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Now in Japan
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Tuesday, 29 November 2005 00:00 |
 Blood+ is the follow-on to 2000's movie Blood: The Last Vampire,
a film famous for being particularly, well, bloody. Making the
move from big screen to small requires a certain toning down (although
there's still plenty of the red stuff), while there are some changes to
the lead girl's personality that have upset some fans - but that
doesn't mean this isn't a good series...
1 - First Kiss
Saya Otonashi has a problem - much as she may seem the ordinary high
school girl, she can only remember the past year of her life.
She's being cared for by a local family, whose son Kai has taken on an
"older brother" role for her, and apart from her missing memories
she has pretty much an ideal life - until a tune played on a cello
begins to trigger memories within her. Later in the day, Saya is
approached by the cello player, who seems to know her. Their
meeting is the beginning of a huge change in Saya's life - or is that a
reversion to normal? - as a monster appears, killing one of Saya's
teachers in a brief moment. The cello player helps Saya escape
from the monster before explaining that the monster is a Yokushu, a
creature that feeds on the life force of others, before forcing her to
drink some of his own blood From there, a drastic change comes
over Saya...
2 - Magical Words
The blood of Haji (the cello player) causes Saya's true self to awaken
- and that true self is a lethal killer with blood-red eyes.
Sensing the change in her, the Yokushu attacks, but it's no match for
Saya's combat abilities and is quickly dispatched. With the
monster killed, she reverts to her "normal" self and collapses,
horrified at what has happened to her. Kai, who has been watching
events, confronts the cello player about what he's done to Saya, but
they're interrupted by the arrival of the US military and have to
quickly leave the school grounds. When Saya awakes, she initially
has no memories of what's happened, but slowly they begin to come back
to her. Her foster father seems to be aware of her past ond her
true nature, but when the military ask for Saya to be handed over to
them he refuses - the military see her as only a weapon, and he's not
about to allow her to be used in that fashion, but Saya overhears their
conversation...
Seems the US military are quite heavily involved in whatever it is
that's going on - they've been paying Saya's foster parents to take
care of her and still see her as 'property'. If the initial
scenes of episode one are anything to go by, she's someone you really
don't want to meet when she's been fully awakened, either - definitely
the complete opposite of the cute & sweet girl she "normally"
is. Quotes used as it looks like "normal" for Saya involves heavy
swords and lots of blood.
I've never seen Blood: The Last Vampire, so I don't have any
preconceptions formed by the movie. One of the biggest complaints
I've seen so far is the schoolgirl-Saya just isn't in keeping with the
tone of the series - she's meant to be a psychopathic killer all the time
- but 52 episodes of that (yes, this is set to be a long series) would
be too much. The contrast between schoolgirl-Saya and
awakened-Saya was part of the appeal of these two episodes, and I hope
she retains her "normal" form as much as possible. Given she
seems to remember what she's done while "awakened", there should be
some interesting psychological damage to explore as a result, too.
So far, so good, though. Perhaps a bit on the slow side, but with
so many episodes to work with there's no need to rush the setup of the
characters & setting. Animation's of a high quality - so far,
at least - and the background music is pretty good too. I'll
definitely be watching Blood+ for a while at least...
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