Blood+

When Blood+ came out back in 2005, it was one of the seasons most anticipated releases. The original work, Blood: The Last Vampire, screamed for a longer storyline that showed some development. And while Blood+ was to take place in a separate universe, if it managed to construct a decent story around the beautiful aesthetics of the film, then we would have had a definite winner. Sadly, Blood+ is, to put it bluntly, a bit of a mess.

Blood+ starts off decent enough. Saya, our protagonist, is revealed to be the only one capable of killing the human killing, blood sucking chiropterans. Early on, a ... bit os a standard "mysterious past" is established, although over the course of 50 episodes, it's never explained as well as it probably should have banned. Those hoping for a one woman show, like Blood: The Last Vampire, may also find it interesting that Blood+ sort of becomes a band of travelers movie with Saya's close friends, Riku and Kai, and her guardian of sort, the mysterious cello playing Hagi.

One of the biggest problems of this show is that so many of its elements are very, very conventional. Saya is an amnesia sufferer who has "forgotten" about her past as a bloody killer. The American military is interfering in the role of vampires, which would have made for a decent little conspiracy story, if predictable, if it was fully explored. We are also treated to a bevy of corny "live your life for today" speeches from the likes of Saya's friends. It's all very standard fare.

This wouldn't have been too bad, and would have been saved in part by the decently exciting action, if the series wasn't so arbitrary. New rules and twists are introduced haphazardly to the plot at seemingly unfit times. The Schiff, who are basically manufactured vampires, are tossed into the mix lazily, and their new set of rules and characters pops up and then is sort of left behind as the series progresses. This is how a lot of the second half of the show works. As Saya pursues Diva, the head honcho of the bad guys, all kinds of unexplored sub-plots are layered on; besides the aforementioned Schiff, we have some conflict between Diva's guardians (they're the bad guy equivalent of Hagi, basically), and political dealings with the American military, but they all feel terribly unimportant and underdeveloped, because the show ends up basically becoming one long, protracted chase scene, with Saya desperately trying to locate Diva and defeat her once and for all. This is extended by a relentless number of fight scenes that begin to lose their importance as we realize they are basically just delaying the final showdown.

The show becomes simultaneously bogged down by the unneeded subplots, as well as too narrow-minded in how it chooses to be "mysterious" about all the characters and backgrounds. No, a show needn't spell out everything for the viewer, but we're never really given much to go on, if anything, from Saya, Hagi, and Diva and her cronies. Even as one of the antagonists essentially falls in love with Saya, it all feels very rushed and heavy-handed. While the pacing manages to keep the show watchable, it becomes so repetitive and predictable that it fails to stand out.

The ending itself is something pretty much any viewer will be able to see from a mile away (and it has to do with another weird arbitrary rule that seems to be heaped on just to attempt to make it sad). Because of this, the emotional punch it is supposed to provide is more like an emotional feather dusting.

There are some positives, the animation is good, even if it lacks the dark appeal of The Last Vampire. The various world locations we get to see manage to help keep things varied. Kai becomes an interesting character with a soft-side to go along with his rambunctious one, that we can really empathize with. The action is generally pretty exciting at first. But the show just wears out its welcome with the arbitrary introduction of new ideas and characters that are often abandoned simply to fit the plot. It makes you wonder why they were needed in the first place.

Ultimately, this all leaves Blood+ as a watchable, but simplistic and by-the-numbers vampire flick.

3/10

The plot had great potential but for many reasons the anime just couldn't keep me hooked for more than a few episodes.

Never had I encountered such awkward voice acting. Equally awkward was the music throughout-lackluster, dry, and often inserted at the wrong moments.

And the characters frustrated me(this is just a personal pet peeve.) They were dimensionless, although I can't say much about the main character, Saya, since I never finished the series.

The biggest con for me is that the anime is incredibly SLOW. Again, this is just me, but I like my anime to have unrealistic timelines that doesn't bore me into multitasking while ... watching an episode.

Disclaimer: I realize that I have not seen all the episodes so my opinion is partial, but an important criteria when judging a show, to me, is that it captures the viewers into anticipating the next episode. The above was what I got from the first few (5 or 6) episodes.

Verdict: good plot, terrible delivery. 2/10

This anime dragged. There's no other way to put it. The first 7/50 episodes were exciting but then it got incredibly boring. It got so boring that at episode 24 I was going to drop it. To be honest I should have. I mean sure there's action and gore time to time but I'm afraid that's not enough to compensate for the poor pacing. Very slow and boring anime. I'll avoid watching this if i was you.

Animation

Was average, nothing special at all, after watching The Movie BLOOD i was surprised they used such cute-ish character designs that I have seen in so many school life animes. Action-wise the animation felt a little dull but not terrible.

Sound

Well I watched the English dub for this one, the voice actors where well chosen but nothing extraordinary yet again.
Opening and Ending was average yet again..i mean average comes to mind so much I dunno what else to say.

Story
...
One word keeps coming to mind when I think about the story…..POTENTIAL.
Once I got to the end of the anime and I knew the whole story I found myself thinking it had a lot of potential but the implementation of the story was mismatched, slow and it just feels very anti-climactic. I was disappointed because it felt like the story stole elements from various other anime and it came off like another TYPICAL monsters vs. the hero anime. I think people who watched the movie blood will definitely be disappointed with the scope of story but then again that’s just my opinion.

Character

The whole range of characters include military guys, scientists, whiny useless tag-alongs and siya herself. In saying that I did’nt really have anything in particular against the characters they were all just as predictable as pie with little or no depth to them even the mysterious siya herself which was the most disappointing and surprising part.

