My Anime Life: Blood-C

Not quite in time for Halloween, I know. But I had a more important post to put out, so instead here's a late theme-appropriate article, the second on the "My Anime Life" series. This time we look at Blood-C, the third anime project in Production I.G's Blood franchise. A collaboration between established Blood staff, and manga collective CLAMP, Blood-C became notorious in its time due to its frequent usage of graphic violence, which was censored in Japan and caused it to be banned in mainland China.

The initial set-up is deceptively simple; Saya Kisaragi is a shrine maiden for the local Shinto temple run by her father, and is something of an airhead at school. But at night, she fights monsters in the surrounding woods dubbed Elder Bairns. People in the village start falling victims to the Elder Bairns, who speak with Saya and accuse her of being a traitor to an ancient covenant. The storyline is something a hybrid between a slow J-horror style creeping dread and unease, and the more action-oriented style of earlier Blood projects. The storyline is concluded in the movie The Last Dark, where Saya is in pursuit of forces tied to the series' events.

To say Blood-C is an acquired taste would be an understatement. Its pacing is purposefully very slow and cyclical, with part of the unease coming from how different events either don't seem to impact each other, or repeat in a kind of forced normality which grotesquely contrasts against the monstrous attacks of the Elder Bairns, many modelled on pre-existing Japanese yokai. Saya's character goes from innocent and air-headed young girl to someone who could easily dice an opponent with her sword in the blink of an eye, and some bits of the lore aren't explained fully until after the series has ended. The characters are also deliberately shallow, with a late-stage twist explaining it in a way I found interesting, but likely wouldn't sit well with a lot of people. It also does became very graphic. For once, I fully understand the censorship it received, because...yikes.

This commentary also partially extends to the movie The Last Dark, which is technically very impressive, but the tone is starkly different. It can still be quite violent, and there is a lingering dread that forms part of the horror, but it feels a lot more like a retread of the original Blood: The Last Vampire than a follow-up to Blood-C. It does properly wrap up the story, and Saya gets her wishes fulfilled, but it doesn't have quite the right kind of oomph. It's something I would watch to close out the story rather than as a good story in its own right. And to enjoy the animation and music for both, which are really good.

So...what about this? I can see why Blood-C is the black sheep of the Blood franchise. It deliberately adopts a tonally dissonant approach to its narrative, has a major plot-altering twists that I personally didn't see coming first time, and a movie that shifts tone yet again and makes the two feel like the products of entirely different teams (they're not, it was again a deliberate artistic choice). Should you try it? Well, maybe, I guess. At your own risk.