Welcome, my lovely fans, to the final review of horror anime month. You know, I love Marvel comics, okay, I loved Marvel comics until the mid-90s and now I only love the old stuff. But there's one aspect where the company still produces decent stuff sometimes and that's the movies. One of the early movies was Blade and, though it had some issues, it was awesome. Even though Blade was kind of a strange choice since he was a relatively obscure character best known for his guest appearance in the 90s Spider-man cartoon. Naturally, with the success of the films Marvel made the decision towork with Madhouse on various anime projects. There was Iron-man, Wolverine, X-men and Blade. Honestly, I've been hesitant to watch these since they seem like a cheap attempt to cash in on the movies and the trailers haven't been promising, but to close horror anime month I'm going to look at Blade. To start off with I'll briefly talk about what I thought of the movies, skipping the first one since I already mentioned it. The second one was good, not as good as the first but good. The third was, in keeping with Marvel film trilogy tradition, terrible. Let's just hope that the Blade anime is more in keeping with the first two. Knowing Madhouse, it could go either way.
The story opens with Blade in Japan hunting vampires. He runs into a few and asks one of them where he can find a four-fanged vampire. His search leads him to a nightclub where a father and daughter pair of vampire hunters is fighting the owner, a vampire named Radu. I'm not sure if they're referencing a really stupid horror movie series there or not. Anyway, Blade defeats Radu and then the group is attacked by Deacon Frost a vampire with four fangs. It ends with the father sacrificing himself, I don't recall them ever giving the guy a name, and Frost running off with a sample of Blade's blood. The story from there follows Blade as he hunts Frost and his vampiric organisation known as Existence. Makoto, the hunter from earlier, chases after him. I will warn you that her initial reason for doing so is really stupid. It's a simple story but it's told pretty well. There's one really good emotional moment towards the end. There's also quite a bit of back story, which is worked in pretty well. The biggest issue with the story is that a lot of it involves Blade going somewhere in Asia, finding Frost, Frost getting away while Blade is fighting something, and then it repeats. It does get repetitive after a while.
The characters are mostly well done. Blade, Razor, Whistler... I mean Noah Van Hellsing (He's basically Whistler they just gave him a different name) and Makoto, once she stops being stupid, (to be fair, she only acts like a moron for the first few episodes and it's understandable in the first) are all interesting characters with depth. Even a lot of the one-shot characters feel like real people. That being said, there are some issues. I'll start with the more minor one, Kikyo Mikage. Now, this is a Marvel anime original character and he's terrible. He's very one-dimensional and his power, retractable full length swords with hilts included that come out of his hands, is one of the dumbest I've ever seen. And I've seen characters with the power to communicate with squirrels and the power to detach their arms. Full length retractable swords makes them seem almost mediocre by comparison. This guy shouldn't even be able to bend his arms. My bigger issue is with Frost's motivations. Towards the end they have him give a pretty predictable villain speech where he expounds about all his plans. If that wasn't bad enough, he has two different and contradictory goals. That's right, when he starts his speech he says that his goal is one thing. Roughly five minutes later when he's ending it, he says his goal is something completely different. That's great continuity right there.
The art is really good. The characters look good (mostly), although don't expect Blade to look like Wesley Snipes. Which is fine since this isn't connected to the movie trilogy. He does look similar to another actor though. There's a variety of vampire types, most of which are interesting and have a good aesthetic sense. The settings are varied and nicely detailed. I did have a few issues though. The first one is going to be really nerdy, fair warning. My first issue is that Madhouse fails at drawing Wolverine. Here's the thing, Wolverine is supposed to be all of 5'3 and stocky. In this he's as tall as Captain Blade of the space station DS 9, who should tower over him at 6'2, and he's kind of scrawny. As I said, it's a nerdy complaint but it's still valid. My second issue is with the final variety of vampires. They appear right at the end, there's a lot of build up and I was wondering what they would do with them. Then they appeared and I burst out laughing. They look really stupid and it just kills the dramatic tension. My biggest issue is with the fight scenes. They almost all follow the same basic pattern. Peons get destroyed with ease, a big baddie shows up, it looks like Blade is getting his butt kicked, Blade does a slow-motion special attack, the fight ends. This is not how you make intense action scenes. The final battle between Frost and Blade... That works. It doesn't follow that same pattern. Why didn't they do them more like that throughout?
