Blood-C – 12(Final) Review

This is all the movie is going to amount to be – a search and kill mission.

Episode 12

Finally, the series ends. This is such a frustrating show, up until last week the whole series has been too slow and draggy and then come the final episode, it suddenly attempts to redeem itself.

Everything that they did in this episode is what they should have been doing for the last 11 episodes – good animation, exciting soundtrack and decent plot development. Sure, there were some odd parts to the episode but if this is a sneak peak for the movie, then I my interest in the movie may have been revived.

Review

So essentially this is one huge revelation episode. We finally know the whole truth behind Saya, and everyone in the village and this is most likely the animators trying to tie things up before entering the next part in the movie. Perhaps if the information were more spread out instead of making it a mind-dump final episode, this show would have been better. There were too many sudden things happening in this episode and all the emotional scenes fell a little flat as a result of it; sudden declaration of love, sudden bond between people, way too many sudden things for the viewer to feel that emotional attachment but I would still applaud the great use of background music to help alleviate those scenes. (I found the bonding moment between Saya and her Father to be unimpressive and unexplained)

But that being said, when I think about it, if the show had decided to spread all this information out, I think it might still end up with the series still being overall dull without a smashing last episode (which was what this was) as I still believe that the main issue with this series (forget the plot holes) is the fact that they had not enough material for it to last 13 episodes. It is nice to assume that there is some reason behind this terrible pacing of the series – that because everything was controlled by Fumito, this justifies the first 3 episodes of repetition and lack of progress in general. However, it was still unnecessarily long and repetitive, not to mention how boring this made the series.

The funny thing about this episode is that it feels like a “lets dump whatever leftover material into this” sort of episode. The crazy amounts of blood and the disturbing manner in which they killed off characters is probably the animators way of releasing their frustration with this show (and using up their left over quota for blood and violence). I really do appreciate how disturbing this episode was as this episode is probably the first time I cringed while watching the show because the scenes were too disturbing and not because they were bad, so I applaud the animators for that. The scene with Nono (or was it Nene?) getting pulled apart was definitely mentally painful to watch.

So lets move onto Saya…

Okay, so the whole reason why the monsters were saying that Saya was worse than them (Elder Bairns) was simply because she was a cannibal? Well, if you think about the Cadbury Advertisment with the chocolate man eating themselves, it is really not all that bad. =P Tsk, talk about whiny monsters who complain too much.

I understand that since Saya is close to her “dad”, she would want to mourn him, but she did kill him afterall. Typical Saya. =P Well, that is probably better than the usual: “I will not harm my friend” notion since this show surely does not try to be that.

Although the topic of Saya’s intelligence was never really breached upon in this episode, I did like the fact that she finally has spunk in her and is not as annoying with her attitude about wanting to save people yet not do a thing. The issue is that this sense of comradery that she suddenly feels for the humans is another sudden thing. Despite how much she may seemed to care about others, she never really actually did show it properly until it was after the fact.

Now onto Fumito….

He makes a pretty cool villain and his crazy psychotic behavior made the episode more interesting to watch. Although I do not like the idea that the whole thing is like a huge psychiatric experiment, I would still like to know who the hell Fumito is and I hope that they back his ability to hi-jack a whole island with some substantial status of reason.

What I don’t get is that is how Fumito is controlling the monsters. So what if he uses Saya’s blood? Shouldn’t Saya be the one with the ability to control them because of the bond that they share and not Fumito? So why are they listening to Fumito?

Another thing is that if Fumito is able to control the Elder Bairns (as implied), then why do they still divulge information throughout the series thus making Fumito’s job of brainwashing Saya even harder than it needs to be?

As for the Animation,

Boy was this episode ridiculously better than the rest. The fighting scenes were original and more fluid with good choreography, the camera angles were exciting and once again, we have the damn censorship laws destroying some of the scenes. Instead of the usual run and thrust, Saya is finally fighting like a warrior. I just once again wished that they had done this for the rest of the season and not stinge on the budget so that they could go nuts on the last episode. Which brings me to the issue of the second half of the episode.

Although the second half of the episode was nicely done, the style of the show had changed and more CGI was used so I felt like we were watching a scene from the Blood-C movie due to the difference in animation style. Perhaps they had decided to save some effort by using scenes from the movie in this episode as a “trailer” of sorts for the movie.

The music in this episode was also really good. It might borderline as being too overbearing at times, but it was feeling more grand (as well as movie worthy) and it reminded me of X/1999.

Give mommy a hug

Overall, it was a really good episode and much better than what I was expecting to see. The best part (and slightly anti-climatic moment) was when Saya was about to slash the helicopter into half and Fumito pulls out a gun and shoots her. It was hilarious, I don’t know if I will be able to contain my laughter during the movie if Saya is to remain with an eyepatch on for the whole duration of the movie when it comes out.

The dog finally makes its re-appearance with another crytic message and honestly, that was the worse part of the episode. For once, I had just wish that the show would stop all its half-assed revelations that tells us nothing at all. Thankfully, that scene was rather short so it was tolerable.

Although this series has major issues (and we have definitely established that in the last 12 weeks), this episode was fun and I think that if one leaves their brain behind whilst watching the show and simply enjoy it for what it is (which is pretty much nothing until the last ep) all in one sitting, it might be semi-decent. The atmosphere and tension in the show is relatively decent and if we were to overlook the pacing of the show, the plot itself is partially interesting. (I know I am not convincing anyone with my choice of half-assed words.)

(I know that I am missing quite a few points in this review but hey, it is not even 8am yet and I honestly don’t think that this show requires me to tell you guys that there are issues with it.)

Episode Rating: 8/10
I enjoyed the action and revelations despite how lame some of the execution of it was.

So, it has been fun reviewing this series for you guys and I hope you had fun reading the combine reviews between M0rg0th and I. We will probably be reviewing the movie when it comes out. =)

-ra out!