The Blood franchise is an odd one. Projecting a great deal of edginess with its title, it is, in fact, on;y loosely tied together by theme.. Because there are essentially no relations between the core lines of the franchise, such as Blood+ or Blood: the Last Vampire, I’m going to be skipping right to what might be the most storied entry, Blood-C.
Made in 2011, Blood-C has the appearance of a significantly older show, in a perhaps deliberate attempt to hearken back to the ghosts of brutality past. Yeah, not to do this out of order, but Blood-C is probably talked about heavily because it’s pretty close to being a more modern member of the Video Nasties – it was the subject of debate and, in some territories, even censorship for its violence and gore, including during its original broadcast. The uncensored cut, however, is pretty easy to find these days. So you know going in, with that kind of resume, that you’re going to see some extreme stuff.
That said, just because something is extreme, doesn’t make it good. This is a topic I’ve had to talk about before, so we’ll get to Blood-C’s gore when we get to it. Which, oddly enough, is not right away: Blood-C starts with character and story, which is a good sign and a good enough place to start a review as well.
After an overscored opening with a pretentious monologue, we follow Saya. A shrine maiden by virtue of being the daughter of a priest, she seems like a cheerful and clumsy girl if one of unusually significant spirituality and, when she’s not tripping over her own two feet, athletic ability as well. We see her have breakfast at the local cafe, sing a silly little song to herself on her way to school, laugh and bicker with her quirky friends, and so on. After school, though, it seems that duty calls for a Shrine Maiden, and it’s not sweeping up the place or making talismans but rather taking up a sacred sword and dispatching a monster called an Elder Bairn.
The monster, and the fight with it, is rather creative. At first it looks like nothing more than a worn jizo statue, but then it up and attacks, rushing at Saya. As the fight goes on it becomes more and more monstrous, sprouting arms with mantis claws, extending its neck, and so on. Each transformation lets it attack Saya in some new way, but also limits its stony armor so that she’s able to do real damage to it. She slices off the beast’s arms and drives her blade through its neck for a very impressive blood fountain, all the while in “serious business mode”. On her way back to the shrine she runs into her Father, and though still covered in blood flips right back to her chipper airhead attitude, which makes an interesting juxtaposition.
With one episode in the can, it’s time to talk about some of the elements of Blood-C that are just everywhere, for better or worse.
On the positive end, the cinematography and choreography are very notable in a good way. Blood-C is a show that shows its age, but as an example of a high-quality offering from the last days where this kind of thing was done almost entirely by hand. The movements in this show are striking in their grace and impact. Notable as well is the action choreography – it’s really top notch through the vast majority of scenes. Blood-C doesn’t rely on flashy effects, shouted attack names, or lengthy internal monologues about the status of the combatants, it just outright shows a schoolgirl with a katana doing battle with an inhuman monster, wasting no motion and selling every hit to its fullest.
While there is something of a pattern where Saya gets kind of thrashed until her eyes turn red and she kicks ass, there’s more than enough variance and play to keep it interesting and dynamic. Even in the very first Elder Bairn fight, which is among the shortest and least involved, there’s a good back and forth of tempo, a real feel of weight and power to the moves of the combatants that’s going to naturally keep the audience engaged. Saya may start on the back foot, but her efforts are legitimate, it’s not just her getting beat until suddenly she kills the monster in one go, she’s cutting, striking, leaping, dodging, and doing her best to give as good as she takes, all letting the action speak louder than words could.
Related to this is the gore. Blood-C is a lot of things, and one of those is very much a show that’s not family friendly. Despite its high-school heroine, Blood-C is the kind of show that kids should be kept far away from (at least by conventional standards, but that tangent is not one for this week). This isn’t, oddly enough, in fanservice. Saya is gorgeous and the opening takes full advantage, but the show as a whole has very few moments that so much as pay attention to that appeal. No, Blood-C is all about the violence and gore.
This is what Elfen Lied wanted to be, or thought it was – a show that could really stick the landing of having fountains of blood and piles of bodies. Suffice to say, everything that awful little outing did wrong, Blood-C does right in terms of selling your gore. Creative and different injuries and deaths? Check. More texture and interesting horrific visuals than just geysers of red? Check, though Blood-C has plenty of those geysers too. The gore happening to individuals we have some degree of investment in so that the emotional impact behind it is actually there? Check again.
It’s not all sunshine and roses (or blood showers and dutch angles, if you prefer) though. We also get a few things that might… stick out. Like a splinter in your mind. For one, we have the score, which skews heavy. I guess that maybe it was just the style at the time, and the show to its credit does know when to cut the overwrought music entirely, but it does some rather conspicuous work all the same.