Value

Very low value, I wouldn’t buy it, recommend it or watch it again. Chances are if you like this and give/gave it a high rating you haven’t seen a lot of anime series like this before, SHANA for example, which is not great but better than this.

Final Comments

If you watched the movie BLOOD and are expecting a similar series you will be in for a unpleasant surprise. BLOOD+ is not the worst anime I’ve seen but I just like watching anime with originality and depth. This had neither.

4 / 10

Planet Tyro Rating: Low Watchable

planettyro.com

Studio IG, the studio behind the super successful Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex at this point in time was just starting to come into their own as a company. For the anime Blood Plus, most of the people were involved in some way with previously mentioned Stand Alone Complex. Could this group and Studio match the success and magic of their previous work(s)? Did Blood Plus reach the feats and grit that the movie Blood The Last Vampire (2000) had, and create an in-depth and interesting storyline?

Our main character, Saya Otonashi, has amnesia and is under care of an adoptive family living near ... a US airbase on Okinawa Island. One day, her simple life is interrupted when she is attacked by a strange blood feeding bat-human creature called a Chiropteran. Saya quickly learns she is the only one that can kill these things due to her own blood crystalizing the creature’s blood. Over the course of the 50 episode series, Saya embarks on a world-wide journey (with sidekicks) to defeat an evil organization, uncover the history of the Chiropterans, and her own past.

At the time, or at least in the first few episodes, the animation was superb. However, it quickly became mediocre even for 2005. Details began to disappear in return for still images. The show itself can be split in half in terms of quality and the plot being interesting. Blood Plus’ first half builds mystery to the characters, a complex conspiracy, and some fairly decent shock drama. However, the series then dives into a collection of terrible sub-arcs, some deaths, explosions, but in the end turns into a hot mess.

Blood Plus goes from outstanding and tense to a mellow over dramatic story. Each fight quickly becomes not only episodic but also either prolonged fights for the sake of extending it to another episode, or the audience being forced to listen to the dying words and life tale of said victim. The goal was probably to ultimately lead to a crazy finale in which the Studio clearly lost sight of long ago. Everything becomes so predictable and repetitive for the show that even the monster-of-the-week fight scenes and the overall chase plot becomes a snooze-fest.

It is really hard to enjoy a show that has become a bit of a cult classic when pacing is a little on the dull side, animation quality deteriorates hard, a show clogged with uninteresting subplots that are never truly answered, plus a main plot that is delayed just for the sake of more episodes. There was so much potential going into Blood Plus, but the potential was forgotten and never explored. At least the music was really good.

I find Saya just to be too much of a pansy. It was taking too long for her to "wake up". The father was just too unreal "don't forget to smile" and all those life lessons he had. Kai wasn't like he was in the manga and had the tradition anime hang up of "being useless" and "unable to protect". The story just dragged on and it took too long for them to get to the point and made any action scenes were made too short.
All in all, it was a big disappointment.

I can't believe I even finished this anime. I just kept thinking, it has to get better, it has to, right? Well it doesn't.

The plot had potential, with all of the different factions. Some conspiracy stuff going on which is always good. I like that it goes back in time and explains the history and backstories. The art and sound were fine.

The main problem is the main character, Saya. Basically the entire series is her saying "I can't" and whining and being a big annoying baby. I can understand the first few episode/fights, yeah the chiropterans are big and scary. But this literally ... goes on until the very end, it's really really annoying.
The rest of the characters are okay, but nowhere near cool enough to make up for Saya's horribleness.

The original idea and the refreshing take on the girl-meets-vampire genre, along with it's unapologetic devotion to taking the title literally with copious amounts of gore, make this anime a gem - at least, it would have, if it wasn't for that sheer mind-numbing annoyance factor provided by the main character, Saya.

If you want a normal girl, facing hardships and trauma and growing from them, this is not the anime for you. If you want a bad-ass female protagonist, this is not the anime for you. With nil character development and a core concept that can't decide whether to make her 'normal' (yet go ... all the way to, god forbid, any sense of reality in her reactions) or a fighter. you're left with imo, the single MOST annoying female character ever.
And it's unfortunate because the plot had the potential for a LOT of solid character growth.

It's like they wanted to capture a sort of nuanced take on the personality aspect of 'normal' girl who is a god chara w amnesia, so they focus a lot of screen minutes per episode on her 'emotions', yet fall so far short of the mark, those minutes only exacerbate the ridiculousness.

It's also like they want to milk the 'mystery' aspect as much as possible so they end up having every conversation inanely cryptic, even among those in the 'know' and those outside, and then make the characters ok with it, when even 1% reality would have had them respond, "hold up, wtf are you talking about.' Like we get it, you want to create suspense, but ffs, have your human characters behave even a bit like humans??

Back to the useless, pathetic crybaby who constantly insists she can handle it to the point of trying to 'protect' her brother, but invariably ends up crying 'i can't, i can't' when faced with any danger, irrespective of how many people die and suffer around her, when she can protect them so easily. While it is understandable in the beginning because it's not easy for a 'normal' girl to up and become that brutal or violent w zero misgivings, by the 7857465th time it gets reeeeeaally old.
Till it makes me wonder why the Red Shield is wasting fuel on carting her from place to place.
With the Lycee school arc she seemed to have gotten her act together, but in the climax at the Plantation she went back to being perfectly useless when required only to kill her own comrades in the end w/out even taking out Karl. I gave it 14 episodes because of the reviews but i CANNOT take it any longer.

100/10 save yourself a lot of frustration and do NOT watch.

