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Digital Downloads
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 16:00 |
 Time for another bout with BLASSREITER, and in this case another little taster of how it could have been if all that daft Amalgam / fighting business hadn't gotten in the way. With Zwölf apparently no more, thanks to Xargin's attack, Amanda and Hermann take refuge while they figure out what to do next...
Amanda escapes from Zwölf headquarters, and takes refuge in an orphanage run by her aunt. There, she is visited by Sasha, who entrusts her with the design data for Isis, a new generation of nano-machine created to be the last resort option to defeat Xargin. However, Beatrice learns of Isis, and aware of its significance heads for the orphanage to seize the data for herself. Meanwhile, Hermann's having to come to terms with what the nanomachines have done to his body - he's afraid of what it represents, of his no longer being fully human. It does give him the ability to fight, though - so when Beatrice arrives at the orphanage, it's Hermann who faces her...
BLASSREITER has always had its best moments when it concentrated on its characters, and not on the action. With the exception of Malek, whose story veered a bit too far into gratuitous nastiness for me, the characters who have had some time devoted to their backstory - Joseph, Xargin and Sasha, primarily - have all ended up getting a little more understanding out of me as a result. This time around, Beatrice gets the backstory treatment, with a sequence covering her life before meeting Xargin and how she's come to be so devoted to him - although that sense of devotion may be one-sided. There are some scenes in there that could almost be considered powerful, and while you end up more feeling sorry for her than anything else (her devotion to Xargin being somewhat misplaced), it's still a good way to flesh out her character. Add in some half-decent scenes with Amanda and Hermann, and you have an episode that is one of BLASSREITER's better efforts - although that's perhaps not much of a compliment.
Of course, that good work is offset by a few more mindless action scenes, which are really where the series loses me. It's strange - I like action, I like mecha shows (and that's what the Amalgams are, at heart - glorified mecha), but the way it's done in this series just completely turns me off. That's mostly down to simply not knowing what Xargin's motivations are - at the moment it simply seems as though he's throwing the ultimate hissy fit at humanity, and that's no motivation at all - and without knowing why all this is happening, I can't bring myself to care about it or the people involved.
If you have any sense, you'll have given up watching BLASSREITER by now and be reading this simply out of curiosity - if so, that's how it should be. If, like me, you're still forcing your way through it, you have my sympathies - it can't be easy. The idea of BLASSREITER has so much promise, if it were to be done right, and the character work shows that the folks behind it can actually write, but overall it's just not worth it.
Watch this episode
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