Blade

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 for ... Japanese 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.

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 faster ... than 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.