I'm not surprised that one of the villains are the U.S. military and how they use monsters to win wars seeing how much Japan hates America but they need to be more realistic. Who helped rebuild their economy and established their democratic and capitalist structure? The animation is fine, but the Saya and Kai are really dumb. I hate seeing dumb and emotional characters as well as Kai's dumb script, dialogue, or what he says. There are little tidbits on how the show just doesn't make sense naturally and that they're no limits in their world so anything can happen. The enviromental details are also ... very bad such as Viet Nam. A lot of issues I have with the show is things like using platinum credit cards to buy whatever they want in Viet Nam when the people there don't even accept such cards at vendors. Vietnam also looks very developed when in reality, it's very run down. It's one of the poorest countries in the world yet they can afford a big private girls school. Not only that, but the drawings of the faces of asians are so bad that you can't even tell the difference between a Jap and a Vietnamese. They don't know the landscape of Vietnam at all and that orphanage they had of children who come there because their parents were killed by duds..... Well first of all, orphanages don't even take care of the orphans in Vietnam and duds don't exist in suburban areas especially their capital except for the ones that remains as tourist sites of the traps they made. I'm only on episode 6 and they messed up that much about Vietnam in like 2 episodes. If they messed up that badly, then what other features of different cultures did they mess up. You even wonder if they've even visited these areas before they even did their show.


Edit: Episode 9 now.
Oh my FUCKING GOOOODDDD. They don't give scholarships in Vietnam, especially to fucking musicians. You don't get money there as a musician, even a professional one. AND NO ONE IS STUPID ENOUGH TO FIND DUDS AND SELL THEM AS SCRAP METAL EVEN IF THEY DID EXIST IN VILLAGES IN VIETNAM. My god these people are retarded. I don't know who made this show, but they need to do some serious homework. And who the hell would even buy their scrap metal......

I loved the whole concept and plot of this anime.. but I feel like after season 1 it was a FLOP. The details in the animation decreased by about 70% and that`s odd because shouldn`t it be getting better after each season? For example in season 3 in the anime look at the television and how the reporters are drawn. I usually cackle at bad drawings but I really liked the idea of this anime and I was upset that the directors/executives didn`t take more time with it. I`m a stickler for good drawing so I rated it harshly. However I did finished it because ... I remember watching it years ago and never did. Lastly some of the characters` actions were so illogical I felt as though they were just killing off everybody for no reason.

I remember seeing this anime airing at night on Saturday but back then I was a young teen just getting exposed to anime so I never quite got into it but I did like the opening songs (especially op 2 and 4) enough to record them on vhs and look them up on youtube as the years past. Eventually, I decided to sit down and finally watch the anime those songs were associated to.
Unfortunately, despite the anime being called "Blood+" the main female lead Saya spends the first 25 eps in the fetal position crying about how she can't do it, leading to someone ... dying due to her inactivity which then leads to her announcing her resolve to change and wanting to know about her past only to repeat the entire process. It's not until ep 34 that Saya transforms into a badass emo character after an off screen 1-year time skip that she's able fight without the need to be heavily coaxed into battle.

Despite all of this, the series reminds you as often as diva performing her one opera song (often) that Saya is the chosen one and that only her blood can kill the Chiropteran, yet even the expendable support characters point out the plot hole of the narrative regarding the need of Saya to single-handedly handle the issue by asking why they don't just put her blood into the bullets for which the excuse given was "we don't have the time and Saya is the only one." Keep in mind the time wasted trying to convince Saya to fight + the fact that a year time-skip occurs where they advanced their bullets' capabilities to the point that they can make big holes in Chiropteran (which they just regenerate from), yet no one bothers to set aside Saya's blood during all the transfusion scenes to use for effective bullet research. (The writer knew that if this was done then Saya's importance within the series would be reduced to that of a glorified emo blood bank for their bullet manufacturing instead of an emo sword wielder.)

Accompanying Saya for the vast majority of the series is her incestuous non-blood related elder brother Kai. Kai remarks about how he cares greatly for his siblings and shares his strong desire to protect them; yet his equally strong desire to get into Saya's pants compels him to follow Saya around the world while dragging his younger brother into increasingly dangerous locations. Funny enough, he has this uncanny ability to make almost any female (not Saya) to become infatuated with him to the point that one girl even went as far as to steal her father's money and use it to cajole a bum reporter to take her around the world just so she can get into Kai's pants. Yet despite this, Kai only has eyes for Saya and brushes all other girls off leading to arguably the best moment in the anime where in the final episode, Kai gives one of the most dead-inside expressions while on stage looking at Saya kissing someone else (you can practically hear the poorly performed sad song flutes playing in the background).
The art in the Openings and Endings are pretty good but within the show itself tends to lean from being average to somewhat decent at times.
In short, the story and characters leave something to be desired but if you're still interested in watching this, I recommend starting at ep 34 and if you need context, just google it to save time.

Story: 5/10
Story is quite captivating, it seems fresh to me (I have watched only one more vampire anime, though), but having watched it all I realize it's rather basic and predictable when you know enough. The good thing is the atmosphere of mystery holds quite long and there are revelations even in the last ten episodes.
That said, some were ridiculously obvious and also literally delayed for tens of episodes without any reason behind this. The story is also extremely dragged and sometimes feels like not moving at all. I think the number of episodes could be halved to make the plot develop without periods ... of nothingness. The story feels somewhat disjointed between different countries, as well. There is also the Schiff subplot that feels detached and doesn't really affect the main plot in any way. And there is a lot of plot armor and everyone is able to talk to everyone in Japan, Vietnam, France, Russia, the UK or the USA.

