Anime Blood+ (TV Series)

[pbfrontmanvdp]

Been a while (about a year) since I've posted on here, mainly due to the fact I just started teaching full time. Anyway though I was wondering mainly two things: 1) Has anyone seen this anime. Not just comment about that, but your intake to the plot, character design, and music compared to other animes just like this (ex. Hellsing, Ninja Scroll, Technolyze, Elfen Lied just to name a few that I find similar) and 2) What you found appealing about this anime and what chose you to continue watching this anime or not.

Plot - Basically is about how the Earth is being taken over by Chiropterans (demons who feed on the living dead) and are rapidly multiplying daily. An organization called 'Red Shield' sole duty is to hunt down the Chiropterans and eventually wipe out the existence of them ever even appearing while keeping it unknown to the public. However, a girl named Saya [spoiler] who has been 'sleeping' for some time and raised to live a peaceful life [/spoiler] with a very devastating past (that she has forgotten), is the only secret weapon for taking down the demons. A man named Haji, sworn to protect Saya, knows of her past but chooses not reveal everything to her all at once for her own safety. With the combination of Haji, Red Shield, and Saya's family they try to take down the rest of the remaining Chiropterans.

That's pretty much the plot and once a few people comment I'll explain a little more about it.

Character Design - Two main characters (or who I believe are the two main characters) Haji and Saya starts out a little slow, since at first I didn't really know what was truly going on. However, once they start going into Saya's past it gets really good with character development. (spoiler) Saya's [spoiler] sister however did not have enough character development for me until the very end, but it was to little to late for me although I figured her feelings towards humanity were justified at the end [/spoiler]. The rest of the characters, even a lot of the minor characters have a ton of character devolepment, some more than others that should, but it was still great nonetheless.

Music/Animation - Music was amazing in this, parts were even better than one of my all time favorite animes RahXephon espically the third OT "Colors of the Heart", which is by far my favorite opening for an anime. The artist animation in this OT would have made this anime even better, however the anime itself is very well drawn too.

At first I didn't think I was going to like this anime, since it seemed like just another "senseless killing for the sense of killing" type of anime (almost how I thought Elfen Lied was going to be). However, you really need to watch the whole anime to really understand whats happening just like in RahXephon. In a sense it was like a lot of my favorite anime series all put into one. There was really only one disappointment throughout this whole series and its towards the very end of the series anyway (and no the ending isn't a half *** ending like a lot of anime series are I could tell they put a lot of time into how to actually end this one). That's just about it i'll wait and see if some people comment, since I didn't see a topic started on this one yet.

[Raiyuu]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]I think this is one of my favourite recent series, despite the fact that I absolutely hated [i]Blood: the Last Vampire[/i]. It took some persuading by friends to make me stick with it - the first couple of episodes are quite [i]B:tLV[/i]-esque, which I suppose makes sense to draw in fans of the movie. By the end it's morphed into something quite different, something I enjoyed immensely - just the kind of deep, layered, long-term narrative I'd been missing since [i]Fullmetal Alchemist[/i] ended.

Basically, my advice to sceptics is: stick with it, because around the quarter-series point some seriously cool baddie-types - the [spoiler]Sif[/spoiler] and [spoiler]Diva's Chevaliers[/spoiler] - begin appearing. I felt a bit short-changed by a couple of the fights around the climax, and there's one piece of utterly unbelievable [spoiler]character resurrection[/spoiler] in the final episode ([spoiler]he was [b]cut in half![/b] crystallised, shattered and [b]sliced in twain![/b][/spoiler]), but otherwise it's a top-notch action series, with no filler, that doesn't suffer from pacing issues even when Saya's [spoiler]moping around being emo[/spoiler].

Recommended for lovers of epic, story-driven stuff.[/FONT]

[Dagger]

I started watching this but couldn't really bring myself to stick with it. You know how, every once in a while, you run into a character that you passionately hate for piddling reasons? Okay, maybe it's just me. :animeswea But that's how I felt about Kai. I wasn't that enthusiastic about any of the other characters, either. All I really wanted was some [spoiler]hawt Haji/Saya romance,[/spoiler] and I didn't want it badly enough to watch the rest of the series just for a development that might never happen.

So I ended up "watching" Blood+ vicariously. Which essentially means that I didn't watch it--I just spoiled myself silly every time an important new episode came out. Which sure saved a lot of time, haha.