The voice acting is pretty good in this. Ootsuka Akio and Sakamoto Maaya especially do well. The first two movies had pretty awesome soundtracks, this does not follow suit. The music is pretty dull.
The yuri factor is a 1/10. There's all of one major female character and she doesn't get any les-yay.
So, how does the Blade anime hold up when compared to the films? It does okay. There's quite a bit in here that's done well, but there are also quite a few problems. The characters are mostly really well done, there is a good story hidden beneath the repetition and the artwork, aside from a few things, is pretty good. Really, every aspect of the anime had a lot of good things going for it but there are also negatives to everything. A lot of which just come from laziness. Whether it was repeating plot points, repetitive fights or continuity flubs. Almost all of which could've been avoided if they'd put in more effort. As such my final rating is a 6.5/10. If you like Blade as a character, either from the films or the comics, you'll probably enjoy this but if you don't care about Blade, it's probably not going to have anything for you.
HyHybridMedia
September 23, 2012
Not Recommended
Now let’s get into Marvel Animation. Like DC Comics is having trouble with their theatrical releases aside from the Nolan Batman movies, Marvel is doing worse in their animation department considering from I heard on the internet about the two beloved series Spectacular Spider-Man & the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes got canceled mostly due to Disney being a part of Marvel and after seeing Ultimate Spider-Man, fans were pissed at the result of that show and while that happened, Marvel decided to cross into anime territory along with the help of studio MADHOUSE with Marvel Anime, a 4-part anime project that reintroduces them forJapanese audiences and the following feature players were Iron Man, Wolverine, X-Men & Blade. Now I’m only covering the Blade anime for today as the others will be on another day.
Erik Brooks was half-man, half-vampire after his mother Carol was attacked by a vampire named Deacon Frost. He sought assistance from Noah Van Helsing and over time, vampires worldwide fear him as the "Daywalker" or "Blade". He investigates a vampire organization in Asia called "Existence" starting from Japan all the way to Southeast Asia.
Okay, I know most of you have heard some of this plot before and if you haven’t, you didn’t see the first Blade movie.
Yes, the plot of Blade hunting down Deacon Frost for killing his mother is a part of the first movie but in the series, the killing of said mother takes place in England, which I heard that Blade was originated from in the comics so yeah, Blade is British.
Joining the hunt alongside Blade is Makoto, a female vampire hunter who at first hunts Blade for killing her father, even though she should’ve been hunting for Frost since he turned him into a vampire and Blade was just doing his job and making sure she doesn’t die. There is also Noah Van Helsing, most likely the one who supplies Blade with weapons and for that, he does a better job of that than Shen from the live-action TV series and he has a wolf-dog whose name I don’t know or too lazy to find out.
Most of Frost’s flunkies or either vampires of the High Council are served as easy targets for Blade whether he comes close and it doesn’t seem much of a fight but just as a fly in his face and the weirdest (and dumbest) thing about it whenever Blade finishes an adversary, he calls out a move like it’s a damn videogame move. All the other very minor characters in the series often share their backstories but we as an audience can’t get too close to them since after that episode, that part never gets mentioned again.
So, in the U.S., the show (along the other Marvel Anime) aired on the formerly geek-centric G4 and the dub of this was made by Studiopolis, Inc., an ADR production company who worked on dubs (either anime or Western animation) in the past such as Afro Samurai, Blood+, Bleach & Naruto. The voice of Blade in this effort was Harold Perrineau, whom you know from Lost, OZ & Link from The Matrix Reloaded & Revolutions and he was fairly decent in his part, not better but still better than Sticky Fingaz’ effort.