Art: 4/10
The artists seem to have done some research, I was particularly glad to see the setting of different countries displayed accurately. Still, the art style is somewhat unusual and I couldn't help thinking character designs were way too cartoonish and undetailed for an attempted dark atmosphere. Often, when one shot changes the other, so much happens it can give you a feeling of some shots being dropped somewhere.

Sound: 5/10
Mainly fine, but I find Saya's battle screams and Kai's angry voice terribly annoying (Saya screams 5 times or so, but Kai spends all first half of the show angry and yelling). I liked the cello music Hagi keeps playing, but it happens rarely and he seems to be playing the same moment every time. And the characters tend to say other characters' names all the time, in any circumstances, even just because.

Characters: 2/10
That's the real problem with this anime. Protagonists are mainly useless. A useless main heroine Saya who only feels sad, avoids any help and communication, saying she has to protect everyone, sucks in fighting (she's usually unable to fight 3 ordinary chiropterans in a row) and doesn't do a single thing about it, all because she resents her nature. She's still the only one who has at least theoretical ability to defeat chiropterans, so we get the only one capable soldier being terribly indecisive (kinda like Shinji from Evangelion). A useless secret organization who has a sweet didactic talk with too nosy a reporter, sinks a ship attacked by flying creatures to bury them and keeps sending people against chiropterans, the monsters who are bullet-proof and able to tear a human in 2 seconds. I wonder how this organization even managed to exist for more than a century. The useless adopted brother of Saya, Kai, who's whiny and slightly sabotageous in the first half, he at least stops shouting in the second, but, unfortunately, doesn't become much of an asset. Hagi, Saya's chevalier, is somewhat useless, constantly being thrown somewhere or impaled by enemies and vainly fighting back. There is a reason behind his rather little fighting capabilities, but given the scale events attain, I think it's plain stupid. Also he can't really think on his own and only waits for Saya to give him an order, while other chevaliers built a multinational corporation on their own. I guess, "Nankurunaisa" or "The things will work out" is mentioned this often in-universe because it turns out to be the motto of the protagonists. They don't work toward their victory, they just wait around with sad faces and suddenly start winning in the end just because this anime has to finally end. There is also at least one situation of stupid inability to express/perceive one simple thought (whether one of the groups is a total enemy or can be negotiated with) for the sake of cheap drama.
The antagonists aren't useless but are ruthless and/or psychopathic. Solomon, though, is particularly prominent, because he's a thoughtful character with interesting development vector, but his development also stops just when there was a good prospect, without him really achieving anything.
The side characters or the guys somewhere between protagonists and antagonists either are underdeveloped or are finished soon enough. Looking at the characters in focus, I'm just happy they aren't ruined as well.
In the end there is simply nobody to root for or care about but annoying Saya and her team are constantly shoved into your eyes.

Enjoyment: 1/10
The series starts rather promising. There are mysteries to be solved, the power to be acquired and the circumstances to be overcome. Saya is said to "not be fully awoken" which holds her back in battles and gives her depression and frustration. But as the story progresses, her abilities don't increase and the sadness doesn't go away which becomes increasingly annoying. The mysteries, on the contrary, get solved so the only reason left to watch becomes to know how it all ends. There the dragging begins... Luckily, it contains a period of quick pacing, but not in the end. Also the future events become increasingly obvious toward the end and the story degrades into simple killing of kinda villains of the week one-on-one with luck and miracles. And the attempted depressed dark atmosphere is based not on the real events but on the mood of the main character I could care less about. So we get 50 episodes of Saya whining, shutting in and getting her ass kicked. It's a marvel the "good guys" are able to last this long. There is also a lot of blood, more than I expected or wanted, but I guess it's on me, given the name of the show.

Overall: 2/10
I feel sad I spent my time on this and I definitely won't rewatch it. The story isn't that bad and the abridged version of the plot would read cool, but watching it for 50 episodes, as well as horrible character stupidity is just a waste of time. It's not what you expect from a show with this lot of praising reviews here marked as helpful.

TLDR: Watch Episode 30, and then return to the beginning (anytime from Episode 1 - 5). You'll thank me later.

Full version: Plot holes, plot holes everywhere. I was very excited going in. 50 episodes of what seemed like a promising series, good looking characters, and a bad ass female heroine? Sign me up, vampire novels (especially from Laurell K. Hamilton) are some of my most-loved books. Well, if you're also a fan of those books, don't bother with this trash, it's closer to Twilight in terms of poor quality.

Biggest problem: It moves too slow.

No anime, movie, or media, should take 30 episodes (that's ... 30*30 mins = 900 mins = 15 hours) to tell us a backstory that literally took 15 MINUTES.

I'm serious - if you skip Episodes 1 - 29, you won't miss anything. We don't learn anything about the protagonist (Saya), except that she has PTSD flashbacks every episode. The same two flashbacks. On repeat. No one explains anything until episode 30 (more than halfway through!), where there's a full conversation - and fully colored - flashback sequence.

The remaining 20 episodes have slightly better pacing, but can also be skimmed through. There's a lot of repetition, filler, and side character scenes that don't contribute to any developmental plot.

Main character:
Saya starts as an oversensitive and useless girl, and later becomes an insensitive and somewhat useful girl. That's all. I wasn't a fan of her at the beginning, but I really started to dislike her in the London arc.

It's totally understandable that most humans would need time to transition into e.g. the military, the battlefield, anywhere with a lot of violence and potentially death. PTSD and other triggers are natural. But Saya's aversion to killing does not seem to be something she can overcome at all, costing the precious lives of basically everyone else around her. And when she does manage to 'kill' monsters, her rate of success is about 1 out of 6. That's right.

1 out of 6, less than 20% effective.