Here's a linguistic question: what's up with "Hagi"? I'm tempted to spell his name that way, to be honest. I can't remember how it was pronounced in the anime, and in the Blood+ manga I started reading (there are several, so who knows where canon begins and ends), it was spelled ハギ, which should be pronounced Hagi, rather than Haji. Hopefully my memory isn't betraying me. Am I missing something? Apparently it's spelled ハジ (Haji) on the official site, except that the romanji is given as "Hagi." An evil typo? Something deep and meaningful? Argh.

The manga I read a few chapters of was Blood+ Yakou Joushi; it's about Haji and takes place before the beginning of the anime. Nice art and loads of brooding. Very shoujo, especially in how it slips in BL undertones. :rolleyes: I haven't looked at the other two manga yet, but I'm semi-interested in them.

~Dagger~

[Raiyuu]

[FONT=Trebuchet MS]He's definitely pronounced ハジ (Haji) in the series, though I've seen the romaji spelt both ways. I think I even saw 'Hadji' from one source.[/FONT]

[pbfrontmanvdp]

[font=Arial]I have to agree with Dagger. For at least 25 episodes I could not stand Kai. Kai was such a boring, Shinji-like, character in the beginning that I was hoping would die some way pretty much throughout the first half of the series. However, later on he becomes one of my favorite characters and seems like the creator did a whole 180 on his attitude towards Saya's line of work and what he knew his purpose in life was going to be.[/font]

[font=Arial]I will strongly agree with Raiyuu that the movie, [i]Blood: the Last Vampire, [/i]was terrible and I do not recommend watching it at all. It was rather dull and without Haji making an appearance and the only recognizable character from the series being David, I pretty much lost interest about halfway through it.[/font]

[Doublehex]

Well, concerning the original, I didn't think it was so bad. The visual aspect of it was quite good, but the story, well it wasn't so much. It was a very simple story; if you were expecting something complicated, I can see why Blood: TLV wouldn't of have met your expectations.

But from what I've read, it was originally supposed to be a 10 episode series, but they cut off the funding after the first episode. So, it's fairly obvious why the story was so poor.

As for Blood+, I'm only on the fifth episode and I'm loving it. A tad bit slow, sure, but I have no qualms with it right now.

[Kenshin DX]

[COLOR=DarkGreen]If Blood + does anything right it's the opening themes. Raion , Seasons Call , Aozora no Namida , and Colors of the Heart, Are all fantastic works. The music for this series is fing incredible

As for the series itself it starts good but it begins to turn crappy really fast. Shame since it had a lot of potential.

I wonder how it will turn out once it hits Adult Swim.

Does anyone know if there will be a sequel or OVA? because the ending was left very open ended.[/COLOR]

[pbfrontmanvdp]

As of now it doesn't look like there is going to be a sequel to the series. There is however a pretty bad (in my opinion) OVA called Blood: The Last Vampire which is by all means not a good choice to view after watching the series.

However, I was wondering if anyone ever read the manga on this and if it was totally different or somewhat comparable to the TV series. Also, does anyone know if the manga is longer than the TV series.

[Raiyuu]

[i]Blood: the Last Vampire[/i] came first, lol. That's why the series is called [i]Blood [b]Plus[/b][/i]. So the series is an improvement on a fairly shoddy film, rather than there being a shoddy OVA follow-up to a decent series.

I agree that it was pretty poor, though.

[Doublehex]

I could of sworn that I said in my original post that B:TLV came before Blood+.

But yeah, compared to most, B:TLV was pretty bad, although you can contribute that to it supposed to be an opening episode instead of an OVA.

[Dagger]

This news is a few days old, but Blood+ is officially going to start airing on Adult Swim at 12:30 on Saturday, March 10 (slash Sunday the 11th). I guess that means it's taking over the Trinity Blood timeslot (are they trying to maintain a continuity of vampire anime or something?).

ETA: Or is it 11:30?

~Dagger~

[Magus]

Originally, it was 11:30, but there was some type of change on the adult swim schedule. The whole anime block (or action block... whichever it's being called) has been pushed back a half hour for Oblongs or something of that nature. So now Blood+ will air at 12:00, eastern time of course.

[pbfrontmanvdp]

Yea, but Dagger I can't imagine how much they are going to have to edit this series (especially the first episode). I'm just glad I was able to watch it subbed, but I am interested in watching the dub on AS just to see who the voice actors are. I can see Steve Blum being a voice actor somewhere in there...hopefully one of the Cheveliers.

[Dagger]

You think? If it were on Toonami, maybe... but even Evangelion got by unedited on Adult Swim, and I don't remember Blood+ being more violent than that.

