Saya’s anguish over recent events is only made worse when threats against her father are now made.
What They Say:
A brand new “Blood” brought to you by the dream-team of Blood x CLAMP. The original animation “Blood-C” at last begins.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the losses that Saya has felt recently by having people she knows or are at least familiar with getting killed, she’s starting to collapse in on herself a little bit. She does have a decent support system at home though that is there for her, but how can you recover easily after seeing someone you know chewed in half as we saw in the previous episode? What’s making things a little more surreal for her though is the Elder Bairn that’s communicating with her (which is amusing in itself considering the voice actor that’s shared with Watanuki from xxxholic) and there’s all sorts of discussion about wishes and what kinds of limits he has in terms of his abilities.
With the promise to grant a wish, though there are those restrictions, the dog has promised to stay with her until things are resolved. With her not feeling any threat of evil from him, it’s something that’s somewhat accepted here, though she still has this disturbing feeling that it’s all a dream. While we do get this all in a fairly relaxed form, there is some amount of tension to it which is lost not long after as Saya returns to her daytime persona by going to school. Though not without a trip to get a drink from the cafe first where there’s the somewhat disturbing interactions that are had there. Personal space is something that doesn’t seem to exist at times, especially when you want to make a moment seem more important.
Not unlike past episodes, there is a bit of action here as we get a stone-style samurai creature that shows up that gives her a good run for her money. And like the previous one that seemed to know a bit about her, he’s threatening her father as well. It’s a creative design from the start with the eight arms that he has, giving him a very strong insect like carapace, and setting it outside in the fields during the daytime adds even more to it. And the show continues to be one that doesn’t shy away from the bloody scenes as this one really goes all out at one point with the blood from both sides all over the place. Saya’s ruthless nature when it comes to defeating her enemies is one of the best moments of the show and the dark nature she has is shown in full here. While most of the episode can be written off, the few minutes we get of action and potential plot bits really sells its potential.
In Summary:
With the last couple of episodes, we’ve slowly gotten a little more on the story here but still nowhere near enough to actually make it compelling. Seven episodes in and we’ve still gotten only the thinnest of plot material here which makes it pretty much near impossible to actually recommend the show. At least on that basis. It is very easy to recommend when it comes to the animation and the violence itself has really been stepped up a lot in the last few episodes. This episode doesn’t sell the show any better overall, but if you’ve stuck with it for this long, it’s at least teasing out a little more and still giving us enough payoff in terms of action and bloody violence.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Nico Nico
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
