Amazon.com
Based on the feature Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), Blood+ (2005) combines elements of the magical girl, vampire and biomedical experiments out-of-control genres. In the original film, Saya, the last true vampire, battled the bloodthirsty demons attacking an American base in Japan during the Vietnam War. This Saya has lived for more than 100 years, but remembers little of her past. The magical guardian Hagi appears and presents Saya with a special sword: she must cut herself and allow her blood to flow into channels in its blade. Only her blood can destroy the artificially created monsters known as Chiropterans. The sinister conglomerate Cinq Fleches who created the Chiropterans is pitted against the secret society the Red Shield, whose members include Hagi and Saya. Blood flows freely during the ensuing battles, escapes, and flashbacks, as Saya whines, fusses, and cowers while her friends get stomped. The filmmakers arbitrarily change the rules of the story as it stumbles along. The characters repeatedly say that only Saya can kill a Chiropteran, but near the end of the first season, the hooded figures called the Schiff appear, who hack Chiropterans to pieces with their swords. As Saya is a vampire, she needs blood to stay alive, but she never bites anybody and spent years in a human family without seeking blood (or having problems with silver and garlic). A sixth disc is devoted entirely to interviews with the filmmakers. Unrated, suitable for ages 16 and older: graphic violence, violence against women, nudity, alcohol and tobacco use, ethnic stereotypes) –Charles Solomon
Product Description
Saya Otonashi, a seemingly normal high school student, suffers from amnesia and she can’t remember the past year of her life. One day, after a man appears and gives her a katana sword, her destiny begins to be revealed. Soon she finds herself fighting the latest threat to humanity ? Chiropteran monsters, ravenous immortal creatures that can change their form, disguising themselves as human beings. They feed off blood and hide themselves within the human world. An organization known as the Red Shield has been waging a private war to wipe them out and now the struggle has grown. Saya?s journey for the truth has begun.
Blood +: Part One episodes include:
First Kiss
Magic Words
The Place Where It All Began
Dangerous Boy
Beyond the Dark Forest
My Father?s Hands
I Must Do It
Phantom of the School
Rainbow for Each
I Want to See You
After the Dance
Lured by the White Mist
Jungle Paradise
The Last Sunday
I Want to Pursue!
Siberian Express
Do You Remember the Promise?
Moon Over Ekaterinburg
Broken Heart
Chevalier
Sour Grapes
The Zoo
The Two Chevaliers
Airy Singing Voice
The Red Shield
4.0 out of 5 stars
Part 1…So you will be left wanting more!
Like I said…this is “Part 1″ and who knows when part two is coming. So when it comes to ending…do not expect one because this is a 50 episode series.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Anime *Only First Season in this Set!*
I’m rating the anime as a whole a 5/5. However, this box-set only includes the first season which hardly concludes the central plot of Blood+.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Blood minus
The fact that it’s a great story saves it from a one star rating. Inferior (to the Japanese) voicing and dub titles instead of subtitles detract from this excellent series.
Vampires are usually portrayed as sexy mysterious people, or as bloodthirsty monsters. In “Blood+,” you get two for the price of one.
While this is technically a spinoff of “Blood: The Last Vampire,” this series stands easily on its own — gallons of gore, taut action scenes, mystery, and a young vampire finding out the truth about the past she can’t remember. And this boxed set — containing the first half of the series — is definitely worth getting.
Saya Otonashi is anemic, and she doesn’t remember anything about her life before she was adopted by a kindly veteran, George, and his sons Kai and Riku. Other than that, she’s a perfectly normal Okinawa schoolgirl. Then a monster — a vampiric Chiropteran — attacks her at her high school. She’s saved by the mysterious Haji, who forces her to drink a little of his blood.
She destroys the monster in a matter of seconds — unaware that her punky, overprotective brother Kai also saw the monster. And Saya’s confusion only grows when she finds that George is discussing her mysterious past with a man named David, who is from a secret Chiropteran-fighting organization called Red Shield. When Saya’s father is attacked and kidnapped, she, Kai and Haji all join the rescue effort.
And afterwards, they become a part of Red Shield, though Saya doesn’t know why she is so vital to their mission. Her fight takes her across Vietnam and Russia, through bloodied jungles and Siberian wastelands — and her own half-forgotten memories — as David tries to track down a train car with someone called “Diva” inside. But then Saya is told the truth about her own nature — and her relationship to the cruel Chiropteran queen, Diva….
While the original movie focused mainly on action, “Blood+” is more densely plotted, and more mysterious in its story. Primarily it’s a horror/coming-of-age tale (with a bit of a love triangle), but there are also traces of mystery, comedy, horror and tragedy woven in here.
In fact, the writers juggle multiple storylines (including one about a reporter and a schoolgirl) with ease. They also spun up a rich, complex vampire mythology, with multiple vampire breeds — the horrific bloodthirsty fiends, the sexy Chevaliers like Haji and Solomon, and the cruel, childish Diva. There’s also the Schiff, hooded half-vampires who show up long enough to give Haji some new punctures, but don’t yet have much effect on the storyline.
The animation is another exquisite part of the story — detailed, realistic, and a bit gothic with all the shadows, pale light and old-world buildings. And there are some beautiful, striking images, like glowing blue roses, Saya’s sword, and chateau ruins. But for all its beauty, “Blood+” is crammed with violence — dismemberment, ripped-off faces, and buckets of blood from vampires and humans alike.
