First Impression – Blood-C

When they say ‘blood’ in the title, they mean it

Ness: Ooooo finally it’s out!! Well, there was a pre-air but I didn’t bother with that crap low quality video. It’s all about the high quality baby~! And the wait was worth it. I have been looking forward to this anime since hearing that it’s being adapted once again. But man, we’re in for lots of changes…

Hime: I’m a little biased when it comes to CLAMP these days, expect bile and sourness on the horizon. Though, I am ready to give Blood-C a chance; this is one of those time where I would happily be proven wrong in my preconceptions.

Karakuri: Here it is! The summer title I was most excited for: Blood C! I was recently informed that CLAMP will be doing the storyline too, so that’s something to look forward to (I’ve been a fan of CLAMP for almost 10 years now so there’s a lot of love here). Anyways, I’m biased, so on to Blood C.

The new series starts off with Saya doing some sort of miko thing and we see some sort of light until her father shows up. When she goes to greet him, she falls on her face and we learn that this is a common occurrence. They then talk about the light and how it might lead Saya to her future because her mother used to see things like that too.

Insert “No! Don’t go towards the light!” joke here

She then goes to a café nearby to eat breakfast like she does every morning and the owner, Fumito and her (who have known each other for a long time apparently) talk about how clumsy she is and how she and her father are on really good terms. After leaving the café, she then sings about how good life is. Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything extremely plot important here.

Sadly, this song has been stuck in my head for the past hour or so.

Saya makes it to school on time and her friends (Yuka and twins whose names were never mentioned but apparently they’re called Nono and Nene) and her basically talk about how saint-like and clumsy she is. The class rep, some quiet, angsty looking guy and the homeroom teacher, Kanako are all briefly introduced. We then get random ominous flashes of a lake and you think something is going to happen…

… But instead you get basketball. Although Saya is incapable of walking on a level floor without tripping, she is somehow extremely good at sports (is this even possible?). While talking with her friends about how good she is at sports, the topic switches to the fact that Saya’s mother died when she was younger and that’s how she became close with Fumito because he took care of her.

Suddenly it’s after school and the class rep asks if Saya wants to go for cake with him. Saya then says that she has to head straight home after school and notices the quiet guy staring at her before she leaves. Saya runs for a bit, notices something but doesn’t investigate, runs, notices something again, runs, gets distracted by a dog and then finally runs home.

Is there even any need to look both ways before crossing the street? The town is practically deserted.

When she gets there, she finds her father just standing by the entrance to the shrine. Suddenly she has a serious expression and asks if she has work. They perform some sort of ritual where her father hands her a sword and he tells her to ‘slay it’.

Saya takes the sword and walks dramatically deep into a forest where she runs into a stone statue looking thing that’s floating in the middle of a shallow pond. After chanting something, Saya and the statue have a ridiculously long staring contest before it suddenly rushes at her. She hits it a few times with her sword but it gets up again and suddenly grows arms.

It would have been terribly unfortunate if the thing stood up again at this moment in time

While exchanging blows, she loses the sword and gets the crap beaten out of her until she dives and manages to retrieve it again. Her eyes then turn red and she pierces the bandana wearing rock through the neck (after cutting off both of its arms) effectively killing it.

Holy crap, it’s like a fountain.

She walks home covered in blood and meets her father, who says they must purify the blade. However, Saya is shaking and has a death grip on the sword. When her father goes to remove it from her hands, Saya sees the light from the beginning of the episode again. It ends there without really explaining anything.

Plus side to black uniforms: blood stains don’t show as much

Ending thoughts:

Indeed, I had somewhat of a bit idea of what to expect considering the images that I’ve seen for this anime. Something about Saya having a school life and of course fighting demons at night. But really now, this is CLAMP and their remake of the series seems softer and even less darker compared to the movie and Blood+. So many changes and for one, I just have to say… WHAT THE HECK IS WITH HER TWINTAILS like puff balls. It’s so so annoying when they do back shots of Saya’s head. But that’s not the end of it. Oh man, the opening theme was pretty hawt. Seeing CLAMP go so bold with some nekkid Saya wasn’t so bad. The blood peeling off effect was such a reminder from the Ghost in the Shell movie! Though, the song was pretty good!

I was not as excited for this show when seeing a pre-air out but once I got the official aired video and started it; I was so looking forward to what CLAMP would do with one of my favorite stories. Well, it’s a whole different story from what I can tell. Seeing that Saya is clumsy, I guess for comedy relief, is annoying. They turned Saya into a clumsy innocent hard working girl who has a somewhat hidden night life where she gets all serious slaying demons. Indeed, the water fight was actually pretty cool. The scene where Saya ran past the demon and dived under the shallow water to get her katana was just awesome. What I noticed though, is that they didn’t use the old story element of her blood being special that kills the other demons or even depict Saya to be somewhat of a vampire.