I was expecting a goddess of destruction, and got a goddess of hesitation. Considering how she's repeatedly worshipped as the 'world's only hope' or salvation from monsters, 20% is a pretty dangerous rate to hedge your life on, imo.

Which leads me to another important point...

The bad guys in this show who don't die, get stronger. The heroine and her team members who die / don't die, seem to struggle to live even one more day. There is a weird power imbalance that could be described as watching a sports team play a game where they NEVER WIN. Throughout the series, Saya's team suffers from severe injuries, death, and tragedies, while the antagonist and gang remain... untouched. It is the opposite of most hero stories. So, even if Saya is weak, her team is sadly, not much better.

And yes, in case it isn't already obvious, the producers kill off a lot of amazing characters (but don't worry. The manga rights all these wrongs, and keeps the RIGHT people alive).

Side characters:
Almost all the side characters were entertaining and had excellent character depth. It was like all the creative writing that should've gone into Saya, went into the background characters instead. You start rooting for e.g. David and Julia, enjoying Lewis, Riku, Min, Moses, and Solomon (my favourite boy). The side characters kept me watching the more than Saya. Granted, not everyone was neccessary (like the Schiff), but the dialogue and personalities came to life for each of them, and is possibly the series only redeeming point. Heck, I'd rate Saya a 2/10, and the supporting characters a 10/10.

The only 2 side characters I could do without, would be Kai and Haji. Kai is full of denial, selfish, projecting his insecurities on others, an arrogant troublemaker, and incestuous towards his sister. He always causes problems for others, and then doesn't take responsibility afterwards. I firmly believe he should've stayed in Okinawa and gotten married to Mao. He would've been happier, and his life goals would've been the same.

Haji had a lot of potential, but slowly became a silent 1D character, more like a human shield and servant for Saya. His past and personality should've been explored more, and there was a hint of it in like, the last 2 episodes, and then it was gone. His strength was also weak compared to many bad guys, always in defensive stance vs. attacking, and unable to wound any of them. A lot of good intention, but overall a passive and forgettable character.

Other notes
- Plot holes around Saya, her parents, chevaliers, the species, biology, are never explained fully, if at all. I was frustrated throughout the episodes and referenced the manga often, just to understand what the * was going on. They don't even mention the word 'vampire,' even though that's what they are, extremely evolved bat creatures.

- Content is predictable for anyone who knows basic World History and world geography. Judging from the rave reviews, a lot of people don't.

- I couldn't stand the music / soundtrack. The series plays like 10 variations of the same song (the antagonist singing), at least once per episode. It's not even a full song, by the way, just a 20 second melody. Gets tiring, fast, so mute your volume and read the subtitles if it gets unbearable for you too.

- Considering how burdensome Saya was, I was really hoping she would die at the end and give it a clean break. Nope. Instead, all the irritating characters stay alive, and the best ones remain dead.

All in all: This series was a waste of time, psychologically dark, and I wouldn't recommend it. The manga appears to be much better and a quick read, though there are many character differences.

How a bad pacing kills the interest on a show.

This is an anime I can't just recommend. I couldn't even finish it, because of the pacing. Is hella slow, but in the worst sense of the word slow. This isn't like saying "the beginning of The Lord of the Rings is slow-paced to set up everything in motion", this is "at episode 15 the plot theoretically already started, but it feels like literally nothing happened".

It's painful to watch, because what the show is telling me is interesting but it feels like nothing is happening. My feeling at episode 15 was the same I ... had in episode 3, "this is the start of the series, it's setting things up". Episode 15, of a 50 episode show... That's 30%, feeling like nothing happened. To compare it with a show like Avatar (which I know isn't anime), at episode 15 a lot of things have happened, we have a sense of progress towards an objective, and we feel how the relations between the characters is progressing and evolving. The two series have nearly the same length.

I can't tell you if the rest of the plot is good or not. I don't know, because I dropped it. But considering the problems I mentioned before, I don't think is worth my time. Maybe you can enjoy it, I don't know, but have in mind this is one of the worst paced shows I ever watched.

TL;DR: The pacing is horrendous at the point of causing me to drop it. Having in mind that, I don't think the show will do something good with the plot after the point I dropped it.

Don't be fooled by the cover like I was; this is a straight-up shoujo dressed up as a vampire action series. It's the worst kind of shoujo at that--- the kind that makes every decision in order to create maximum drama rather than to tell a good story. In turn, my critique is going to sound especially harsh, because this is more than just about what a show succeeds or fails at doing--- this is about how nasty the intentions of the creators of this show are.

As such, this is going to sound more like a rant than a review, but only because there ... is literally nothing good I can say about this show outside of the technical aspects. Trust me, I really did try to hold onto the one thing in it that had some potential and figure out whether or not it worked, and this review is part of that attempt. Also, yes, this review is only for 30 episodes, but I believe the patterns I recognized in these 30 episodes extend throughout the show AND if 30 out of 50 episodes are trash, most of this criticism is relevant.

I'll start with the characters. None of the characters have any interesting personalities to speak of, which isn't always damning by itself. The show's overall tone or collective chemistry can make up for that if the characters and overall feel aren't archetypal, but that isn't the case here. Saya has no personality other than being demure, Kai is the redhaired boneheaded juvenile delinquent, and Riku is the cute innocent little brother. Meanwhile, the character dynamics are also typical anime high school fare. Hagi is the dark brooding bishounen that's forever by the poor girl's side because shoujo. He's bland as hell even after his backstory and you'll find the exact same character in Vampire Princess Miyu. You won't be watching the secondary characters for their personality either, but the show doesn't give us additional reasons to care about any of them. The primary villains lack enough personality or background for you to care about all the scenes with their internal scheming. Maybe in the next twenty episodes the show will devote time to flesh them out but the fact still remains that it introduces the politics first and the character investment later (which would work if we cared about the plot, which I'll get to later). There's an attempt to make sympathetic villains in the Schiff but since they're cold blooded murderers with little characterization/background up to this point it doesn't work.