Letting that circle us back to the first scene, we also get quite a few inexplicable pretentious speeches with no lead-in, seemingly no relevancy to the show, and weird visuals that are focusing on detail to try to hide the fact that they’re showing nothing.
In another thing that might bother you at first, remember how cool and impactful the combat is? Saya doesn’t. Or at least, her body doesn’t – she takes some gruesome deep wounds in almost every fight, more as the show goes on, but the next day the worst she’ll have is a bandaid if she was hit somewhere conspicuous, and that too will vanish pretty quickly. Since this is a spoiler review I’m just going to come out and say that, like you might expect of the pretentious speeches, there’s actually a reason for this, so kudos to anyone else who has seen this thing and picked up on the rapid healing, even as a continuity bother, from early on.
At first the show follows what seems to be a pretty standard pattern: Saya spends her days being a nice little schoolgirl painfully oblivious to the Class Rep’s crush on her and normal things like that, paling around with her friends (Class Rep, the brooding guy she seems to be developing a crush for, the sharp-tongued big sis, the identical twins who say everything in unison, the doting owner of the cafe near the shrine, a little dog with strange markings she sees around, and so on.) At night, she takes up her sword and fights the Elder Bairns in all their Lovecraftian Yokai glory.
This pattern starts to shift, however. The first couple Elder Bairns appear in the wilderness, and Saya goes out to fight them. Then, they start appearing in the town at night, where they capture and eat people either through hypnosis or bloody violence. The first of these, which is a shoggoth-like thing that takes the form of a trolley car, utters a few words as it’s dying – “Honor the Covenant”. The next, a very strange griffin-like thing and its very undefined minions, have a little more to say, referring again to the “Covenant” and naming it the Shrovetide. Another is chattier still, and while it has a clear monstrous nature even fights with a weapon in a human-like fashion, getting out a few more details before Saya offs it.
Then, after a ghost story clearly referring to the Elder Bairns causes Saya to pass out, we get our next major change when one of the identical twins, Nene, comes to visit Saya at the shrine. Here, an Elder Bairn attacks in broad daylight when Saya isn’t armed, and despite some heroic efforts on Saya’s part, Nene picks a bad place to stand and joins the Chomp Club with Marimo Jinguji and Mami Tomoe before the end.
By the time Saya is physically and mentally fit to go back to school (her father now sending her with the sacred sword), Nene’s disappearance has been noted, and in light of the other disappearances that have happened in town, the authorities are warning everyone to take care. On the way home she meets the other twin, Nono, who seems to be possessed by an Elder Bairn living in her shadow, which isn’t shy about slaughtering and messily devouring all witnesses to its broad daylight attack on Saya. Saya tries to save her friend, but killing the monster ends up leaving only chunky salsa of Nono behind.
If you thought the Elder Bairns starting to talk was a little odd, this is about when that weird dog starts to talk, too. It questions Saya’s convictions, who she made promises to and why. Seems like it has something important to say, but like a lot of spiritual guides it’s got a bad case of cryptic-itis, especially as it explains its purpose is to follow Saya in order to grant a wish, but not what wish or of whom. We also get scenes with the pretentious monologuer suggesting that, though she only dreams it, his rambling speeches may be some suppressed or hidden memories of Saya’s, in which the monologuer suggests an experiment to “see who is right”. Given his speeches are about what makes a person themselves and if it can be changed, I’m of course reminded of a certain great video game.
The next Elder Bairn Saya fights is a giant beetle samurai who is extremely talkative. In this climate of doubt (for the audience at least) he talks a good deal about “the old Saya”, how she’s weak now, and how she’s confused by human lies. She manages to take on her red-eyes mode (eliciting praise from the bugman) and bisects the enemy, only for the broody guy she seemed to be crushing on to come across her while she’s still kneeling in a pool of blood with a dead Elder Bairn lying around, also marking the first time that anyone else witnesses any of this and doesn’t die (since evidently Nono’s rampage went down as missing persons)
Broody boy now acts affectionate towards Saya and is brought into the know. Later, the dog does more challenging of Saya’s reality, causing her to reach the cusp of remembering something very important, as it seems she’s part of a contest with a mastermind where a great deal may be at stake.