Seeing a school life for Saya is pretty cool. Dude, Saya has twintails and there’s actually twins (that are in sync) in her class! AND OF COURSE, there’s the hawt bishie silent type guy teeheeeheee xD. I still have mixed thoughts of what I think about this first episode. I guess, in order for me to enjoy this anime… I should not think of this as Blood the Last Vampire or Blood+, but as a whole different anime with no relation whatsoever. Comparing this new anime to the originals will just ruin the show for me. But overall, the animation is okay, Saya’s hairstyle is shit and I want more bishi cold-hearted hawtness! So! I somewhat look forward to the next episode and I’ll be following this anime. But I don’t think that I’ll be reviewing it. Laters~

Watching the OP my first thought was; Oh great, twins. But what’s that you say? “Hime, you looooove twins! Aren’t you always going on about them in Blue Exorcist?” Yeah, but that’s male twins. Female twins are just blegh. It’s like double the hamster voice, it hurts my ears. We also get a nice shot of blood peeling from Saya’s ass. THANKS FOR THAT, GUYS. SOMETHING I REALLY WANTED TO SEE. The song itself is okay, probably merits a download. It’s about as memorable as the ED, which isn’t saying much. The lyrics are pretty good, I’ll give it that. Very…uh, vampirey? The animation is nice, too. I like CLAMP’s distinctive noodley style anyway so that wasn’t a problem for me.

I was, however, about ready to commit seppuku when Saya started singing about the most inane pointless shit that ever happened. One verse was bad enough but it just seemed to drag on forever. Obvious padding is obvious. Also, she’s supposed to be a vampire right? She has awesome red eyes and a kick-ass sword, and yet she wanders around with a smile on her face singing about the yumminess of coffee? We are borderline Edward from Twilight territory here with how gay that is. If she started sparkling guys it honestly wouldn’t surprise me. I was expecting more from their uniforms, too, tbh. What school allows chains around the collar? Is this an S&M training school, or are they all just major goths? When we finally got to some actual spilling of blood – from a stone with grasshopper hands, whut? – it looked pretty cool. I was just happy it was actually blood and not rainbows, you never know.

The atmosphere also blows. Holic could rustle up a creepy atmosphere when it wanted too, and X was all about making things feel epic. So why does this have no particular feeling about it whatsoever? The music is barely there, unless of course you count the buzz of insects as part of the soundtrack. It’s like they’ve gone out of their way to make this the most boring set up ever. Kobato was dull, but at least it tried to evoke an emotion from you, even if it was usually tears. I just don’t understand why all these supernatural-based shows feel they MUST waste half of their first episode showing us the boring daily lives of our characters. Half the time it’s not even called back to so why bother? There’s nothing wrong with diving straight into the action. Blood-C would be a thousand times better if they skipped all this training and just threw us into something a bit more interesting. Treating it like a shounen so we have to wait for Saya to “level up” before she can do anything substantial is just a waste of time. Time that I wouldn’t waste on this show, because even if it manages to pull itself out of mud and into something entertaining the ending will no doubt be complete balls because this is CLAMP and they can’t write an ending for shit.

Okay yeah, nothing happened in this until about 2/3^rds in, but when action did happen it was pretty awesome. Aside from the ending, I was disappointed with the way the story started out. It seemed like everything anyone said revolved around Saya being clumsy and the rest of the time she spent running, stopping, looking around and then running again. You’d think something was about to happen, but it never did. None of the characters really stood out to me much, aside from Saya but I’m sure they’ll get involved with the plot in some way or another (I’m talking about you, angsty looking guy). Some of the character’s names weren’t introduced either, though their names are up on the Blood C site so I guess they’ll get around to that eventually or just mention them in passing. The seiyuu were about average too, so I guess I’ll just be watching this for the action and blood. (Though knowing CLAMP, they probably have some crazy plot in store for us.)

The opening song… was that random French I heard? Anyways, the animation of Saya fighting looks pretty badass but the opening song didn’t really stand out to me. The opposite happened with then ending where I liked the song sung by Nana Mizuki (in what I will forever dub the Rosario+Vampire ending song voice) but the animation was just still shots of Saya in various places. My god she has a lot of hair. Also, her glasses must be glued to her face because during that battle, they didn’t even go askew. Mine fit pretty well, but like hell would they be able to stay there if I moved around that much. Other than that, I have no complaints about the character designs (even if the two males from school look suspiciously like Touya and Yukito).

Fortunately, it looks like this Saya is a bit more inclined to fight than the beginning Saya of Blood+! Hopefully there won’t be any episodes wasted on Saya not wanting to kill because she seemed pretty okay with fighting in this episode. Speaking of Saya: Most. Kickass. School. Uniform. Ever. I am extremely jealous of how awesome Saya’s school uniform looks. The sleeve!!! THE SLEEVE. Not entirely sure why the chain is there, but whatever. Is the sword supposed to be special or something? Saya seemed to be less powerful without it, but that could have just been to cause tension in the fight sequence (and she didn’t even need her blood to kill the thing…. Whatever it is). It looks like the whole killing vampires (if that’s what they even are in this series) thing in this is heavily tied to Saya’s miko duties but I guess we’ll find out about that later. Overall, it was kind of an average first episode with a completely epic fighting scene that made things worthwhile so let’s see where CLAMP takes the story from here.

Preview:

The dog shows up again. Was it’s random appearance actually plot relevant??? Looks like more slice of life but there seems to be another epic battle ahead as well to balance things out. Well, until next time~!