Once again Blood-C delivers an absolutely stunning episode. As if the previous episode wasn’t bad enough already, this episode goes even further.
Usually when a large amount of people need to die, you often just see one big explosion or otherwise very destructive thing, followed by a heap of dead bodies. That latest episode of Number 6 is a good example of that. This however was much, much more nerve wrecking as an entire classroom gets murdered out, and we actually see the monster maul each of his victims separately. This creature just kept chipping away everyone until there were just two people left. Now that was incredibly intense. With this I’m also sure: this series has the best fight choreography of the entire season. It’s a shame that the animation couldn’t remain as good as the first episode, but each action scene still is incredibly well crafted.
The thing with Blood-C is indeed that its cast lacks complexity. But dear god, for me it throws around more and more things that just completely make up for that lack. I mean, i like character development and all, but it’s not as black and white that I only like characters with character-development, and hate the ones who don’t. I’m growing more and more fond of Saya, and the biggest reason for that is how the mystery uses her. This really is one of the few series of the Summer Season that isn’t rushed, aside from Penguin Drum and Natsume Yuujinchou, and BY GOD it shows. Heck, I’d even argue that out of all of the series that are going to end this month, this one is the one I’m looking forward to the most aside from Steins;Gate.
The second half of the episode again had me on the edge of my seat because of this. The horror here too was very effective in just building up tension, and using the build-up of the entire season. Bit by bit throughout the series, Saya remembered a bit more and we’ve now reached the point where the inconsistencies really start to show, and she’s finally starting to think for herself.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
I just like that there is actual tension and you can’t actually tell who’s going to be saved or not. When she dived, saved the kid and told him to run I thought for sure he would get away. Nope. While she’s protecting herself in the background the kid is being taken out and they don’t even make a big deal out of it. It’s really refreshing that the other characters don’t turn into uninvolved spectators.
Is it me, or the Elder Bairn “smiled” like some mass-product Evas from The End of Evangelion?
I will praise this anime for one thing: it kills characters left and right with no remorse whatsoever… Its something people should learn from
I hate the classic “last second save” that everyone pulls off in movies and crap, its so damn predictable thats pretty much every time a death is being announced, you know its not gonna happen
Still think this was the worst way to go about fleshing out Saya… Saying that she has been fake all this time because of plot isnt gonna cut it, bad character is bad no matter what
Cassidy- I thought I was the only one who noticed! That was entirely disturbing, watching the kids being picked apart, out one by one like from a pack. That’s also very realistic hunting though. As someone who isn’t disturbed much by gore, Blood C has an unusual effect on me, and those realistic noises don’t help at all :O
I don’t get the hate for Saya, to be honest- I mean, she’s not a human, nor does she act like one, so in what ways must we force our expectations of acting like a human upon her? I will admit that it’s slightly annoying for her not to come to her senses earlier and pull out her katana and get serious- but that’s the thing- it literally takes a death of a classmate/close friend for Saya to give into her serious nature, and while she does it without much complication, the fact that you have to pressure her to get there is what strikes me as odd; I think that’s the exact reason why the only class that came to school was Saya’s (CALLED IT!) because whoever is playing behind the scenes wants Saya to transform, or waken up, or complete the promise/covenant or whatever, and the only way to do that is by sacrificing those closest to her. If that’s true, then it’s unbelievably harsh, and I’ve only really come to sympathize with Saya and everything she’s gone through.
Is it me or is this whole setting taking on a Truman Show kind of plot? This is what I suspect, at least.
My main issue with the protag is that she is in these combat situations daily. Litterally. She had already watched folks she dosent know and friends die. And was broken up about it. Swearing she was going to do better.
Yet, she dosent go all out from the start. She never gives it her best at the beginning of combat, she waits till her worst fails. At this point in time she has seen those guys kill two of her best friends two days in a row along with random townsfolk.Hell they even attacked at her home!
Why did she not jump out the window of the school building and attack at full power as soon as she saw the guy who was obviosly going to attack? Why did she stand and watch as half the class was killed and only drew her sword at that point? Why did she not go all out at that point? Why was she “suddenly confused and having flashbacks from stress”?
She does this every day. Something else is in the way.
Are Tou-“sama” and the guy who feeds her weird food acctually allies in her goal? Its been pretty obvious that they and the teacher know exactly whats going on, and its an experiment. And she is failing the test pretty badly.
If she would just go all out from the start none of her failures would have happened. I call mind wipe and reprograming.
Im pretty sure the “dog” knows this. Im not even going to bring up the subject of the “suspicious guy” who loves her. Noone ever talks about him.
I am happy that there is a movie coming next year. As far as I see this series is going to need one, and it was the plan from the start.
