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STUDIO: Sony Pictures
MSRP: $19.99
RATED: Not rated
RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES: None
The Pitch
Japanese girl + katana + aforementioned Japanese girl’s blood on aforementioned katana = bad things go bye-bye.
The Humans
Saya, Haji, George, Kai, Riku, David, Julia, various assorted chiropterans and chevalier…whatever the hell those things are.
The Nutshell
Saya is a seemingly ordinary schoolgirl who is living with an adopted family of her father, and brothers Kai and Riku. Saya is also an anemic amnesiac (gotta admit, that’s a new one), not remembering anything about her past and needing regular blood transfusions. When she’s attacked by a large, batlike, blood-drinking creature called a chiropteran, she learns that she has special abilities, not the least of which is that her blood is the only thing that can kill the creatures. When she smears blood onto a specially-made katana, she becomes a lethal instrument of death to chiropterans. Working with a clandestine agency called Red Shield, Saya searches out the secrets of her past and to rid the world of the chiropterans.
The Lowdown
Okay, on the real, most of that nutshell I had to glean from other sources. Because I’ll be damned if, after watching the five episodes of this disc (episodes 6 – 10 of Season 1), I have the foggiest idea what this story is about. Blood+ is a TV show adapted from a 2000 anime film, Blood: The Last Vampire, which I’ve not seen. There were fifty episodes of the show produced over four seasons…fifty. And how many episodes do you get with this Vol. 2 offering? Five. Trying to follow the story from what you get here is like watching say a half hour of Attack of The Clones and then trying to piece together the entire six Star Wars films. Not really gonna happen. So I have no way really of knowing how good this saga is from this one, rather sorry disc.
What I do know is that Saya carries around a posse, including a mysterious guy named Haji, who looks after her when she’s on assignment. She uses a rather wicked looking katana to fight these chiropteran dudes, which must be near cousins of Batman’s Man-Bat or something. Right before battle, she cuts her finger, her blood runs down the length of the blade, and she goes Benihana on these creatures, with the nice requisite anime bloodspurts afoot. But honestly, there’s only action of that sort in the first episode of the disc, “My Father’s Hands.” The other four episodes are somewhat tiresome filler as Saya tries to deal with the recent loss of her father and trying to figure out more about her past.
Do yourself a favor, if you’re a fan of this franchise, don’t be duped into buying this pathetic offering of five episodes. Studios sometimes do this – offer piecemeal episodes of a series – and it’s a practice they need to be punished for truth be told. There’s a nicer-looking, six-disc set (here) that has the first 25 episodes, or one half of the show’s run. Five to a disc plus an extra features disc. That’s what I should have been reviewing instead of this.
The Package
The episodes look incredible, as is to be expected by good anime. There are both Japanese and English language tracks, as well as English, French and Korean subtitles. No extra features.