School reopens after some uneventful days, but clearly won’t stay that way as an Elder Bairn attacks the campus. It butchers almost everyone Saya knows there, sparing only the broody boy (who isn’t seen during the rampage) the class rep (to keep the love triangle intact) and the teacher who seemed to be somewhat in the know (who again isn’t seen until the beast is dead). The Elder Bairn seems confused by Saya’s desire to protect the others and mostly kills around her, adding to some strangeness
In the wake of the slaughter, Mr. Broody interrupts another talk Saya has with the dog. However, during that conversation, Saya starts to notice some that some of what’s normally narrative convenience is actually odd in character: how he can’t give an answer for why or what about her he likes, how no one was at school except for Saya’s own class despite the opening having been for “everyone”… and ultimately (as her dad takes over the other half of the conversation) how she doesn’t even know her mother’s name.
This existential crisis is interrupted, as most are, by an Elder Bairn. Saya fights it, but Broody runs back in to get devoured before she puts it down. In her low state, she’s tended by the cafe owner, and after some coffee and guimauve (her usual), she seems to be feeling much better. Too much better ,really. Later in the day, while visiting the cafe, she meets her teacher, who wants to see her shrine’s sacred library.
There, the rug is well and truly pulled out from under Saya as she’s forced to notice that the “ancient” manuscripts in the shrine are new paper, and further that only the book her father showed her in the past seems to have anything in it; the rest are just props. The teacher is very insistent on pushing this revelation, no monster stops her for once, and to cap things off Nene and Nono (who should, recall, be very dead) reappear to affirm that Saya’s reality is a lie.
It turns out that those two, along with the broody boy (also alive and well) and a few others are the “main cast” of this production, which has only been going since the start of summer. They confront Saya with the facts and reveal that they have special protective charms that keep them safe as main cast members, while most of the “extras” are dead and devoured. However, this team now wants out… mostly because this mess is taking too long, was more gruesome than expected, and in the case of Mr. Broody he actually really despises having anything to do with Saya.
This may be because Saya isn’t human – she’s actually an ancient being, presumably related to the Elder Bairns, and has only been placed into an amnesiac state that the mastermind is maintaining against the consumption of Elder Bairn blood that should break it (as the team attempts to do by force-feeding Saya) with drugs and hypnosis, leading the the rebellion here led by the teacher, actually an academic who wants to publish proof that the ancient legends of Saya are true.
And who is that mastermind, you may ask? It’s someone Saya has seen every day, and who is responsible for all the food she has – the cafe owner, Fumito.
This is, in my mind, another example of how you should do a big twist. The whole Truman Show style reveal that everyone Saya knows is a bunch of actors with their own reasons for going along with this crazy plan (Broody to make money, the twins to have their criminal record expunged, and so on) is a huge twist that, if done poorly, could have absolutely ruined the show and broken all interest in it.
However Blood-C had a scenario with enough clues that while Saya abjectly has the rug pulled out from under her, the audience… doesn’t. I still wouldn’t have totally predicted that it was a cast, or that Nene and Nono would be anything but dead, but there was clearly something going on with questions of identity and whether Saya’s experience was real. It could have been a lot of things, and the reality we’re told was certainly one of them, but we knew that something was up.
Similarly, the identity of the mastermind is decently set up. There’s a lot of focus on when Saya has her guimauve and coffee, careful shots especially in the dark times to show that she’s eating and drinking what Fumito provides. Further, we establish early on that Saya’s food and drink from Fumito is at least a little special. Broody is very reluctant to share Saya’s bento, and her “father” outright refuses to have her coffee passed off to him so that he can drink first when they’re together at the cafe, with the thin excuse that he can’t handle a strong brew. Later on, when Fumito shows up at the shrine, Saya asks if Guimauve is always pink, and Fumito says that it depends on what you mix in and the pink ones are special samples he thought would suit Saya.
There’s enough light in the show, with Saya’s silly songs and the days at school before the broad daylight attacks began, that you don’t necessarily call out the frequent close-ups of Saya’s coffee being prepared or shots only to show that she did eat the guimauve that was left by her bedside when she was feeling terrible as being obvious hints… but they do kind of stick, so that when the truth is revealed, you see that there was a clear trail pointing in the direction of the right answer.
I talked about this before, in reviewing Shangri-la a show that had a notably bad “twist” ending, the ironic fact that you have to set up and establish these twists if you want them to land, and I think I can, all other quality matters aside, point to Blood-C’s story structure as one that supports its twist and makes sure it’s executed properly.
As an odd aside, if you think this sounds like the twist was too well set up, I will note that according to lore the voice actors weren’t told about it until the time came to record the revealing lines, which helped the earlier performances seem genuine, a pretty big effort to conceal the twist.
Back in the show proper, once Fumito is revealed to be the evil mastermind behind this killer “experiment”, and the monologue-spewing somebody who put Saya into this position as what seems almost like a game to him, there is exactly one episode left of Blood-C.
