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.