I like how saya only changes whwn shes realy close to death or a someone she defines herself by dies, it’s like everytime a bit of her identity dies, she turns back into “old saya”
About why Saya doesn’t attack on the start. It seems that her inner instinct as a hunter or killer makes her wait and check her opponent, never attack blindly without knowing what your opponent’s strong and weak points. She says that she want to protect but when she fights her instinct takes over even before her eyes turn red.
She is supposed to protect ppl yet she waited the man to enter the cab so she can identify her opponent.
@Snowolf:
“I mean, she’s not a human, nor does she act like one, so in what ways must we force our expectations of acting like a human upon her?”
Because she is inhuman in a way that makes her silly from a human point of view and since this is a horror-series there certainly should be better ways to show her inhumanity than making her inhumanly silly and dumb. Also, there is just this comparison where one thinks what a reasonable human would’ve done in this situation and then sees how slow Saya’s mind works figuring out how strange her surroundings are. Saya begins now to ask questions the audience had since the first few episodes, it’s like the show has been sleeping the whole time and now starts slowly (VERY slowly, of course) to wake up (just like the dog mentioned in episode 06 when he said to Saya that she should wake up).
“but that’s the thing- it literally takes a death of a classmate/close friend for Saya to give into her serious nature, and while she does it without much complication, the fact that you have to pressure her to get there”
How exactly her “red eyes” work is a mystery since she could use them also in episode one and there was no death of a classmate involved or anything similar to that. She just fought that thing alone and started suddenly to kill the Elder Bairn as her eyes changed. I think, I agree with Kelkor more on this matter as these red eyes are just her “old personality” trying to break free. Perhaps the fights make it easier for her “old personality” to appear and this is in no way related to Saya’s will of protecting everyone which is why she can’t do anything about activating it earlier or using it like another “weapon”, it’s just a sort of unconscious change that overcomes her at some random point (which means more or less at the convenience of the script-writers).
“Is it me or is this whole setting taking on a Truman Show kind of plot?”
Hmm, I agree with you that it seems like such a kind of plot but this “staged” vibe of the setting has been apparent for a long time now, I’d say. The series certainly dropped more than enough hints in the beginning about the strange nature of “Saya’s Town” by showing how empty the streets were, how the sites of Saya’s battles were cleaned the next day, how the victims Saya failed to protect were just reported as missing to Saya’s classmates and so on. That part was clear a long time ago, I would just wish this series would get past dwelling on this part of the plot and start sharing the story with the audience in a meaningful way instead of dancing around the issue and wasting the time with showing even more gore and blood than in the previous episode.
The second half showed again how this episode avoids to talks about its story. We had three characters who talked with a Saya that began to question her surroundings (hurray! It only took her nine episodes to realize something’s odd and trying to do something about it!), first there was a dog who again asked Saya meaningful questions but not in any way that could hint at anything directly and he congratulated Saya for the progress they made this day in waking her up (since he also knows that the end of the series is approaching, you know) but before Saya could begin to talk with him really, Tokizane appears forcing the dog to leave and asks about Saya in his concerned voice, but Saya discovering now the beauty of reason asks Tokizane some hard questions which Tokizane avoids to answer which makes him rather suspicious but before that dialogue can get going, Tadayoshi appears which now forces Tokizane to leave and Saya starts with another topic: her mother. She doesn’t remember her name which is obviously odd but Saya silly as always hadn’t noticed that until now. And that’s it, end of the episode. Tokizane seems suspicious, the dog tells us that this episode did another babystep towards the end and Tadayoshi gets confronted by an obvious oddity of Saya’s background – everything you can get from that second half without relying on speculation and guessing. Not really the way a ninth episode should look like, I would say. At this point I would have expected for Saya to ask questions AND get answers but with this slow pacing even doing both these things in one episode would be far too fast-paced and therefore Saya only gets the chance to ask questions but not to get any answers from them.
Well that had to be the most infuriating anime episode I have seen in a long time. Why?
The whole time Saya was fighting that monster I was shouting “AIM FOR THE GOD DAMN LEGS! OR THE GOD DAMN EYES!” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the flaws in the monsters design. Even then it’s killing all your friends with it’s legs. It can only move with it’s legs. If that’s not incentive to strike them then what the hell is?! But no…you go red eyes and then you aim for the god damn legs. Congratulations. Now if you only did that an episode ago then nobody would have died.
And those students…honestly. How retarded can you get? Frozen in shock I get. Running to a dead end like the roof I cannot. You might as cover yourself in seasoning and lie down on a plate. There wasn’t a ladder or something?!
And Saya begins to realise that something is not right with the town. All it took was for the dog to remind her again and again during the last few episodes. Finally, a light bulb. Pity we the viewers have already figured out that this is heading toward the Truman show/all a dream ending.
Still if was satisfying to see all those annoying characters die horribly.
