Blood-C

You will not like this series. Yes, you, the reader of this review. Yes, I can tell.

You will watch the first couple episodes. You will be befuddled by the juxtaposition of a slice of life high school setting and utterly brutal, gory, monster battles. You will detect no overarching plot and abandon it.

You will have been a fan of Blood+, and will not like this anyway.

You will watch the whole series, be extremely upset with the ending and story execution, wonder what was the point of it all, and not like it.

You will be turned off by the gore and not like it.

I did none of these things. I enjoyed the fights, visceral and intense as they are. I didn't notice any awkward pacing or choppy execution. I was enamored by the mystery and the ending justified much of the series for me. But I am in a minority.

Perhaps I am unusual, perhaps I am just a cretin who didn't realize just how flawed the series was.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I liked it. You won't. No one else did, and that's okay.

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Blood-c is one giant troll of an anime. Unfortunately, it proved so good at the gimmick it used that it chased away most of the audience before the good times started rolling. I was going to give it a stinky 3 by episode five but then I continued watching and by the end it had redeemed itself. Still, that is no excuse for those awful, eye-gouging first episodes.

Story:
Since you are most probably a returning customer to the Blood franchise, you are already familiar with the story. Sword-wielding mystery girl in a high school uniform fights man-eating monsters. Mystery is solved in a gory, splattery, bloody, dismembering, brain-bits-flying, bone-cracking way.
Blood-c has no continuity with the previous anime of the franchise. It takes the basic story and spins a different tale. So, if you, like me, were expecting more Haji—gawd, there can never be enough Haji!—you will be sorely disappointed. Sigh~ (Allow me a moment to once again overcome my disappointment in this crucial omission)
So, is this a good story? In a word, yes. But that becomes apparent only when you finish it. Once again, the first few episodes are trolling you in a very horrible way. This would have been acceptable in a 24 episode show but in a 12 episode show it did irreparable damage. So, it requires a certain masochism to get you through to the good part.

Characters:
It is very difficult to talk about the characters without including major spoilers, so I'll do it this way…
Saya is a high school moe-tard klutz by day and a kickass, monster-slaying, katana-wielding warrior by night. How could that possibly be combined, you ask. Watch to the end and be amazed.
The rest of the cast—no, I am not being lazy, it has to be this way—are just as they should be. Watch to the end and be amazed.

Animation:
Anorexic 7-feet-tall people design courtesy of CLAMP aside, this anime really rocks the fight scenes. Smooth, sleek, gory; these scenes are the main reason to watch this anime. Every time it was blood--fest time it was like the anime became ten times better. Even the animation came alive.

Music:
I noticed three distinct soundtrack groups. One for the horrid slice of life wannabe. One for the creepy times and one for the fight scenes. I must say the creepy times soundtrack impressed me the most. It was exquisitely creepy.
OP: Awesome. Fluid and beautifully stylised animation with a standard j-rock ditty. I wish the whole thing could have been like the OP.
ED: Boring. I skipped it every time.

Overview:
It is very difficult to recommend this because it sabotages itself with a horrible beginning but if you are into gory stuff, this will not disappoint. It is not called “blood” for nothing, you know. Some of the brutal stuff I saw popped my eyes out and I was even watching the censored version. I would have liked to see it uncensored but there is no way I'm watching this again. I would rather re-watch Blood+ ...where Haji is.

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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 from it'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.

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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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