While the animation by MADHOUSE does look very beautiful and dark to look at but the action scenes animated there rate from sub-par to weak, since I mentioned the calling-out your move when finishing an enemy earlier and the character design of Blade looks……odd in some way but not in a bad way but very strange. The music overall is awful in this series, mostly a generic rock theme for the series that never fits the tone whatsoever and the rest of the music is standard anime music but not exactly being a standout.
FINAL VERDICT (THE ANIME): Very, very uninspired and overall boring. I will say that plot is more Blade-focused rather than going for the other characters’ less important side story and most of Blade’s past in the series has more detail added than the movies but the action gets rather too repetitive too quick and too monotonous. I can’t judge the whole Marvel/MADHOUSE project too quick since those I’ll check out later but for this one, I’ll say watch only once.
ThThatAnimeSnobRE
September 3, 2023
Not Recommended
Blade was the fourth Marvel attempt to get a piece of the anime fans into the MCU and once again it wasted its money on a lame adaptation. The OST is by far the best thing in it; those rock pieces are nice to listen to lots of times. The rest of it are terrible. Just 3 minutes into the show you are greeted with dumb cannon fodder vampires attacking innocent civilians and getting vaporized by the hero. They don’t even fight in an interesting way; they are just brainlessly attacking with claws and get owned in less than a second because Blade moves fasterthan light or something (lol at the after image he leaves as bait; what is this, early Dragonball episodes?).
What is even worse is their dying animation. They don’t burn and turn to ash with a few bones remaining to fizzle away in the wind. It’s how it was done in the live action trilogy and From Dusk Till Dawn and why it was so cool to look at. Here they just go poof and disappear like it’s a Digimon being defeated.
What is even worse than even that is how they look. In an attempt to flavor their appearances, they have all sorts of weird hybrid combinations. Just imagine a vampire catfishman who uses vampire cats and water as hindrance. Weird? How about vampire chicken? Vampire imps? Vampire ninjas? This is plain ridiculous, especially when it is pointless. No matter how they look, they are equally weak and use the exact same dumb technique of “running towards the opponent with no plan at all”. Shouldn’t a story full of dark areas and vampires be scary or unsettling? Well this one here isn’t in the slightest. How can you be afraid with such piss poor weak adversaries? They look stupid too.
There are also human collaborators of the vampires, called familiars. Not only they are even easier to beat than vampires yet they have the nerve to attack Blade in hopes of defeating him with simple clubs. They are also idiots enough to have tattoos on their wrists showing the vampire insignia of the guy they are working for. Amazing secrecy people, do you have the map to his lair drawn on your ass too?
And then there is the Big Bad of the show, whose actions make no sense. He is clearly ten times stronger than Blade, constantly defeats him easily and then lets him escape, despite the more than obvious fact that he needs his blood to complete an experiment. Instead of capturing him single-handedly, he keeps sending his troops to be massacred by Blade and then walks away when he has him cornered. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s called the “We can’t have a showdown before the last episode” strategy.
There is zero investment in the action, in what is supposed to be an action show. The animators are using random slashes and gunshots, most of which are done with still frames and a cheap fire effect covering the monsters. And all vampires are defeated in less than a second with a simple punch or kick before they are set on fire; as if they are made of paper. They are not even shown suffering before they die. Hell, they are not even shown being damaged much before dying. Hell, there isn’t even ash remaining as proof a battle took place there. Furthermore only vampires are killed in this show, while normal people always survive or just fall unconscious. This is of course done because the show is aimed at children and thus can’t be too brutal. And for some reason vampires don’t count as people who turned into monsters, but as Digimon, so it’s ok to kill them. Hypocrisy, anyone?
As for the story? Aside from Blade chasing after the Big Bad it is practically random travels around the world, fighting mooks and listening to the overblown dramatic tales of unimportant people you will never see outside the episode they appear in. So practically THERE IS NO PLOT AND STORY THAT EXCEEDS TWO LINES OF TEXT.
TL;DR: It was a subpar work like all Marvel derived anime, and thank goodness it was the last one.