Still, a show certainly has the right to flesh out the scheming of the villains. However, it adds two additional plot threads involving the secondary protagonists that in thirty episodes have added absolutely nothing to the plot or characterization outside of the viewer wanting to follow those characters in the first place (which I doubt, because again, we're not given enough personality or background to care). The show also has characters make dumb decisions in order to get those plot threads started in the first place, so it feels especially forced. Kai, Riku, Riku's girlfriend, and some random reporter all go to great lengths to involve themselves in what an extremely dangerous and creepy situation while they themselves are powerless in such a situation.

The main plot thread is not much better. The overall problem is that the show doesn't bother setting up the threat that's going to keep the tension high throughout the show. For half the show, all we know is that sometimes these things called chiropterans attack people, but we don't know the scale and it seems small scale. We don't know what potential threat the main villain poses; a scene establishing the power and destructiveness of Diva on a large scale could have been inserted early on in the show to keep the viewers scared of her return. Instead, for twenty five episodes we watch some German guy scheme behind the scenes and Red Shield uncovering some attempts to make chiropterans, but the question is why do we care? In fact, I didn't pay much attention to any of that and by episode 30 none of it mattered. The main point was very simple in that the main villain simply awoke, but we still have no idea about what her plans are and thus what threat she poses. Of course, you can argue that they will insert the point of tension later, but that's still 30 episodes with no tension. You can also argue that the mystery will keep viewers watching, but usually mysteries create tension because either the initial events are bizarre/intriguing enough for you to want to find out what happened and/or solving the mystery negates the big threat. Well, there's no big threat established here, and I don't find the events bizarre enough to warrant a mystery; monsters are attacking people to suck their blood for sustenance.

So if the plot isn't engaging, what about the character development? Since I've already discounted the majority of the supporting cast, the only potential source of interest on this front comes from Saya's development. In theory, Saya's character arc goes from a timid, PTSD-afflicted girl who longs for a family to a decisive, independent warrior who has made peace with her past trauma. I can't say Saya didn't get stronger at all, but let's just say her development is highly questionable. What complicates matters is the issue of PTSD and "realism". That is, if a character suffering from PTSD goes through many events that feel like they should change her for the better but don't, you can always make the reasonable defense that realistically speaking people don't move on from trauma easily. Because over the course of 30 episodes, Saya jumps back and forth between fighting and being too traumatized by her past to fight. Of course, it's obvious from all the illogical melodrama in the show that the writers aren't earnestly trying to tell the story of how Saya overcomes her trauma and gets stronger but are just trying to milk her for all her angst. But if you isolate Saya's arc, it's hard to attack it because of the aforementioned PTSD defense.

Now I will make a long list of all the illogical/pointless things the writers contrive for the sake of melodrama in order to justify the claims I made in the opening paragraph and to discuss Saya's arc in detail. SPOILERS AHEAD

-As mentioned Kai and Riku insisting that they tag along with Saya despite the obvious danger and their own powerlessness in such a situation instead of just waiting for her to come back like normal people. It's not just that they want to be there to support Saya; Kai is mad that he isn't allowed to participate in physical combat even though he's just a high school boy who likes to get into fights. In addition, in the first few episodes, Kai hears that a monster has severely injured his dad and responds by going off on his own in order to try and shoot it in revenge.

-Along the same lines, Riku's girlfriend is somehow so attached to him that she steals money from her father to travel the world in search of him, and when she finds him, she adopts the same mentality of wanting to involve herself in this supernatural conflict despite being powerless. In response, Kai does the same thing that the Red Shield guys did to piss him off; saying that she shouldn't get involved because it's too dangerous.

-She is accompanied by a reporter who has a better reason in that he wants the big scoop, but this plotline does nothing because we're just watching them discover things the viewer already knows.
-Solomon falls in love with Saya at first sight and having had one dance with her.

-The show spends time setting up Saya's school life in Vietnam as she goes undercover and this goes nowhere, except to have a final scene where Saya's new best friend (that she made over the course of a few days) sees her all bloody with a sword after she had a fight. This gives Saya more reason to mope around despite it being no big deal.

-The show wastes time hastily setting up Kai's friendship with a local girl who later gets turned into a chiropteran. She's a generic girl designed for the viewer to feel bad for and she hasn't been seen since episode 14 so far. As far as I can tell there was no point in this except to produce angst when the girl he likes gets turned into a monster.

-In the same vein Kai gets heavily attached to one of the Schiff after spending an afternoon with her and based on this he decides to try to help the Schiff even though they're trying to kill Saya. This creates a temporary rift with Saya just for the sake of it, because the two can't have a reasonable conversation. Saya clearly sees that some chiropterans like herself, Riku, and Hagi are humanlike but unilaterally lumps all the chiropterans as her enemies without even hearing Kai out.

-The Schiff decide that the best way to get Saya's blood is to kill her instead of asking her, which the show excuses by saying they were raised as weapons. OK, fine. But after they realize Saya's not their enemy and that they're both after Diva, they turn down the offer to work together because apparently they don't know how to work together with others because of how they were raised. I mean, even animals know how to work together in packs to hunt larger prey.

-The Schiff decide not to engage with Saya and Hagi only to come back later and fight them while they're with the Red Shield members.

