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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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March 17, 2008
by: Serdar Yegulalp
The beginning of Saya's violent odyssey into her past -- and her future.
Review Hardware Used: Samsung SyncMaster 226BW 22” flat-panel widescreen display; Nero ShowTime 4 running on Windows Vista; Tannoy Reveal studio monitors; Yamaha AP-470 USB 1.1 outboard amplifier
Disc 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 and disguise 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. Features - English, Japanese audio
- English, French, Korean subtitles
Disc Review Content: (This section may contain spoilers.)
Saya Otonashi ought to be just another teenage girl in school except that she remembers nothing of her life before the last year or so. All she’s sure of is her family: her adoptive Vietnam-veteran father, George, and her two brothers, Kai and Riku. They live in Okinawa, not far from an American airbase, where the jets and bombers scream overhead and a mysterious long-haired man in the park plays the cello in a way that seems hauntingly familiar. “Who am I?” Saya asks herself, and it isn’t long before she gets the first and most brutal clues towards answering that mystery. One night she sneaks back into school to retrieve a pair of shoes and is assaulted by a “chiropteran”—a monster that once was human, and now feeds on the blood of humans to survive. She’s almost mauled to death by the creature, but then the cello-player shows up, infuses Saya with his blood to revive her, and gives her a sword. When infused with her blood, she can use it to kill these creatures … and kill she does, much to her own shock and dismay. Welcome to Blood+, Production I.G.’s TV-series expansion of the universe that was set up in their short film Blood: The Last Vampire. As fantastic as that movie looked (and sounded), it was impossible to see it as anything but a taste of bigger and better things to come. Blood+ uses some of the same basic concepts from that movie, but surrounds them with a lot more in the way of characterization, motive, background, and personality. The Saya of the movie was a cold, one-dimensional killing machine; here, she’s a conflicted and troubled young woman who’s discovering that she has great and ghastly things at her command.
From what I’ve seen of the show so far, it makes for a slightly less gritty but far more emotionally accessible—and by that token, more broadly enjoyable—experience. The first volume doesn’t waste much time getting the basic situation set up: by the end of the first episode, Saya has already stared life and death (as in, her own death and pseudo-resurrection) in the face. By the end of the first disc, she’s made at least one crucial decision about how to handle her future. She’s made a big leap from her earlier life, where her biggest worries were her prodigious appetite and her prowess at pole-vaulting. The aftereffects of the school battle allow us to find out what’s really going on. George has been keeping watch over Saya for the sake of an organization called “Red Shield,” a group that is devoted to tracking and stopping chiropterans --beastly vampires -- whenever they appear in the world. Saya’s blood is the best weapon they have, since it acts as a super-coagulant—it crystallizes the blood of the monsters and kills them on contact. Bullets cannot stop them, and if cut up they have a nasty tendency to regenerate.
All of this is moot if Saya isn’t willing to fight, of course. David, George’s liaison to the Red Shield, is worried that they don’t have time to wait for Saya to remember her past. George has to balance his paternal feelings for Saya—real or not—against the possibility that his love won’t keep any of them safe from monsters. David’s belief is that the best thing for Saya is a hard dose of the truth, and the sooner the better. “She was born just for fighting,” David tells George sternly, “and you’ll never change her.” He may be right about that, but not in the ways he thinks.
 (C) 2005 Production I.G., Aniplex, MBS, HAKUHODO
Saya's closeness with her adopted family -- especially her brothers -- will help her weather the brutal times ahead.
Right from the beginning it’s clear that even though Saya’s not related to her family by blood, she’s as important to them as they are to her. Kai, the older and scrappier of the two, is her source of fighting spirit. He’s the one who finds her half-dead and bloodied after the battle at school, and seethes at the possibility that something terrible is happening to Saya and he has no say in it, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Mao. Riku, the younger, is a source of cheer and good faith, and when he crumbles into despair later on he gives the others (Saya included) a reason to pull it all together.
 (C) 2005 Production I.G., Aniplex, MBS, HAKUHODO
Haji, Saya's protector or "chevalier", turns up to reawaken her powers when she needs them most.
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