In it, we get the (mostly) full meeting between Saya and Fumito where the game was set, with Fumito evidently wanting to know what can change the nature of a man (or an inhuman being that feeds on Elder Bairns, as the case may be). In the present, he has a controlled Elder Bairn execute the traitors, devouring Broody Guy, Nene, and Nono in delightfully gruesome ways before Saya rouses enough from her blood-induced stupor to fight it off and save her former teacher. Teach doesn’t last long though as she runs into Saya’s “father”, who has reverted to a half-Elder-Bairn state in which he rips out her throat with his teeth, thanks to Fumito’s control of the situation.
They fight, Fumito monologues about how Saya is under some ancient compulsion to not kill humans (which he would remove if she “won” their bet), and while Saya’s pleas for her “father” to become his thinking self again only give enough pause for her to strike a decisive blow, he’s able to die as an intelligent being, telling her how the bond he felt to her was no lie.
Saya chases after Fumito, who is busily turning everything to ruin. Class rep breaks ranks and saves her from the goon squad and gets shot to death for his trouble because apparently in contrast to Broody he developed actual feelings for her, and the latest Elder Bairn shows off the power of multiplication, leading to countless beefy rabbit monsters rampaging through the town to slaughter absolutely everyone left of the extras and destroy the place. Anyone who seems to be getting away is gunned down or run over by Fumito and his spec ops goons.
Saya chases after, dispatching the core of the hive-mind en passant as she tries to catch up with Fumito (and the last main-cast survivor, the shrill big sis type who was evidently playing at being a high school girl so Fumito could make her governor of Tokyo). She almost gets there, but Fumito quite literally shoots her down from his escape helicopter.
Saya survives, of course, and as the magical talking dog narrates that he was there to grant Saya’s wish to remain herself, she prepares to pursue her next wish, giving herself a badass eyepatch and running from the ruins onward into the human world, presumably looking for revenge in the movie, Blood-C The Last Dark.
Last Dark picks up six months later. A man on a commuter train degenerates into ghoul form, attacking several passengers and making off with a girl, but unfortunately for him runs afoul of Saya in the process. She dispatches the abomination, and the girl he’d carried off, Mana Hiiragi, ends up being Saya’s ticket to a group of young adults bent on resisting the Fumito-driven oppressive Tokyo regime, which enforces curfews on minors and restricts media and the internet.
This group, called SIRRUT, really hammers home that Last Dark is a different genre; the series of Blood-C was fairly traditional horror, albeit with its big twist. Last Dark veers more towards Cyberpunk. There’s still plenty of blood and swordplay, but not so much the gore or visceral combat that gave Blood-C its look and feel.
In any case, SIRRUT, backed by Fumito’s cousin, is all against the oppressive laws pushed by Fumito’s groups, the megacorp Seventh Heaven and the shadowy cabal behind it (consisting pretty much just of Fumito) known as The Tower.
After a meeting where Saya gets a new sword from the dog (now seen in his human form as the owner of that magic shop nobody can find unless they’re special enough), SIRRUT’s hackers find a location where Fumito is scheduled to appear – at Mana’s school. Mana and Saya go in, but it turns out to have been a trap laid by Fumito, who was only there in Shikigami form and who, after clearing the room with a false fire alarm, unleashes an Elder Bairn on Saya. Saya cuts it down, but as she and Mana escape they’re intercepted by Fumito’s goons, who take some advantage of the fact that Saya still can’t kill humans, from which a little car action and some hacking are able to extract them.
In the meantime, we learn… surprisingly little that we didn’t know from Blood-C, honestly. I think the most notable fact is that the clan both Fumito and his cousin were a part of were the administrators and secret-keepers of the Shrovetide, the covenant that allowed the Elder Bairns to reap a fixed number of humans at appointed times. All the same, it doesn’t hurt to clarify a few facts like what the Shrovetide is and how much influence Fumito really has.
The next movement proper involves Mana, who hadn’t wanted to hack after getting her reporter dad presumably killed by Fumito with a good tip, taking to the computer again to find the headquarters of The Tower. She’s successful, and (after trusting SIRRUT enough to take a drink made by the sponsor), Saya storms the place. She still can’t kill humans, but she is apparently able to maim, and Fumito’s top henchman goes ahead and turns himself into an Elder Bairn after losing an arm, which allows Saya to… finish him off screen? Really?
I suppose that was to save time for the real climax. Saya reaches Fumito’s room, starts tripping, and then falls down as she once again succumbs to drugged coffee. It seems Fumito and his cousin were actually on decent terms, wiping out the rest of their family to rule the world, and Saya has been delivered to Fumito. The terms aren’t quite the best though, as Cousin literally backstabs Fumito when Fumito monologues about wanting Saya rather than the world. For his trouble the cousin, who evidently houses the mystic core of the Shrovetide within his body, gets injected (by way of a giant vial thing through the eye) with Saya’s blood, causing his body to freak out and ultimately disintegrate and reveal a big weird eye.
