And the third series I’m definitely going to blog this season: Blood-C. Before I decide on the others I first want to watch Dantalian no Shoka and Kami-Sama no Memo-chou’s second episode that air this evening. As a fan of Clamp though, I really like this series so far. It’s got a lot to like, but at the same time I can also understand that it’s not for everyone.
For the ones complaining that this is too slow, though: that’s pretty much both Clamp and Blood+, albeit in many different ways. Blood+ took a really long time to get going (like, 15 episodes or something), while Clamp’s stories are always filled with a lot of laid-back scenes, describing the different characters. It’s that kind of charm that I really like, because of how they always end up delivering upon it later, using the slice of life scenes to create memorable characters, even those who are supposedly one-sided at first. My only worry right now is the 13 episodes, but at the same time I’m very curious as what Clamp can do when they have less time than usual to work with.
Oh, and the fight scenes! This series definitely has the best action of the season. This is because you can actually see what happens: characters’ movements are detailed and actually anatomically correct. Saya really feels like she’s struggling with the enemies she fights, and instead of the cameras just focusing on some weird angle, they really allows us to see how she moves and tries to attack. This has been a knack of Production IG for ages now. I really feared that they abandoned this philosophy with Sengoku Basara, but thankfully Blood-C shows them once more animating some excellent down to earth fight scenes.
Now, the big potential pitfall for this series will be spending too much time on build-up, and (most importantly) too little on actually delivering. I liked this episode, though. The non-action bits were good slice of life, and felt very personal. The characterization was pretty good and down to earth, especially of the cast as a whole, and the characters talking to each other actually kept my attention throughout the episode. When describing the slice of life, the dialogue is actually quite natural, the characters discuss down to earth topics that actually secretly flesh them out really well. My only problem is that Saya acting embarrassed felt awkward. Her acting overall has its moments where it’s a bit weak.
Oh, and for the people who haven’t seen Blood+: don’t worry. It’s not yet sure whether or not this Saya is the same Saya as in Blood+, because we don’t know whether her father is telling the truth about actually being her father and all, but this really seems like an original story. There have been no references to other series
Rating: ** (Excellent)
On the other hand, this is the biggest disappointment of the season for me… Watched Blood+ long ago and liked it quite a bit, and this is just… Not even close
I hate what they did to Saya… And this spends too much time on pointless school crap etc that no one cares about, then inserts a random fight at the end, which makes it feel like a boring monster of the week show
Sigh…
The action in this show took me by surprise and has kept me interested. I do hope that the story arc starts picking up soon.
It’s not so much that I’m disappointed with Blood-C being slow.. just that aside from a few not-quite-spectacular fights and some obvious foreshadowing, what’s happening is utterly trite and tedious. I just can’t help comparing to this Heartcatch Precure, and yet finding it underwhelming.
“using the slice of life scenes to create memorable characters”
Ha…
“The non-action bits were good slice of life, and felt very personal. The characterization was pretty good and down to earth, especially of the cast as a whole, and the characters talking to each other actually kept my attention throughout the episode. When describing the slice of life, the dialogue is actually quite natural, the characters discuss down to earth topics that actually secretly flesh them out really well.”
Um…Psgels. Where we watching the same episode here? There is nothing memorable about these characters. They all feel like typical characters transplanted with personality traits of previous clamp characters. That conversation wasn’t natural at all and did nothing to explore the characters. All we got was some good fight animation and pointless banter. In other words, this was episode 1 rehashed. I spent the first 16 minutes in painstaking boredom.
Psgels, I bet you will drop this show eventually. All and all if the next episode doesn’t give me a reason to give a damn about the a girl with a glaring lack of personality I am dropping it.
I can only agree with what AidanAK47 said and say that I totally disagree with your assessment of the slice-of-life in this series, psgels. These characters are a pain to watch not only because they are stereotypes but because the whole dialogues between them just seem… stupid. Or then there are moments when these school-friends seem like they are making fun of Saya without her realizing it. There’s for example this scene where Itsuki tries (again) to express his love for Saya, getting even an obvious encouragement from the twins and STILL Saya just doesn’t get it! Saya isn’t just this kind of unnerving moe-dump anymore, she just seems retarded by now.
And Aidan also mentioned that already but to make an example how much of Ep 02 seemed like “more of the same” without real progress: There’s this banal scene between the dog and Saya where Saya just tries to get close to it and the dog flees at the last second. And now it happened twice (!) in two episodes, one such scene could be a hint to the importance of the dog in later episodes but letting this boring scene happen two times in the first two episodes is just obvious and dumb.
