Review for Blood C: Complete Series

Introduction

Why did it have to be vampires again? Anime creators love their vampires, and pay no heed to my complaints that they should give it a rest once in a while. How about a show about mummies, or witches, or gargoyles, ghosts, banshees, werewolves, and stay puft marshmallow men? No, in anime, supernatural equates to vampires, although don’t get me started on zombies. The last couple of years have seen the Blood franchise pulled from its crypt. It all began with a groundbreaking short movie from none other than Mamoru Oshii, called Blood: The Last Vampire. I actually caught it on late night TV once, but other than a Goth girl with a sword on a train, and a US army base, I can recall nothing about it. Manga Entertainment have released it in the UK on DVD, and latterly on Blu-ray, although that Blu-ray is getting rare now. Then came a follow up series, Blood+. Sony in the US got hold of it, and held onto it like the unpopular kid in school who owns the football. Their release stateside was unimpressive and extravagantly expensive, and they still won’t let anyone else have a crack at it.

In 2011, it was time to wheel the old vampire out again, and this time the CLAMP collective have developed their own vision of the universe and the characters. The result is this Blood-C series, and the follow-up Blood-C: The Last Dark feature film, produced by none other than Production IG and all of which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray by Manga Entertainment this year. I’m beginning by taking a look at the Blu-ray release of the series.


Saya Kisaragi is a happy-go-lucky, if somewhat clumsy girl, who lives with her father in the temple where he serves as a village priest. It’s an isolated, sparsely populated village, but every morning after completing her shrine maiden duties, Saya’s off bright and early to the Guimauve cafe for breakfast, before making her way to high school, singing a song to the beat of her footsteps. She’ll invariably be distracted, usually by a cute puppy, so she’ll wind up late for school, but with a forgiving teacher and appreciative friends, her days are always pleasant. Then she’ll head home after school, take the sacred sword from her father, and go out and slaughter demons by night...

Twelve episodes of Blood-C are presented across two Blu-ray discs.

Disc 1
1. O Ye Winds of Heaven
2. It Is for Thy Sake
3. As for Man
4. That Has Made Me Sad
5. Meeting in the Way
6. Dashed By Fierce Winds
7. As Pitiless as the Storms
8. Within the World

Disc 2
9. Against My Wish
10. Since Tis By Its Breath
11. Whom Then Are There Now
12. If Remembering Me

Picture

Blood-C gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at the 1080p resolution on these Blu-ray discs. You’d expect the combination of Production IG and Clamp to produce something interesting, but Blood-C is surprising bland, with subdued colours and for Clamp, rather generic character designs. The animation itself comes off really well, with more than the usual effort put into character animation, while the action sequences certainly make the Blu-ray presentation worthwhile. However, the rest of the animation is less impressive on Blu-ray, with the oil painting style backgrounds never really pushing the detail levels, and neither does the character art. The subdued colour palette never really requires the Blu-ray to pop, but most disappointing is the degree of digital banding on the discs, which is up there with a DVD presentation in terms of prevalence and degree. Any mildly dark scene will have digital banding, and it can be distracting.

The images used in this review are sourced from the PR, and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

Audio comes in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English and 2.0 Japanese forms, with a translated subtitle stream locked to the Japanese audio, and a signs only track locked to the English audio. I went with the Japanese audio as always, and was happy enough with the original language performances, while the subtitles were accurately timed and free of error. I did feel that the volume was a little low in comparison with my usual settings, but that was easily remedied. The stereo does a nice enough job conveying the action sequences, and the requisite crunchy gooey sounds that come with a horror. I sampled the English dub, and it does have the edge when it comes to opening up the surround soundstage, but it seemed that the dub was the usual Funimation effort, good enough for the job, but not really standing out as special.

Extras

Both discs get the usual animated menu presentation, with a pop-up menu allowing you to select language options and jump through episodes during playback. Note that while the audio and subtitle options are locked during playback on the Blu-ray, the same is also true for the DVD release of the show, and if you were looking to watch the Japanese version of the show without subtitles, you’ll be disappointed either way.


On disc 1, you have the audio commentary that accompanies episode 6, with ADR director Jerry Jewell joined by voice of Fumito, Robert McCollum. The commentary opens up with a warning of spoilers for the whole series, suggesting you watch it through first. I only sampled it up to the first spoiler, so I can tell you it’s the usual light-hearted Funimation commentary track, albeit a little slow and gappy. It’s interesting to hear that they recorded the dub to a censored version of the show, and at the time of recording the commentary, they were uncertain as to which version fans buying the discs would get to see. Fortunately this release is completely uncensored.