As Saya starts to get motor control back, Fumito forgets he was stabbed to go over to the big weird eye. He merges with it and turns into a massive CGI kaiju. Naturally, Saya is able to enter her ass-kicking state to fight against the Kaiju while tossed midair, eventually diving inside to strike the core.
Somehow, this results in a final confrontation with Fumito back in his human body. I don’t know if he was spat out or just summoned the Kaiju or what. In any case, he’s clearly done, and goes ahead and throws himself on Saya’s sword, lamenting how he couldn’t be with her as the movie doubles down on his creepy love-like interest and how this doesn’t break her curse since he’s no longer human. He even kisses her before he crumbles to ash.
Something like a year later, SIRRUT is together as friends moving on with their lives. Tokyo is back to a free status with the girl from Blood-C (who had one line earlier in Last Dark) having fulfilled her ambition to become mayor, and Mana holds out hope that they’ll see Saya again some day.
As a conclusion for Blood-C, Last Dark is… not the worst thing. It doesn’t really recapture what Blood-C did well, with its creative gore and brutal atmosphere, leaning more towards being just a cyberpunk (plus a little magic) adventure with extra blood spatter. The opening scene with the Ghoul-type Elder Bairn (later revealed to be Mana’s dad, as an escaped test subject) tries, but the rest of the time, it’s flashier, less visceral, and of course way easier on the body count both of named characters and extras – in fact, I’m not sure anyone not aligned with Fumito actually dies as a human in this one.
In that sense, it’s actually hard to watch coming right on the heels of Blood-C. In both the last acts of Blood-C and Last Dark, an Elder Bairn is set loose on a school. In Blood-C, this results in many deaths, most of which have the time to be brutal and the visuals to be if not entirely unique than at least a little different. There’s building menace, ongoing combat, and a steady progression of hoping that maybe THIS will be the one that gets away, dragging the horror out bit by bit. Here, the room is cleared and it’s just a duel with Saya. Even with Mana there it’s not really interested. It doesn’t talk, doesn’t kill, and does fairly little to push our lead before being dispatched.
It’s funny, because I’m not the kind of person who usually enjoys gore for the sake of gore, but Blood-C executed and leveraged it’s gore so well that it’s a little offputting to see it not done as well in the theatrical release. I think a big part of it is that it means the emotions take a step down from the final episode of Blood-C, that had such lovely visuals as Nene (or possibly Nono) being grabbed by the legs and broken like a wishbone, or the rampage of the rabbit monsters happily making finger food of a whole town worth of extras in various sadistic ways. The train ghoul is just a ghoul. The Elder Bairn in the school roars and gets offed in a straight fight. The minion who turns into an Elder Bairn dies essentially off screen. Fumito’s Kaiju just growls and launches stuff at Saya. As opponents in an action film they’re fair game, but again, it seems like a step down when the movie, as the capstone to the story, should be a step up.
That said, I appreciate the overall plotline. I wish Saya had been less tight-lipped. She bonded with Mana a little, and I do understand she’s still reeling from all her friends being paid actors and also dead, but I think seeing a little more humanity (or even abject lack of humanity, if that’s how you want to play it) from her would have gone a long way. In terms of events, though, I have little to complain about: Saya lands with someone who can help her, she makes a failed attempt to get at Fumito, and then a character arc opens up the real attempt that has its share of blood and betrayal. Fumito’s origin is decently explained, his creepy crush on Saya is made clear as his motivation, we’re given some insight into the setting (it’s said the Elder Bairns are dying out, making the Shrovetide unnecessary, and that Fumito was trying to create artificial ones presumably to feed Saya), and so on.
So, it comes down to this: how do I rate Blood-C and The Last Dark?
Blood-C, to me, is a B+ show. I’m erring on the generous side because it had its well-handled twist and because it does have at least one big claim to fame, shifting it higher. The Last Dark is a B- affair. It does what you want it to do and looks good doing it, but it’s marred by might have been, and not living up to its full potential, so it skews lower.
For my part, I’d wholly recommend Blood-C to anyone looking for (pun intended) a bloody good time. Watch it with an unspoiled friend! I think you’ll be in for a treat. As for Last Dark, if you feel the need to see the story through, and I can hardly blame you given the final frames of Blood-C, I guess its worth your time, but just know it’s not going to hit the same notes.