second season or something? Let dead things stay dead please…(unless they’re characters I loved, then you’re welcome to bring them back).

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