As Blade continues to hunt Deacon frost, we start to learn more about what Frost is up to.
What They Say:
Blade and Makoto invade a research facility that is home to a tribe that controls vampires.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With some good episodes that focused heavily on the man who Blade was and how he went from a young boy named Eric to what he is now, the show has done well to flesh him out and provide the origin story in an engaging while. While the hunt for Van Helsing was a kind of simple way to tie it together, it did work fairly well overall and allowed for a number of things to be hit on. What the show has lacked is an overall theme to tie it together yet other than the hunt for Deacon Frost. Iron Man’s series was a bit weak with it as well, similar to Wolverine, and only X-Men has really driven home a strong narrative right out of the gate.
What this episode does is to expand on the world of the vampires a bit to show some of what goes on within that realm. Introducing a particular branch of vampires, mainly consisting of those out of Asia that has grown in power quickly, we see how they want to use Blade’s blood in order to help usher in a new breed of vampire that will be able to conquer the world with ease. And not just humanity, there is a definite rift within the world of vampires as well as many of the new blood resent and despise that High Council and the European vampires that have been around for so long and established the hierarchy. It definitely makes sense and they do it up fun with an emissary visiting in his best old style clothing while the Asian vampires are all very modern and sleek. And with Deacon Frost leading it, it definitely has an interesting edge to it all.
Thrown into the mix here as Blade and Makoto pursue Frost is that on the island that they’re on is a tribe of people that use old methods of control and seeming magic to deal with vampires and other creatures of the night. It gets pretty violent with them and Blade and Makoto get drawn into it as well since they’re both good guys who can’t just let bad things happen without getting in-volved. It’s not a bad little subplot when you get down to it as it deals with more varieties of creatures that you deal with and we get to see a bit about what Blade continues to struggle with. The main thrust here though revolves around the vampires themselves and that definitely helps to set the stage better for the overall theme of the series.
In Summary:
While Blade isn’t likely to reach the top of the list for me of the four Marvel anime series, it’s definitely leapt past Wolverine and will easily move past Iron Man when you get down to story potential overall. X-Men still is at the top for me with what it did on a number of levels. What Blade can work here is a lot of good vampire material that we’ve had in anime for years and years now and blend it well with the Blade comic material as well. I’m definitely enjoying the series overall and it’s now starting to showcase more of what it wants to do when it comes to Deacon Frost other than him just being an elusive villain for Blade to eventually catch up to,. Giving it a bit more meaning and impact will definitely make it more engaging.
Grade: B
