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(C) 2005 Production I.G., Aniplex, MBS, HAKUHODO
(C) 2005 Production I.G., Aniplex, MBS, HAKUHODO
(C) 2005 Production I.G., Aniplex, MBS, HAKUHODO
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February 10, 2008
by: Serdar Yegulalp
A sneak peek at the promising new TV series derived from Production I.G.'s groundbreaking Blood: The Last Vampire.
 Saya Otonashi remembers nothing of her past, but cherishes her present life in Okinawa. She’s got a loving father who runs a bar-restaurant; she’s got friends at school who savor her company—but there’s hints of something very wrong dancing around the edges of her perception. Those hints blow up into something huge and horrible one night when she sneaks back into school to fetch a forgotten pair of shoes and is attacked by a “chiropteran,” a beast that was once human but has now developed a thirst for blood. Bullets cannot stop these monsters, but she can. And it's in that battle that Saya activates her latent powers as a hunter of these monsters. Armed with a katana that can be primed with her own chiropteran-destroying blood, she sets out to discover her own identity and a great many other secrets best kept hidden. Who are the Red Shield, for instance -- the secret organization that watches over Saya and turns an eye to the activities of the chiropterans? What about Haji, Saya's self-appointed protector and assistant, who bestows her sword upon her and awakens her to the full extent of her powers? And what about those flashes of memory that Saya has, which seem to reach back over a century ... ? That’s the quick-and-dirty premise for Production I.G. / Aniplex’s Blood+ TV series, directed by Junichi Fujisaku (he who gave us the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex novelizations [1,2,3]) and distributed domestically by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. It’s of course based on the stunning Production I.G. short film Blood: The Last Vampire, which in its 50-minute running time delivered the protoypical version of the Saya mythology: a girl with a sword hunting unnameable monsters on an American army base in Vietnam-era Japan. Running under the eye-popping, CGI-fueled surface of the film were bigger themes about the U.S.'s continued military presence in Japan, but they all took a backseat to the movie's visuals.  No matter how you cut it, B:TLV felt like a prelude to bigger things. None other than Mamoru Oshii stepped up to the plate to deliver bigger things with his B:TLV novel Night of the Beasts, but the book was so aimless and ruminative (too much warmed-over student-revolution nostalgia, too much lumpy exposition, not enough actual story) that he might as well not have bothered. The promise of Blood remained unfulfilled. Now comes Blood+, a TV series that promises at least some of the fulfillment we didn't get before. It takes the Blood mythology and expands it beyond mere tantalizing clues and side references. If you enjoyed the original Blood but wanted more, more is what you will get in every respect: more character, more characters (plural), more background, and more spectacular imagery. Sony Pictures were kind enough to send us a sneak preview screener of the first season (25 episodes), and without spoiling too much I’ll say this promises to deliver the goods we’ve been waiting for. Aside from looking great—what Production I.G. show does not look great?—and sporting a smooth integration of rendered CGI and hand-drawn animation, it’s been written and directed with the majority of its attention towards character, not just action. Saya’s no longer just the moody cipher she was in the previous iterations of this story. She’s an actual personality, albeit one dialed-down and somewhat softer around the edges than the original hard-edged, kill-eyed creature we saw in the film -- and that makes me wonder how much of a story she can support on her own, especially when the going gets extremely rough and those close to her begin to suffer. Still, this will be a show to watch for when it’s officially released here. Of special interest is Sony's packaging for the product -- the first five episodes will be available in a single DVD volume for $24.98, but a six-disc gift set with all 25 episodes plus bonus features, a T-shirt and manga sampler book will also debut on the same date (March 4). Fans get to choose whether to go single-disc or all-in, right from the git-go. 
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