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.
