+ new story for Blood series fans
+ swordfights
- too much gore*
- direction
- cheap looking visuals
*possibly a + if... you know... you like it
Story
New story in the Blood series! Indeed, Saya is back. For the better or worse, the only unchanged thing from old Saya is probably her name, hair color and fighting style, to the point where you can't be sure whether she's the old Saya or not... Story is completely new and unrelated to Blood+ series so you can watch them in either order, although Blood+ does provide a lot more background story.
Anyway, Saya is back to murdering stuff. And she does so in peaceful village, where she lives with her father in a shrine. She lives happily, helps cleaning shrine, drinks coffee, sings a song in the morning, goes to school, has lunch with friends, doing pretty much everything a japanese anime high school girl does. Problems occur when weird evil monsters threatening village appear. As a good shrine maiden, just like her mother she's sworn to slay them all with her trusty katana and protect the village. Smells fishy? For a good reason too, you'll have to see for yourself.
What I didn't like about the story was probably it's pacing. The overall idea is nice, but they turned it into episodic monster kill with gore as its main element. Felt like whole thing could be summed up in 2 episodes.
Art
Has some nice rural vistas, animation was ok at first but seemed pretty shitty (and sometimes hilarious) towards the end. The feeling I got from watching could be described as "cheap".
Saya's new character design is not too bad but god damn does she have hair. Where did it all come from should be a movie by itself. Other characters are not really memorable or special in any way (maybe just the cute twins). This anime being designed by CLAMP, you can expect to see tall characters with long limbs and males with triangular faces.
Sound
I don't like to talk too much about music, since it depends on opinion way too much. I'll just say the it was mostly fitting the situation. Voice acting was nothing special, it did convey the character types as they intended to, so I guess it's ok.
Character
Tough to say something without spoiling, but I'll try. Characters include Saya, her father, her coffee maker and few of her classmates. Interactions between them are pretty much on level of any generic slice of life anime. With a twist. Not spoiling.
Every other villager is there for the sole purpose of being eaten or ripped to pieces by one of the monsters.
Enjoyment
Was hyped at start, getting progressively less excited throughout the series, then little more excited again at the end. That being said, I didn't enjoy most of it, mainly because of the "episodic monsters". They were completely pointless and didn't lead anywhere.
Overall
It is no secret that a lot of people die in this anime. It's pretty bloody! What bothers me is that I didn't feel anything watching most of them die, simply because it was overdone. Those people played no role in the story, you didn't know them, they didn't know you. Their death was pointless yet creators still decided to put a lot of emphasis on it, because it has "blood" in a title so there has to be a lot of it. As fan of CLAMP's works this anime felt like betrayal. Could've been a lot better have they made a movie - just like they did with sequel, which I suggest you watch if you liked this one at least a bit.
