Blood C is supposedly the latest spin-off of the
prominent Blood franchise – Blood: The Last Vampire, Blood+ and Blood: The Last
Vampire live action, rather than an actual continuation. Really it’s little
more than an alternative rendition of the Blood universe with only the title
character in common. Just in name mind you. Based on this premise alone, Blood
C is the kind of anime that will be loved or loathed depending on how well
acquainted fans are with the Blood franchise. Having watched a good portion of
Blood+, I’m not overly impressed with this little stand-alone slasher flick.
Saya Kisaragi (Otonashi in Blood+) is portrayed as the
trademark kind-hearted, likable but clumsy schoolgirl who moonlights as a
Furukimono (giant, non-descriptive, man-eating monsters) slayer. However not
content with the drastic alteration of her personality in order to shoehorn the
generic shojo heroine prototype – granted there is at least an explanation
given, Blood C radially changes the character’s physical appearance. Whereas
Saya Otonashi was simple, sleek and lifelike, Saya Kisaragi is a kawaii
overload of implausibility. And with character 180, comes the redesign of the
iconic image of the blue sailor uniformed girl wielding a katana. In Blood C,
Saya supports a red and black school uniform with a chain (I kid you not)
around the collar. This is pretty fucking stupid. Blood is a franchise about
vampires, there is absolutely no need to ‘Goth-up’ the heroine in such a
blatant manner. With hindsight it starts to become clear that the writer started
out with this image of a gothic schoolgirl hunting monsters with a katana and
decided to slap the name Blood onto it to attract a wider fan base. In case you’re
wondering Blood: The Last Vampire, Blood+ and Blood C were all written by
different people. I think this adds weight to my theory.
To the shows credit, Blood C panders to a different kind
of horror, specifically the gory violent kind. Which does start off surprisingly
well, as one by one her friends, classmates and even general bystanders are all
brutality murdered right before a helpless Saya. This ability to create a sense
of suspense and peril is perhaps the best aspect of Blood C. Unfortunately the
effect is quickly diminished by how routine the attacks become. Monsters show
up around Saya, Saya vows to protect her friends, her friends die and only then
does Saya go batshit and kill the monster. When we reach the school battle, the
charm is somewhat lost since we know Saya is capable of killing the monster but
only after she has witnessed her friends die gruesomely. Once we’ve reach this
point, the gory factor just seems superficial.
As for the twist ending, it creates more questions than
answers. While the initial notion of trying to change Saya’s personality to see
what characteristics are innate, is an interesting idea and I imagine could be
a good story if handled better, it just raises the question of why? What is the
villain’s motivation? What does he actually gain? I mean aside from screwing
with Saya and producing a massive body count? The final battle is one of the most
gratuitous and pointless sequences I have ever seen. How is slaughtering an
entire village not going to attract mass attention? And why do it anyway? Oh
yeah right, “evil”. I keep forgetting.
However the underlying problem with Blood C is that there
is very little backstory and the audience is never privy to the true Saya since
her entire performance was a farce. Even to the extent that the audience never
learns what Saya is – a vampire hybrid. This is problematic since the anime
attempts to stand on its own and that would probably have been for the best. Nevertheless
it can’t even manage that since Blood C requires at least some background knowledge
for the audience to have a clue what is going on half the time. In particular
there are references made to Saya’s monstrous true nature, something that is
never explicitly shown and so there is never a chance to be invested. If we
never see the monster Saya, how do we know Saya Kisaragi isn’t the real Saya?
In short Blood C would have flare much better if it had
dropped the pretence of being a Blood spin-off and just accept being a Blood
knock-off.
Rating: 5/10
For fans of: Highschool of the dead
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