Blood-C (2011 anime TV series)

Blood-C is a 2011 anime TV series with interesting origins. In 2000 Production I.G. made a short feature film called Blood: The Last Vampire about a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. It was an absolutely brilliant movie which has never received the acclaim it deserves. There does seem to have been some thought of turning it into a TV series. That finally finally happened in 2011 with Blood-C, but it’s not as simple as that. This series is more of a radical reboot than a follow-up to the movie.

There are plenty of superficial similarities. The TV series also features a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. She also uses a katana (a samurai sword). There are however major differences. Blood: The Last Vampire was set in the 1960s; Blood-C has a contemporary setting. The Saya of the movie worked for some kind of shadowy probably governmental agency. The Saya of the TV series is a kind of girl priestess belonging to a religious sect dedicated to battling supernatural evil.

And this Saya is a very different girl. The Saya of Blood: The Last Vampire is an attractive young woman but there’s something very dark, ruthless, dangerous and chilling about her. She’s one of the good guys but she’s a stone-cold killer. The Saya of Blood-C is a cute bubbly high school girl. The only real similarity between the two girls is that they are both named Saya.

One of the best things about Blood: The Last Vampire is its minimalism. It tells us only what we absolutely need to know, when we need to know it. We get no backstory at all on Saya, apart from one moment at the end which revels her true nature. But it leaves many many unanswered questions.

The TV series is clearly determined to give us a very detailed backstory on this new version of Saya. There’s nothing wrong with that. TV is a totally different medium. In TV you expect detailed backstories.

It may not be evident at first but you really do need to watch Blood: The Last Vampire before watching the series.

You have to be a bit patient with Blood-C early on. I can understand what the series is trying to do. Saya has a double life. She has been chosen to fulfil an exacting and dangerous duty battling supernatural monsters but she’s also a high school girl. She is trying to balance the two sides of her life. She accepts her duty without question and she is a brave and dedicated warrior maiden prepared to sacrifice her life if necessary.

But she also wants to be a normal teenage girl. She wants to have some fun. She wants the other girls at school to like her. She especially wants boys to like her. She has her eye on one particular boy. She has the perfectly normal feelings of any teenage girl.

I think this approach taken by the series is perfectly valid, but the high school stuff is very very cutesy. If you bought this series for the mayhem and monster-slaying you might find this cutesiness a bit over-the-top.

Even in the early episodes however her sacred mission is not forgotten and she does have some epic battles with monsters. These monsters are known as the Elder Bairns.

The series does quickly become a lot darker. The supernatural threats to the idyllic village in which Saya lives become more frequent and more extreme. Saya has promised to keep everyone safe but she starts to wonder if that’s possible.

She also has reason to think that there are many things she has always taken for granted that may not be as simple and straightforward as she’d thought. She had not realised that the Elder Bairns could communicate with humans. They tell her things that disturb her. 

There’s also a dog, a cute little dog she has befriended. He talks to her as well. Whatever he is, he’s not just a cute little dog.

The battle against the Elder Bairns intensifies but the series gradually becomes more interesting in other ways. Both Saya and the viewer are offered tantalising hints that there is something much more complex going on than the threat represented by the monsters. 

There is much that Saya does not yet understand and that she needs to understand but perhaps she is not yet ready for such knowledge.

Saya also has to deal with something else that is new and disturbing - the possibility that love might be blossoming for her for the first time. This is something that scares her a lot more than monsters.

The one minor weakness of this series is that although the monsters are very imaginative they are at times in danger of becoming just a little goofy. The monsters perhaps needed to be a bit creepier and a bit less over-the-top. The problem was that there was a obvious desire to make each new monster more spectacular than the preceding one. The gushing blood effects are also a bit iffy.

The action scenes are certainly lively.

There is some unexpected nudity in episode 8. It’s very tasteful and given the level of violence this is a series that is most definitely not intended for the kiddies.

Blood-C is an odd mix cuteness, mayhem and weirdness. It’s a mixture I like very much. Highly recommended.

Seeing Blood: The Last Vampire first will add enormously to your enjoyment and it is in any case a must-see anime movie.