I’m not surprised at the criticism of Blood C because this show takes people out of their comfort zone. They don’t like that. The ‘heroes’ always beat the enemy with some new power-up pulled out of their ass, and cute school girls never die, saved at the last second. Well, Blood C is a breath of fresh air. I guess it breaks the formula a bit too much for some. Saya is a flawed heroine. She’s been manipulated / brainwashed or something.
I’m amazed at the material on display here. The violence is incredible, even censored. The fact that its children dying is quite brave. I’m glad the story is centered on the mystery of Saya and not just mindless ass-kicking every episode. This series will be better on second viewing, but I admit it requires some patience to see the ‘big picture’.
It would be interesting to hear what Japanese viewers think of this show because most of the complaints seem ‘western’ – you know, heroes are like Superman.
@Ada Wong, I guess you missed those complaints about plot, terrible characters, weak mystery, Saya complete stupidity to use the power she has to the fullest and instead standing there and doing nothing, lack of any real pacing…..
I really can understand that Hero who fails logic. Hell I approve it. I don’t want any cheap ass new found super powers or always winning either. What we can’t stand is that Saya who is apparently trying her hardest is withholding power and preforming actions that simply contradict that. This isn’t that hero who tries there hardest and fails. This is the hero who half asses it and fails.
@AidanAK47, I’ve heard the complaints about Saya, her “inactivity” allowing people to die, but I think that’s part of her character. It’s intentional. Yeah, she has problems, but it was obvious that all is not well from the first episode. Everything seemed too perfect, even that happy song walking to school.
Saya can’t fight to full potential because of a mental conflict preventing her, flashbacks to past events, etc… but who said she’s supposed to be saving humans? Maybe her confusion is because she’s betraying the Elder Bairns. Saya is not really human and might be going against her nature – one even talked about the “old you” not being this weak.
Well, since this series seems to be planned around the Saya mystery they presumably have a solid explanation for all this weirdness.
@Ada Wong,
“I’ve heard the complaints about Saya, her “inactivity” allowing people to die, but I think that’s part of her character. It’s intentional.”
Intentional or not. Doesn’t make it any more fun to watch. The character only comes across as terribly stupid in both cases.
Now here you are looking too much into her character. Saya has the memory of a goldfish, a single minded goal and a clear lack of understanding for human emotions. No conflict. She simply don’t have the brainpower for such a thing. After all most of the series spent it’s time showing us how dim and air headed this girl is. There were plenty of ways for the writers to make her inhuman side effect her slice of life section. Possibly let us invest some interest in the girl. But no. They wasted it on pointless crap.
“Well, since this series seems to be planned around the Saya mystery they presumably have a solid explanation for all this weirdness.”
Isn’t it obvious? I bet you a tenner this all takes place in Saya’s head. It’s not that difficult to figure out. We just need to wait for the characters to catch up.
Again, I have to the characterizations so far are all paper-thin. There is a difference between trying something different and just plainly present stuffs in a bad way. Clearly, there is more to what is currently happening. The way things are moving are clearly fake enough to show that Saya might be dreaming/hallucinating and the Furukimono may not even exist.
@Ada Wong:
“I guess it breaks the formula a bit too much for some.”
Blood-C’s formula is hardly anything new or original. Taking a story and telling it in a non-linear way like Blood-C by having a dumb “heroine” forget what really happened at the beginning and why things are as they are seems like a neat idea that has been done before whenever you have stories that rely on revelations done by flashbacks and new characters having information about the plot. What makes this “new” to you is probably the baby-step-pacing-approach this series is taking which means that it took for example nine episodes for Saya to acknowledge the strangeness of her life despite the viewer having doubts since episode 3 or so. And that’s just plainly boring to plan a series so slow that the whole story is told in the last few episodes while the rest doesn’t bother to say anything significant as far as the story is concerned. Watching Blood-C is a test of patience by sitting through hours of insignificant events until the series decides to tell you its story.
“She’s been manipulated / brainwashed or something.”
So what? I don’t understand this point where I have to excuse Saya for being silly only because someone made her so – she’s still silly! And it’s not like the creators of this series were forced to make her silly as to show that she’s brainwashed. Also, if she was brainwashed than it was done by an idiot when stuff like the name of her mother was left out which is SO obvious to point out as a hint towards it being a fake-memory. Any reasonable person would’ve doubted the memories from the moment someone talked about this “mother” – but that’s why Saya is so dumb: so that she doesn’t think about anything in a very reasonable way. In the end she’s just silly because the person who created her fake-memories was also an idiot and tried to cover it up that way. In the end the whole affair is just full of silliness.
“The fact that its children dying is quite brave.”
Again: So what? Killing children every minute for the first half of an episode is simple exaggeration. The violence doesn’t get better only because it gets more and more each episode. This episode basically just repeated the message of episode 06 that Saya can’t even protect those close to her (but it’s just like Blood-C to repeat that message needlessly). The only difference is that this time even more (nameless) bystanders died horribly while also one of Saya’s close friends died.