This series is made to be slow and really depends on the characters and the dialogue but both these things just seem so obvious and stupid… I can only hope this series gets better once it arrives at the serious part.
I kind of second Frost and Aidan, there is not a lot going on so far. On the other had, this show did remind me to pick up blood+, which I’m enjoying (25 episodes in).
Even as a Clamp fan, I’d have to agree. Saya just seems one- dimensional at this point. Okay, so she’s great at tons of things. She’s loved by everyone around her. She’s an all-out nice girl.Also, her goal is to protect everyone..Hmmmm… Where have I heard that before?
As a Clamp heroine she’s completely forgettable and I find it hard to like her along with rest of the cast.They better get started on the real plot soon because I’m losing my patience!
I feel like Clamp has been going in a downward spiral after the very disappointing endings of TRC( bizarre plot twists yo) and xxxholic( where was the resolution? I WANT A PROPER ENDING! After all that build-up, that’s what we get?!). They really have to pick up the pace otherwise Clamp will lose the credibility they’ve built up through the years.
Also, a side note:when Saya approached the dog, was anyone secretly praying the dog to bite her?No? Guess it was just me then.
This show seems like the most uninspired, boring show of the season. Seems like they’re only making it as a cash-in on the Blood name.
Blood + was paced so slowly it was painful to watch sometimes. You could skip an episode and not really miss too much. Blood C really has given us two episodes of mild buildup, without explaining a whole lot. I also thought the second ep was better visually than the first. There are parts of it though that bring me back to the mid 90’s.
Glad to see almost everyone agrees with me, I honestly thought Id get bashed for my comment lol
But really, like everyone says, Saya is such a boring character right now… WHY DID THEY HAVE TO ADD A STUPID CUTE CLUMSY SIDE TO HER? IS THIS KOBATO? NO! Its supposed to be a hardcore anime about vampires, ffs… If she was on her “serious” personality all the time, this would already be so much better
What I also don’t understand how one can give these silly school-antics THAT much screen-time if they are in the end just banal since actually it’s all about Saya’s darker side… At least I thought this is a series about a girl kicking some monster-ass – but as they portray it right now it seems more like it will be some kind of sentimental drama about Saya than her fighting for some just cause against evil monsters.
But the problem with that is just how silly they made Saya… how is she supposed to be the centre of a serious plot with that kind of characterization?
There’s a reason Psgels is the respected anime blogger and you guys are commenters at his blog – and not the other way around. The man has a very good eye and Blood-C is a far more appealing and interesting show than what one might gather from all the bitching going on. Personally, THANK GOD it’s not like Blood+, a show that consistently failed to engage me, so that I just couldn’t force myself to care anymore by the time the “really important stuff” started happening.
I have to agree on Glau on this. Psgels has a lot of patience and he blogs shows which are deemed “boring” by the mainstream. Anyway, if you don’t like to watch the show, don’t bother watching. No one is forcing you anyway.
Yeah, Blood+ should have had more one minute cat scenes, lame singing routines, and a heap of Kobato so that it could be a much more compelling action series like Blood-C. Maybe if Saya had a tired personality split foreshadowed with a sledgehammer that ties into a theme of nature/nurture Blood+ wouldn’t have needed all of those episodes to tell its story.
There’s actually not a lot about Blood-C that ties it to anything else in the franchise, but that doesn’t necessarily matter. This is obviously more influenced by CLAMP, but I wouldn’t say that it is “soooo CLAMP,” what with having read their manga and all; their works are actually usually pretty tense, even when they aren’t full of action. The anime adaptations aren’t always good at presenting this, which is how I’m rationalizing psgels’s perspective here. Blood-C will undoubtedly move more in that direction once it gets off of this copy pasta, and all of the frivolous things will become serious business, but this followup episode was really tedious.
Like psgels said the fight scenes are awesome, I thought the pacing was really slow too, but I don’t really care, I guess people are expecting a lot of action and blood because of the short lenght and name, and because of that are forgetting to pay attention to the little nuances that for me are just a preview of what’s to come, all in all I believe in Clamp and I don’t think they would name the anime Blood just to borrow the fame and the heroine’s name, I believe they will also make sure to add a strong theme, even if not the same that was used in Blood+. I’m guessing that in the end there will be this big message about individuality, changes and what you really are, and as I see this Saya will be perfect for that. If something in that league happens, the action stays down to earth and I keep getting this dark vibe from the ambient and scenary I don’t really care if it stays slow.
People can have differences of opinion about the balance of SoL and Action in Blood-C. I don’t know what to think of it yet.
