Blood-C channels your inner 14 year old boy.
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)
After an episode where Saya essentially sat shell shocked for the whole time, barely able to utter a word at all, the whole thing just left me laughing at it in that it felt like we had been trolled for an entire season, punked on the real story and given something that was largely meaningless. While it would have been interesting if it had run for a couple of episodes that way before shifting into the main story like it does now, it likely would have gained a lot of attention and fans for doing so. By going this route, where after ten episodes of a thirteen episode series, we’re just now learning the main story of it all and the basic truths, it’s almost insulting.
With the mild revelations about how Saya has been used in this way for all this time to try and shake her out of what she’s in, though the twins and the teacher rigged the game early, Saya’s now starting to get herself back on track. While she’s coming to the revelations, she’s still not truly reacting to things even as events unfold around her. Terrible events at that, where the actors that have rigged the game are now being sent to leave the stage in a brutal, disgusting way. So much so that it comes across like the horror hentai shows we used to get in the mid 90’s and into the next decade where it was just ugly, disturbing stuff that served its own purpose but was just gratuitous. If the scenes, such as with the twins, had been done in an almost wordless way, it might not have been so bad, but with the feeling of real terror coming from the screams and that of the teacher, it was hugely uncomfortable to say the least.
Saya does get dragged into actually coping with things and lets loose with her real self, going full out and doing all she can to stop the carnage with carnage of her own. The revelations are meager here overall, though she is forced to fight those that she had been tricked into believing were key parts of her life. The emotional context of it isn’t lost, but it’s lost all meaning at this point and it just turns further down this road. With the whole town having been made up of actors participating for various reasons, the letting loose of the Elder Bairns in greater numbers leads to more mass chaos, which has to be blurred out, and it’s just terrible. It’s reminiscent of the kind of cartoons friends would draw when you were in junior high school when it comes to creative violence. Yet here, it’s a high budget animation delight of disturbing material. Few shows have turned me off in the way this one has so quickly.
In Summary:
At the halfway mark of this episode, I was ready to close the window and be done with it. It’s just ugly, even for a show of this nature with what its characters are. While we’ve had some brutal pieces in it as Saya has taken down the Elder Bairns, it went far more brutal when the school scene happened a few episodes ago. This one ups the intensity of that by focusing on just a couple of characters and making their fear and cries of terror resonate all the more. It made me incredibly uncomfortable and practically sickened by it, and I’ve seen a lot worse when it comes to horror splatter porn before in the hentai world where bodies are torn asunder in ways like this. Here, it’s just not right and has turned me off of the series completely at this point. No matter how it tries to turn itself around in the next episode, the final episode no less, it’s not something I’d ever recommend.
Addendum: I had previously been told by the UK simulcast Twitter feed that Blood-C was 13 episodes plus a movie, hence the end statement. The show is actually 12 episodes plus a movie due next year.
Grade: D
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.
So there will be a 13th episode? I thought this was the last one, and the story would continue in next year’s movie.
The folks at Anime On Demand for the UK simulcast informed me a couple of weeks ago that it’s 13 episodes plus a movie, which is what I was using as the basis.
Wow, not even Gantz killed people like this. I still can’t believe Clamp was behind this! X/1999 and the Tsubasa OVAs had violence but never got this far. The opening theme for the series was unsuitable in a funny way! XD