-Saya feels guilty over saving Riku's life with her blood, thereby turning him into a chevalier, even though she had no other choice to save his life AND this means that he lives forever and has healing powers. She thinks she can't face Kai because of what she did, even though Kai was literally right there and told her to do it. They also decide not to tell Riku about his new status as a chevalier even though it has almost no downsides besides needing blood transfusions periodically and Saya's been living a happy school life that way. Sure, you stay a kid forever... but you LIVE FOREVER! Instead, they spend the whole episode angsting about it.

-Saya is in the middle of fighting the Schiff because they're chiropterans before she relents to Kai and gives one of the Schiff her blood to try and save her. The Schiff dies instead, and Saya mourns over her death for an episode despite being intent on killing her just moments before (she didn't know her either) and it wasn't her fault.

-Saya meets a group of soldiers on her mission in Vietnam and after one of the female soldiers died that same day, after all other soldiers had died, and despite Saya exchanging only a few lines with her, Saya tears up for that one specific female soldier as if she was a lifelong comrade.

-Get this, it was SAYA who killed the female soldier because she went on a mindless rampage. Before the mindless rampage, she refused to fight because she was traumatized by the setting reminding her of her rampage in Vietnam 30 years ago when she killed monster and human alike. So she goes on the rampage and slashes the soldier, snaps out of it, and cradles the soldier in her arms. The soldier tells her to she is their only hope to defeat the chiropterans in an encouraging way, even though she was just mortally wounded by Saya.

-Along the same lines, 30 years ago when Saya went on a rampage and killed a bunch of American soldiers, one of the soldiers with his dying breath told someone to take care of Saya.

-Hagi stands by and watches Saya's father charge the chiropteran and even keeps Saya from helping him, which results in him being injured.

-So 30 years ago in Vietnam Saya goes on a rampage because she was awoken by drinking Hagi's blood. Except in the present day we have repeatedly seen Saya consume Hagi's blood to enter her kill mode, kill the monster, and not go on the rampage. Instead, she faints after she kills the monster. The rampage mode is usually indicated by Saya's eyes glowing red, or perhaps not, because her eyes go red when she's just fighting in control as well, and sometimes they go red after she sheds her own blood on her blade but hasn't consumed Hagi's blood. In the present day, the rampage mode is not triggered by consuming Hagi's blood but by Diva's song. Later when she visits the Zoo, she hears Diva's song but doesn't go on rampage mode. Anyway, during the rampage 30 years ago, Hagi, her lifelong friend, isn't able to get through to her to stop her but in the present day, all it took was Riku (who had only known her for one year) to call out to Saya. Now, the whole berserker mode trope has always been a cheap and dishonest way for writers to create flawed characters without actually having flawed characters. Saya is clearly just a normal girl and her rampages are not triggered by any inherent suppressed bloodlust/anger in her personality but some biological reaction she can't control. But all these inconsistencies tell me that aside from this the writers are clearly just using her rampage mode as a plot device for more angst rather than a flaw that Saya has to overcome. It doesn't help that after the incident in Vietnam her rampage mode doesn't show up again so far.

-When Saya is afraid to fight the monsters that are attacking her and her father and when she's afraid in Vietnam, Hagi doesn't her his blood to make her go into her kill mode, which results in her dad dying and all the soldiers dying.

-Both Hagi and Red Shield don't tell Saya about her past, using the weak excuse that it's better for her to remember on her own. This of course is the cause of all her angst as she keeps getting flashbacks but doesn't know the whole story. Even if I accepted this, the least they could have done was shown her to the Zoo, which helped her regain most of her memories just by being there. In addition, Saya gets an iron resolve to defeat Diva after regaining her memories because Diva killed her father, so apparently Red Shield didn't think it was wise to reveal this to her early on in order to motivate her to work for them. Obviously, the real reason the truth was kept from her was to prolong the angst and mystery.

-Saya's resolve to fight the chiropterans almost breaks when one of the chevaliers tells her that she's also a chiropteran and that she's fighting against her own kind. The chevalier tells her that she's being used by the humans. This is AFTER both her dad and the female soldier died at the hands of the chiropterans and she had resolved to defend everyone from them. What difference does it make it she's also chiropteran? She's not the one killing people. Saya also starts to angst about being a chiropteran even though practically speaking she's mostly human and NOT a bloodsucking monster. Plus, she knows that Hagi isn't human and has a monstrous hand. Anyway, after the chiropteran tells her all this she leaves Red Shield and leaves a note calling them liars, even though 1) why would you trust the enemy who's turning children into monsters 2) you KNEW they were withholding information from you and you just went along with it 3) they didn't technically lie to her about any of those points.

-Saya angsts about having freed Diva from prison which allowed her to kill Joel, even though it was mostly not her fault because she didn't know. She also doesn't immediately question why Joel would imprison her sister to begin with.