~Dagger~

[pbfrontmanvdp]

I felt only a few sceens were pretty graphic in the Evangelion series. However, I'm not sure if they ever got to the End of Evangelion movie or not (haven't watched AS in a while), so if that was unedited than Blood + probably won't be. Then again AS is pretty weird with editing, since they edited so many different things in Cowboy Bebop. I even think they edited 76 different things in one Bebop episode, so I guess I'll have to see.

[Kenshin DX]

[quote name='pbfrontmanvdp']. I even think they edited 76 different things in one Bebop episode, so I guess I'll have to see.[/quote]


My God that's a huge load of BS. Bebop really had no explicit material I have all the DVDs and they are identical to AS showing. The only thing AS has ever did was not show certain episodes at certain time such as Wild Horses after 9/11. Trust me if there is editing it will be kept to a minimal.

On another note AS doesn't edit out violence I mean they showed all of Trinity Blood in it's gory beauty. The only thing they really edit is language like they did with Champloo.

[pbfrontmanvdp]

[font=Verdana][size=2]I'm sorry I meant to say about 70 or so different edits in the whole series when it originally aired. Theres a website that has the whole listing of edits (not official but ive looked at some of the episodes that the website has listed and they match the ones on AS). Anyway though I don't want to stray off topic more than I already have so if you want the name of the website ill message it to you.[/size][/font]

[Magus]

Even if there were about 70 edits in all, are they really that noticeable? I think not, but then again, the edits that are noticeable [spoiler]"Gren having breast", Vicious slitting Mao Yenrai's (sp?) throat, and then I think some gunshots to the head or blood splatter[/spoiler] didn't really take much away. It was still obvious of what had happened.

I agree, AS don't really do too much editing for the most part. I mean the most that gets edited is language (major language) and nudity, but that's pretty much it. And if Blood+ has any of it, then you should already know there are going to be some minor edits, and not worry yourself about it. (They might not even be noticeable)

[Dagger]

There's also the fact that AS has become a lot more lenient toward violence and sexuality in anime since Bebop first aired...

Back to Blood+, though. How do you all think it'll do over here? It didn't exactly burn up the ratings on Japanese TV, although they tried awfully hard to appeal to the audience that helped make Gundam SEED and FMA so successful in the same timeslot.

~Dagger~

[Kenshin DX]

[QUOTE=Dagger].

Back to Blood+, though. How do you all think it'll do over here? It didn't exactly burn up the ratings on Japanese TV, although they tried awfully hard to appeal to the audience that helped make Gundam SEED and FMA so successful in the same timeslot.

~Dagger~[/QUOTE]


Honestly i think it will bomb here in the US. The series is meh to begin with. It starts out great but then gets [I]extremely slow[/I] paced. Which most viewers don't have the attention span to deal with. If people can get past that then it should do well. But it defiantly won't be a great success . Hell they may even end up skipping a few episodes that's how bad some of them are.It's really a "I hated it "or "I loved it" kind of series.

[pbfrontmanvdp]

[QUOTE=Dagger]
Back to Blood+, though. How do you all think it'll do over here?
[/QUOTE]
I agree with kenshin that it won't do that well here. People like non-stop type anime which Blood + doesn't have. I like slow and fast paced, so for the few that tend to like more of a slow paced anime like Blood + maybe it will do alright. Hopefully more will give it a chance. Plus....it all depends on who the dub voice actors are as well.

[Kenshin DX]

[QUOTE=Phenom]

I agree, AS don't really do too much editing for the most part. I mean the most that gets edited is language (major language) and nudity, but that's pretty much it. And if Blood+ has any of it, then you should already know there are going to be some minor edits, and not worry yourself about it. (They might not even be noticeable)[/QUOTE]

Theres is no nudity but there are a lot of Yuri themes thrown in.

[Raiyuu]

[i]Yuri?[/i] Did you and I watch the same Blood+? And do we both have the same definition of yuri?

If you're talking about [spoiler]Saya and Diva[/spoiler], you're reading waaaay too much into it.

I didn't think it was slow-paced, to be honest - though I did watch a good portion of the first arc pretty much back-to-back. It has a very involved storyline, which contains enough material to play out steadily over 50-odd episodes without getting too stodgy (in my opinion). The only times it feels slow are when [spoiler]Saya endlessly debates her reason for existence, motivation to fight[/spoiler], etc. If it was non-stop action / blood / gore / slashing for the whole series it would get old, really quickly.