I do want to correct something that @Morgoth said, however. They did not repeat the scene with the dog. In this episode she tries to get near the dog, but it runs away. In the first episode, she tried to get near the dog, but remembered that she had to run home to fight a monster. Two different things. That doesn’t mean you have to like it, but it is incorrect to say the same thing was shown twice.
That’s a dog? That was quite a failure of object classification on my part. I want to write, “If I get any dumber I’ll have to revert to picture books,” but obviously that’s no good. I suppose drooling on myself is still a possibility.
“There’s a reason Psgels is the respected anime blogger and you guys are commenters at his blog – and not the other way around.”
Yep and that is that Psgels has the time and patience to keep one updated. And the ability to write a decent opinion. That doesn’t mean he is always right.
I respect his opinion and most of the time I do agree with him. But occasionally I find he may have missed a point or misjudged a series. Well that just goes to show that he is human.
“There’s a reason Psgels is the respected anime blogger and you guys are commenters at his blog – and not the other way around.”
Why the odd defensiveness? We aren’t attacking psgels. If anything we’re wondering what his keen eye is seeing that we’re missing, because what you say happened to you with Blood+ is happening for us right now with Blood C.
@Joojoobees: Hmm, my choice of words wasn’t that great, I should’ve explained my point better… What I meant was that the basic meaning of the scene (the dog is important and Saya is attracted to it) is portrayed two times with these scenes without adding anything to the meaning of the connection the second time around. Therefore it seemed like a bad kind of repetition in my eyes. Since I don’t think this is one of these kind of scenes where repetition is a sort of metaphor.
@Hogart
I wasn’t defending Psgels, I’m just tired of the endless bitching about Blood-C after only 2 eps and I’m glad at least Psgels can see there’s something to the show. The difference with me vs Blood+ and the people bitching about Blood-C appears to be that I didn’t go into Blood+ with any specific expectations and I at least tried to stick it out (understand that I’m not bitching about Blood+ even now, I’m just glad I can get into Blood-C the way I never really could with Blood+), whereas those who have a problem with Blood-C seem to have lots and lots of expectations and no patience whatsoever. So you guys could really learn from Psgels to be less predisposed and enjoy what you have because it isn’t bad at all.
Fair enough. I do wish you’d have just said that, as your wording implied something a bit different to me (all these years and English still confuses me).
For what it’s worth, I’m not going into Blood C with any expectations, and I am also sticking with it to give it a chance.
But my negative response is also unexpected to me, and it’s rare that my opinion contrasts that sharply to psgels, so I couldn’t help but post.
But for my part, I’ll stop. There’s plenty of negativity already, no need for my two cents. I’ve given lesser shows less of a hassle, so you’re right.
@Hogart
Well my wording was a heat-of-the-moment kind of overstatement. I’d seen people bitching about it elsewhere so what you guys said here was just the final straw, so to speak. I don’t actually have a problem with people speaking their mind, I just don’t get what’s so terrible about this particular show compared to many others if you drop the whole expectations bit.
For example, people bitch on and on about the singing, but the thing it immediately brought to my mind was “oooh, girl, they must have some serious pain in store for you if they’re making such an effort to make everything about you so bright and bubbly right now”. So let her sing if/while she still can, it’s not like she doesn’t deserve it considering her night shift…
True, and I realize I’m being a bit unfair, but there’s a line where it goes from “subtle foreshadowing” into “ok, we get it” and they’ve now gone onto “man, is she singing off-key AGAIN?”. And that’s just the singing 🙂
But since I’ve resolved to let it go, I’ll just sit back and watch for now, hoping for the best but expecting what I’ve seen so far (ie, more off-key singing, breakfasts, and puppy sightings 😉
I really like this series so far. It’s got a lot to like, but at the same time I can also understand that it’s not for everyone.
Are we watching the same show? There’s a lot to like? Really? I guess there’s an audience for everything…I’m just going to give a third episode to this show and see if it can deliver. If it doesn’t, I don’t care if it has Blood in its name, no nostalgia of Blood+ can make me stand how bad this show is in my eyes.
Someone actually LIKED BloodC? surprising.
Blood+ was a decent rip off of Buffy(with less feminism, sadly), Blood-C is a complete pile of annoying CLAMP cliches(and i am clamp fan), bland one-dimensional characters, annoying klutzy main character and uninspired cartoony-overstylized fight scenes.
IF this thing does nto get better by third episode, I am forgetting it ever existed and going back to my Blood+ rewatch.
Isn’t Blood-c similar to blood+?
@レナ
Its a bizzaro-world version of Blood+.