Saya can be a bit whiny, but her terror and confusion gradually iron out into a likable, somewhat tragic heroine. Haji takes awhile to be fleshed out, but he’s a tragic, adoring character when he is, especially in the long flashbacks to his childhood and travels with Saya. And Crispin Freeman’s vocals don’t hurt the effect.
Kai is a particularly likable character, just because he’s so normal — an ordinary kid who is in over his head, and just trying to protect those he loves. All the supporting characters — Riku, Julia, David and the cherubic Lewis — are well-written. Even minor characters get plenty of detail, such as the Schiff and Diva’s Chevaliers (particularly Solomon and the increasingly loopy Carl).
“Blood+: Part One” is a violent, bittersweet start to a brilliant series, as well as a great spin on typical vampire stories. It’ll also leave you desperately wanting to know what happens next.
Another reviewer has already done a good review of the content, so mine shall focus on the physical characteristics of the merchandise.
The box:
The box is a stiff cardboard material with a removable (lift-top) lid. The lid is approximately 1″ deep and feels quite sturdy. There is a secondary cardboard insert glued to the bottom portion of the box that guides and holds the lid in place. The outer shell and lid are very well done, very clean lines and really good match on the artwork. The insert in mine however looked like a reject from a factory floor; the cardboard, although very sturdy, is frayed and very rough around the edges. For how nice the exterior box is, I am surprised at the look of the inner support.
The t-shirt and manga preview:
. They were packed into the box along with the DVDs. I’m not big into these types of extras, so other than a quick glance at the manga they didn’t get examined.
Yup, they were both there
The discs:
There are three disks in thin-pak holders. Each of the first two disks holds 10 episodes, and the last disk contains 5 episodes plus some extras. Given that thin-paks for anime usually indicate “bare-minimum”, I was a little put off by the thin-pak; however, the artwork did look clean on the disk covers, so it wasn’t all bad. One peculiarity is that the DVDs by no means fill up much of the interior of the box. I’m not sure if the volume 2 DVDs (last half of the series) are intended to fit into this box or not, but once you take the t-shirt out the DVDs are no longer snug and secure in the box.
Summary:
The most important point of a box is that it is sturdy, and this one is. However, it is also there to protect and corral the DVDs into a secure container, and with the amount of extra space in the box, it does not meet this requirement (unless the rest of the series will be released as thin-paks and fit in this box).
So overall, 5 stars for content and 3 stars for packaging.
Regards,
-T. Panar
*Warning-This Review Contains Spoilers*
Blood+ avoids the problems many anime series have by having a plot that is intriguing and characters that develop through the series and who you genuinely care about. It also actually has a good ending! If you watch a lot of anime, you know how many series do not have satisfying endings. The characters in Blood+ do not seem like the hundredth version of a stock character from other series; they’re unique and complex. The animation is beautiful and so is the music composed by Hans Zimmer. There are also 4 opening and 4 closing theme songs for this series and they’re all great; I think you only get to number 2 in this set. This show was always shown with a graphic violence warning on Adult Swim, and when there are battles, they are pretty bloody but not gratuitous. Occasionally, the plot did slow up a little too much for me just when it seemed like something really big was going to happen between Saya and Diva, but I only minded because I was so into the story. The most special thing about this show to me was the relationship between Saya and her adopted family and between her and Hagi. This is one of the most moving anime series I’ve ever seen. Saya goes through some of the hardest things that happen in real life, like losing a parent and sibling and feeling great remorse for something terrible that you’ve done in the past, then struggling with guilt and indecision. The way these events were depicted was sometimes heartbreaking. These were real things that I could relate to and lift Blood+ far above a lot of other anime.
About the set itself: I prefer dub to sub, but because I love this series so much, I did want to watch it in Japanese with an accurate translation, so was disappointed like other reviewers in the “dubtitles.” I also didn’t like that you can’t get the subtitles OFF of the theme songs. I find them irritating as they obstruct the animation, which is why I prefer dubbing in the first place. I usually switch the subtitles to Korean because it blends in better. The box comes with a T-shirt and a manga sampler; if you remove these, as I would like to, it makes the box too big for the DVDs and they rattle around. The bonus disc of interviews with the Japanese voice cast was more interesting than I usually find these features to be.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ug, Overrated
Beautiful to look at, pleasant to listen to and a chore to get through this is one of the more overrated action series to see its release on this side of the Pacific.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not Nearly As Good As the Film It Is Based on
First of all I have to say that being a huge fan of the movie this is based on is what brought me to the series, which I didn’t even know existed until just a few months ago.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Far beyond my expectations.
I expected just another horror movie; something along the lines of Blood Trinity. But what I got was anything but.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why this series had such poor ratings and timeslot, I dunno
This is one anime series you don’t want to miss. It’s worth finding the set and getting it, since you’ll be hooked and sorry after buying one DVD and having to wait for the rest…
3.0 out of 5 stars
Blood, blood everywhere
Based loosely on the anime movie Blood: The Last Vampire. I thought this TV series was superior to the movie only in that here, the director had time to evolve a story.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy Successor to Blood: the Last Vampire
I am a huge fan of Blood: the Last Vampire (I own the special dvd edition). I heard about this series and scheduled the episodes from Adult Swim on my Tivo.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Story
As the series progress along I was hooked into it’s story and couldn’t put the dvd’s down until finished.