Completed Series: Blood Lad

 

 

Series: Blood Lad (ブラッドラッド)
Year: 2013
Episodes: 10
Production: Brains Base, Viz Media

Official Summary: Staz is the vampire boss of a section of the demon world, but he has little interest in human blood. He's more infatuated with Japanese culture. When he learns that Yanagi Fuyumi, a Japanese teenage girl, accidentally wanders into the demon city, he jumps to the occasion. However, while Staz deals with an intruder on his turf, the oblivious Fuyumi is killed by a monster and becomes a wandering ghost. The disappointed Staz vows to her that he will find a way to bring Fuyumi back to life. ( - MAL )

Catie's Thoughts: It's stylistic but very messy, and overall the show is middling. Clearly meant to tie in to the manga and boost the manga sales, it doesn't stand alone very well. Only ten episodes, you get maybe an arc or possibly two if you rush past the character introductions, and by the ninth and tenth episodes there's so much going on that if it were meant to be an average shounen show you could tell it would go on into the hundreds of episodes. Alas, not meant to be.

Some of the introduced arcs were interesting, but most of it stank of overused. Vampires, werewolves, demon world - check! The fact that the main character is an otaku - but a powerful character? Eh, somewhat interesting. The plotline that eeked in over the finish line - Staz's older brother challenging the Demon King? That actually got my attention but of course that plotline was introduced in the second-to-last episode and has absolutely no resolution because the show just flat-out stops. The plotline about Fuyumi's missing mother - and how she's connected to Bel's mother - that was actually fairly novel as well, I liked that. Again, things introduced just before the finish line. I'm not sure if I would have like the series more if it was given time to grow or not - fairly typical shounen by way of fanservice, which while wasn't strictly unsettling, the air-inflated boobs character design is so boringly overused. This show had some elements that handled right I would have absolutely loved - but it was so meh that I can't bring myself to really recommend it. Any time I hit up a show like this I get curious about the manga and maybe if it's handled better, so I've added the manga to my 'to-read' list. We'll see.

Would I buy it? Nope. Likely not even if found used, just terrifically unimpressed overall.