Next, I'll talk about Saya's arc, which involves more subjective critique. As some reviewers have noted, Saya is way too mopey and intentionally so; the show constantly resupplies excuses for Saya to mope each episode, as I've already described. If I were to identify her primary struggle though, I'd assume that she's traumatized by memories of being a killing machine in Vietnam 30 years ago, which prevents her from fighting chiropterans in the present day for fear of reliving those memories and becoming a killing machine again. Saya also longs for the peaceful life she lived with her adoptive family in Okinawa, which seems to be taken away when she's called to fight chiropterans. I find it very hard to sympathize with her in this regard, as
1)she's only been living this peaceful schoolgirl life for a year so her nostalgia for it seems overblown
2)the show doesn't do a good job actually showing the bonds between Saya and the family
3) she has amnesia, so it's not like she has memories of a much harder time in her life to make her treasure her peaceful life, so her 1 year of peace would just feel like boring normal life
4) when you finally learn about her past, you see that she's been coddled most of her life and her memories in Vietnam were only a brief moment after which she went back to sleep. Even after her original family was killed, she had Hagi accompanying her the entire time.
5) it's not like working for Red Shield meant being separated from her family forever and they even allow Kai/Riku to accompany her on her mission, or even that she becomes a vampire killer for the rest of her life.
6) The fights that Saya goes through are not portrayed nearly as viscerally as in Red Garden, which makes her job seem pretty tolerable.
7) The series attempts to create wholesome family/friendship moments just to provide contrast to Saya's seemingly cruel fate but it comes off as sappy, especially when Saya's fate doesn't come off as very cruel and the characters and character interactions are generic. These scenes have none of the poignancy and authenticity of similar scenes in Red Garden where the protagonists brave their doomed fates together.
As for her primary arc of dealing with her trauma, Saya does not progress much in 14 episodes and when she does progress... it doesn't make much sense and is reverted. There are several critical points in her arc to give it an outline:

-The first time Saya fights, she's scared but after given Hagi's blood she goes into a kill mode and slays her first chiropteran. The second time she fights, she allows her father to get injured because she was too presumably too afraid of reliving being the monster she was in Vietnam.

-In the midst of retrieving her father from the hospital, Saya again says she can't fight, which results in her father dying to defend her. In his dying words, her father tells her to follow her heart and to face her past. You'd think after this incident Saya would at least unsheathe her sword in future fights because her inaction led to her beloved father dying.

-While undercover in Vietnam, Saya visits a war museum and gets PTSD flashbacks. After running out of the museum, she's confronted by a chevalier who brings up her haunted past. Saya remembers her family and the words of her father and says that she will face her past, after which she draws her sword and fights off the chevalier.

-She fights the chevalier one more time, this time with her eyes glowing red but she's in control.

-14 episodes in- Afterwards, as I previously described, she says she can't fight as Red Shield's soldiers are being killed off by chiropterans because she hears Diva's song and is having war flashbacks again, even though she had previously resolved to face her past. After going on a rampage and killing the female soldier, she heeds the female soldiers last words and resolves to protect everyone, even if she becomes a monster. First of all, you'd think she had already learned her lesson about this when her dad died because of her inaction, which is a pretty big impetus for change. Second, if the female soldier died by Saya's hand on a rampage, how does that give her motivation to go protect everyone even if it means risking killing them? Third, I've already talked about the the inconsistencies of Saya's rampage mode, which disrupts her arc.

-Anyway, after finally resolving to defend the world against the chiropterans and two deaths later, one of the villains is easily able to make her question her resolve by telling her she's a chiropteran, as I described before. This makes her leave Red Shield and go to the Zoo, where she regains her memories. Upon learning that Diva was the one who killed her original family, she resolves to kill Diva and all chiropterans. This is redundant, as she already had ample reason to kill chiropterans after they killed her dad and the female soldier that she cared so much about. The only difference is that it became personal, as now she has a name to focus on.

-So for 14 episodes Saya is too traumatized to fight, after which she fights to protect people regardless of becoming a monster in the process, which seemed like it should have been abundantly clear to her to begin with. Then she falters again because of dumb reasoning from the villains before finding out that her enemy is Diva and strengthening her resolve. After this she mopes over what happened to Riku, her rift with Kai, the death of that one Schiff, and the fact that she allowed Diva to go free. Based on all this, as of episode 30 I don't think Saya actually dealt with any of her trauma. Instead, it seems she bypasses the problem by finding motivation to defeat the chiropterans, even though she had ample reason to do so from the very start. She knew people like her dad and the soldiers were in danger of being killed by the chiropterans and still didn't do anything, but she only finds motivation after their deaths, motivation which is easily weakened. She supposedly agrees to join Red Shield to face her past as her dad said, but she only makes weak attempts to get answers out of Hagi and the Red Shield members.

Besides her arc being very messy, Saya is too passive of a character. The plot happens to her instead of her driving the plot. Her constant self-blame, moping, and passiveness undermine the ability of the viewer to sympathize with Saya in her primary struggle because even if being traumatized is understandable, it makes her come off as a pushover who prefers to sulk instead of taking action to improve herself. Even in her action scenes, Saya is only able to deal with the low level grunt chiropterans and doesn't seem to stand a chance against any of the chevaliers which means in 30 episodes she wasn't able to accomplish much. In addition, Hagi bails her out half the time. While journeying to the Zoo, they're attacked by the Schiff and Saya hides under a rock while Hagi takes on 10 Schiff because apparently she hadn't had much to eat. Even in a non fight scene, Hagi has to carry her to make a simple jump, even though she supposedly has superhuman capabilities too. You know, when I watched Revolutionary Girl Utena, I had trouble with the analysis because I couldn't fathom that some women want to be damseled and saved by men. Yet here it is before my eyes; shoujo writers actually fantasize like this, so they write weak, tortured characters like Saya so they can be saved by the dark brooding bishounen in Hagi.

I promise you I'm not intentionally taking these out of context. I skimmed through the episodes I watched before I wrote this to make sure I wasn't missing anything. If you're a fan of the show and wish to defend it, by all means write an equally long post on my page explaining all of this.

But as it stands, it's clear to me that all these contrivances are all symptoms of the same flaw; the creators of the show are more concerned about creating melodrama than telling a good story. I've seen this all before at various levels in other media; in particular, if you watch Silent Mobius/Escaflowne/Scrapped Princess you'll find the same patterns. This is one of those things that really grinds my gears because I am absolutely disgusted by people who revel in melodrama and intentionally write things to entertain you by putting your emotions on a see saw.