The rest of the extras are on disc 2, beginning with the audio commentary on episode 12, this time with Alexis Tipton, voice of Saya joining Jerry Jewell in the booth. At this point you don’t have to worry about spoilers, and it’s a useful enough commentary, if a little gappy due to the commentators having to take a pause to wince in empathy at what’s happening on screen.

Otherwise it’s all promotional material, 2 minutes of Original Commercials, 3½ minutes of Promotional Videos, the Textless Credit Sequences (1 OP and 2 EDs), and the US Trailer for the show.

You’ll also find Madman trailers preceded by an anti-piracy promo, for The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, King of Thorn, Evangelion 2.22, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica, almost all of which are available here in the UK on Blu-ray.

Conclusion

Blood-C has CLAMP storytelling and art design, coupled with Production IG production values. The characters are typical CLAMP and look very nice, especially their costume design, and when it comes to the quality of the animation, this is one of the better shows to come from Japan in recent years. It’s action packed, with our heroine facing off against some inventively designed monster at least once an episode, and the fight sequences are breathtaking in their choreography and visual impact. The final episode has an animated sword fight that is the best I have seen in anime since Le Chevalier D’Eon (also an IG show). Then there is the horror aspect of the show. Blood flows in this show. My word, does blood flow in this show! The deaths are inventive, varied, visceral, and wince inducing. People are impaled, sliced and diced, torn apart, and devoured in more ways than you would have thought possible. This is a show that has no qualms about showing the most terrifying death scenes you can imagine. And at the heart of it lies a mystery, a mystery that gradually unfolds over twelve episodes.

Despite all this, I found Blood-C to be dull and tedious, putting me to sleep on more than one occasion. The unfortunate thing is that I can’t go into specifics about just why I found it to be so, as Blood-C is wholly reliant on the central mystery surrounding its character, and to spoil that in this review would be to gut the show. Although that in itself could be construed as a negative issue, as there is very little beyond that mystery to hold the attention. In general terms, I found the story of Blood-C to be very isolated and sterile, much like the location that Saya is living in. Her village where she is a shrine maiden by day and demon slayer by night is sparsely populated and off the beaten track. The story of Blood-C revolves around Saya Kisaragi, as we follow her in her everyday life, a life which seems to have her as the centre of the universe. Her father dotes on her, the manager of the Guimauve cafe shows her special attention, everyone is her best friend at school, and she’s the teacher’s pet. No wonder that she’s lively and bubbly.


But the more that she fights the demons, or Elder Bairns as they are called in this show, the more the cracks begin to appear in her perfect life, and the more she begins to question her existence. And then the talking dog appears... The thing is that for much of the series, it’s all about Saya; she is the centre of attention, and the centre of the story. Much as the mystery and enigma of her identity affect her, it doesn’t really make much difference to the other characters, or the world around her. What she’s going through might be real, or it might just be all in her head. The point is that without any apparent consequences or connections, it doesn’t really matter; it’s all a sterile exercise that fails to engender empathy in this viewer. It isn’t until the final two episodes that the story pays dividends, and the mystery begins to form connections with the world. It also does this in the worst possible way, an episode of exposition. We have people standing around, talking about what is actually going on, which I find to be a failure in storytelling. The real interest in the story doesn’t materialise until the final episode, by which time it is far too late for the show.

What’s worse is that this is just half a story. No actually worse than that, it’s a prologue, just the preliminaries that build up to the Blood-C: The Last Dark feature film. Twelve episodes that establish a hero villain dynamic, maybe not fully explaining the villain’s motivations, but developing the heroine to the point where you can understand why she would be peeved at the villain. Blood-C is twice as long as it needs to be to actually do this. It would have been better off as a three double episode OVA series, or maybe even a mini-movie. Twelve episodes, ten of which are navel-gazing mental masturbation are just overkill.


If you are into the aesthetics of horror anime, and can overlook storytelling deficiencies, then you’ll lap Blood-C up. The Blu-ray may not do all it can to showcase the visuals at their best, but you can’t hide the quality of the animation, and the inventiveness of the countless death scenes. And you will be left wondering just what the BBFC were thinking letting this get through with just a 15 rating! The action sequences are among some of the best that I have seen in television anime, and while a tad generic; the CLAMP character designs are quality as always. I found it to be deathly dull though.