Anime Talk: Black Blood Brothers

Okay so time to review Black Blood Brothers. Well it's entertaining. But it has quite a few caveats. The dialogue and the story at times can be rather cheesy, the animation is limited, and I disagree strongly with it's portrayal of vampires.

Alright as mentioned in a previous post you can't make an entirely innocent vampire. By definition they are all monsters to some degree or another. And in trying the protagonist and his brother for the first few episodes are really bland, cheesy, annoying or some combination of the three. In fact for about the first 5 episodes you wish the series didn't focus on the black blood brothers so much. Take Zelman Clock. He looks like a guy with a back story. He's an obviously important player and yet takes life so nonchalantly. What he'd do to get in charge? That seems like an interesting tale. I want to see more of him. Or what about that Kelly Wong woman. She looks like she belongs in a different show. I want to see that show. The one about smuggling vampires across the border. A vampire resistance fighting against human tyranny.

You want to know everyone else's deal. Fortunately the second half gets into it. Don't get me wrong they really don't do these guys justice, and the heroes we get don't have much personality. It's as if anybody who gets more than 20 minutes of screen time has to get turned into a lump.

Despite all that it does have it moments. When Clock finally does get off his ass in the second half we see one hell of a fire duel.

All of this leads me to the real problem I have with it. The show never goes whole hog with vampires. It tries do everything it can to make you forget the good guys are vamps. Hell even Clock who's suppose to register as a distinct shade of gray never does anything that would get him a what the hell hero, not really even a raised eyebrow. You're a vampire, man!



Not only that, but he is introduced as the wild maverick vampire the other good guy vampires hate dealing with. Why? I don't see it.

Okay okay. I'm beating up on the series a bit, but it is kind of entertaining. When you scrap away all the cheese, Kotaro's bullshit, and the will they or won't they plot with Katsuragi (the entirety of the series happens in about three days and I don't care who you are I ain't jumpin' in a vampire infested river for you if I've only known you for three days. Screw you.) there are some pretty interesting ideas.

I like the idea of one person being responsible for warding off evil. I also like some of the later fights. Well any fight Cain gets involved in really. Again nothing here is on Black Lagoon level.



But well the animation gets better as it goes on. It just seems like for every hand clap moment there is boo moment where the characters act in ways that are detrimental to their own survival. I'm looking at you Kotaro. Sure this kid is like ten but really, you know, there is a group of what basically amounts to terrorists and one of the dots on their agenda is to kill him and his brother and his first thought is let's run away and wander the streets aimlessly. Yes there is a twist regarding this kid, but it really doesn't stop me from face palming his stupidity.

And considering that more than half the cast are vampires a whole lot of stuff is sentimentalized to the point of being unbelievable. I mean what bills itself as a dark actiony vampire story is the last place I'd expect to get diabetes.