BLOOD-C
2011
Original language: Japanese
- action & adventure
- animation
- mystery
- sci-fi & fantasy
The story
Saya Kisaragi is an outwardly normal girl who serves as the shrine maiden to a country town; in reality, she is a skilled swordswoman charged by her father to defeat Elder Bairns, monsters who feed on human blood. As her battles grow more desperate and more people she cares for fall victim to the Elder Bairns, Saya begins finding faults in her reality, and eventually uncovers a disturbing truth about herself, the town and her surviving friends.
What it’s like
Sunlit school corridors, a quiet shrine courtyard and rain-slick streets give the first episodes a deceptively calm, pastel-bright surface, which the animation then tears open with saturated arterial red and sudden, jagged bursts of violence. The creatures move with a stiff, unnatural twitch against hand-drawn backgrounds, so each fight feels like a glitch in an ordinary day. Sound leans on bright, anxious pop-tinged music that cuts out abruptly when the killing starts, leaving stretches of unsettling quiet. The pacing tightens steadily, so the early gentleness steadily curdles into mounting dread, and the emotional register moves from bittersweet school-life warmth to bleak, paranoid unease. The intensity is high: frequent graphic gore, decapitations and bloody deaths, with cruelty and sustained horror rather than comfort. Best suited to late-night viewing for anime fans who enjoy dark supernatural mysteries and don't mind a gruesome, emotionally punishing ride.
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