Possible Spoiler!!!
If your watching Blood-C then I assume that you’ve also watched Blood + and the anime movie Blood the last Vampire. Then you know that the Blood series is split in to universes Blood the last vampire and Blood plus. I think Blood-C is apart of Blood the last vampire (or BLV for short).
In BLV we see Saya running around post war Japan hunting chiropteran(vampires) with her handler, and that was pretty much it, but a bit later they made a manga
In the manga Blood -The Last vampire 2000 we learn that Saya is treated like nothing more than a rabid attack dog kept in chains until they need her to kill chiropteran. (In Blood C in some of the flashbacks and when that guy is talking we can see Saya in chains) In the immediate area around where they are holding Saya there is a drastic increase in the chiropteran attacks. So they send Saya out to track down and kill the cause and Saya finds the cause, her sister Maya.
Maya(like Diva in blood+) is a twin to Saya. But unlike Saya Maya can partially transform and needs blood. Through course of their fight Maya explains that she has been sending out chiropteran to attract Saya so she could tell Saya of their origin.
Maya says that long ago humans and vampires lived together in peace because originally vampires did not need to kill to feed,and humans and vampire had a long standing “covenant” and that the relationship use to be symbiotic, but humans envies of the vampires immortality broke the “covenant” and began experimenting on the vampire.
In order find the secret to vampire immortality they tried everything(rituals, alchemy,mixing human and vampire genes,etc) and failed, but as the reserch progressed the only thing that changed was that the vampires killing instinct and combat ability sky-rocketed. Eventualy the vampire escaped and killed most of the researchers.
In the 1900s in a bid to destroy their mistake. The humans using the blood from the last living pure blood vampire created Maya and Saya as living anti-vampire weapons, but Maya was a defective because she needed blood.(some how Maya escapes it never said). Saya’s handlers got into the habit of brainwashing and erasing Saya’s memories after a certain number of years. Everytime they would appoint a new handler and each one would try a different method some treating her like a daughter(Cough cough) and some treating her like a weapon.
Maya tells Saya that because they where both one single being once if Saya drinks all of Maya’s blood they will become one again, and will no longer be pawns of the humans.
The last part of the manga shows that Saya goes back to her handlers and kills them then runs away to blend into the human world.
I think Blood-C is a sequal to the manga and that her handlers somehow re-captured Saya and brainwashed her again and now she is starting to remember.
@ specracer29: Blood-C being a continuation of the BLV world is a very interesting idea and makes much sense to me! I somewhat thought the same w/ the flashback of Saya in chains. I also noticed that there are many flashbacks of a scene in a subway which reminded me of Saya’s attack at the start of the BLV movie!
My opinion on the show has been slowly going down hill for a while, but when Saya asked those hard questions to Tokizane? It was the first moment out of the last few episodes where it felt “real”. I was quite surprised, since most of the show feels like it’s swimming in a sleepy surreal haze with everyone acting so unnatural, but Saya asking why he likes her and how does he know her? Awesome. I chalk it up to stylistic writing and following tropes, but if it’s been on purpose then that would be a nice twist.
Episode 09 should have been Episode 01
Why use the ‘Blood C’ for the Title?
I actually liked this episode! Best ep of blood c yet and so makes the other eps feel stupid :\
I won’t lie I shared the panic of the school as it was being murdered. I actually felt so bad that(spoiler) Yuka died. I wished she didn’t she was a strong girl and actually took charge of things but then again the class rep got lucky going off to save Saya while she was stranded to save the others (spoiler end) the enigma in this episode was very well executed unlike the others eps. I also agree with Snowolf that Saya’s class was called to torment Saya with being helpless (cool observation Snowolf)
Speaking of helpless Saya did act a bit stupid. I am not saying there shouldn’t have been casualties because the victims also acted really stupid. But Saya was not real;ly fighting cool and after she did I was irked that it took too long but yes I think this is the best blood c ep and I loved it.
It was an action oriented episode but it also showed much horror and panic in a real life situation.
(spolier) I feel teary eyed when Yuka died it was the most painful death I think in the entire series. But yeah I also felt cheated that I was stripped from knowing her. It kinda reminded me of Riku from Blood + which was also one of the most tragic deaths and yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if Tokizane is a chevalier or a chiropteran as Saya(spoiler fin)
Ok, is it just me or is that sweet Gumeilleve a sort of blood source? It really seems so. Saya usually eats it after she started fighting the furukimono. I* wouldn’t be surprised if the cafe owner and her father are the main antagonists of the series and have aggravated the demons to lash out — it’s true what the director you may rewatch the series after its conclusion for Saya is finally growing some brains and realizing that things are strange and not what they seem.