Bursting from the seams with style
What They Say:
In a fictional version of New York City, called Hellsalem’s Lot, a young man named Leonardo Walch suddenly finds himself mixed in with an organization called Libra that fights super criminals. Blessed with super vision himself, he now battles to help save the world from a criminal called Femt, the King of Depravity.
The Review:
Content(warning as this review may contain spoilers):
I’m a pretty big fan of Yasuhiro Nightow as both Trigun and Gungrave are some of my favorite shows. I also happened to really enjoy director Rie Matsumoto’s last major work Kyousogiga with it having ended up being my favorite show from the year it aired. So obviously hearing that this series would be a cross between those two great minds had me pretty excited and made this one of my most anticipated shows of the season. So does it live up to the pedigree? The answer is a resounding yes.
The setup is here is that after moving to a fictional NYC called Hellsalem’s Lot, a self-proclaimed ordinary young man named Leonardo Walch accidentally finds himself mixed up with an organization of superhumans called Libra. Libra apparently fights super criminals and one in particular called Femt, the King of Depravity. Since Leonardo has super vision himself, he ends up getting recruited as a member and helps them in saving the world while also trying to find his own place in the world.
Alright so to make a long story short, this show is both ridiculously cool and ridiculously weird. It’s style is something of a perfect blend between Baccano in terms of characters/mafia setting and Space Dandy in terms of super crazy universe that can do whatever the heck it wants and not feel out of place. A lot of the show’s elements seem like they wouldn’t work together as well as they do, but they’re handled in an over the top fun manner that makes it an easy sell, with Rie Matsumoto’s brilliant direction helping things as she gives it a lot of visual flair and style. Kyusogiga was a very grand looking production and this one is too as the animation looks absolutely gorgeous and the music’s really great too with a super jazzy sounding soundtrack and the opening and ending themes easily taking the prize as the best of the season(and the ending song having some of the best/goofiest looking dance animation I’ve ever seen in anything).
The cast of characters all seem pretty fun so far for who we’ve been introduced to with outrageously cool names to match (when Leonardo Walch is the least cool sounding name of the cast so far you know it’s doing something right) and narratively it also shares Baccano’s non-chronological storytelling as the first episode pieces together Leonardo’s backstory and his introduction to Libra. It crams in a lot of stuff in to piece together meaning the show’s story is likely going to be something of a jigsaw puzzle, but so far it’s doing so in that makes you eager to see more rather than being a deterrent. That could wear itself thin pretty fast though so thankfully, the second episode lightens up a bit on it in favor of fleshing a couple of it’s cast members and having a really fun car chase sequence. It’s balancing super-complicated plot and insane fun pretty well, and hopefully it’ll be able to keep that up. So far this show’s an absolute blast and I’m really looking forward to seeing more. But enough with this review, you should be watching it instead.
In Summary:
Blood Blockade Battlefront’s opening episodes are a real treat and easily the best this season’s had to offer so far. The characters are fun, the production both looks and sounds great, and it’s got a whole lot of style. It’s hard to say exactly where the story will go just get but all those other elements are enough of a sell so far to easily make this a contender for best show of the season and if you haven’t seen it yet…well what are you waiting for?
Grade: A+
Streamed By: FUNimation
