Trinity Blood

Full Title: Trinity Blood
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, Supernatural
Episodes: 24
Uploaded By: Mavrik
My Age Rating: PG-13 (Mild Language, Graphic Violence)

Being my first anime and the show single-handedly responsible for luring me into this dark, depressing lifestyle of watching anime alone on my pc and then telling you all about it, I will have a little bit of bias when writing this one. Take the following review with a pinch of salt, not like you don't anyway...

The world is carved into two factions, vampire and human. Trinity Blood follows, for the most part, the bizarre and slightly odd individual known as Abel Nightroad. Abel is a seemingly normal human priest working for the Vatican who, in this post-apocalyptic future, are a major force in the world. Seemingly benign and harmless, Abel has a couple secrets up his sleeve. He is a key member of a special operations team by the name of Ax, not to mention that he is also the result of an ancient experiment to find something that could rid the world of vampires, a crusnik (or vampire that feeds on the blood of other vampires.) His duties with the Vatican lead him to a young not-so-innocent girl, who could be the key to the world's survival.

I hate saying this, but this show is terribly cliched. It took a bit of anime viewing to arrive at this conclusion, but arrive I did, I guess. Furthermore, the thrill of the show comes from taking interest in the survival of every other character but Abel because, for most of the series, Abel's power is so overwhelming that's it not a question of if he is going to use it and make all the bad guys go away, it's a question of when. Although the power doesn't seem to do him any harm as long as he drinks some vampire blood afterward, he seems insanely over-hesitant to use it, even when his friends are in mortal danger. He has no problem violently (and gruesomely) cutting a vampire in two in the first episode because said vampire killed a handful of people, but he hesitates to kill another vampire later in the series who he catches in the act of murdering thousands to millions of innocent civilians. This double standard is a bit... odd to say the least. Needless to say, this anime will leave many of its viewers befuddled.

Also, the series would have done much better focusing on action. The action centered episodes are BY FAR the best because face it, nobody cares about politics these days (especially imaginary ones.) That being said I tended to enjoy the slowness of the series. Trinity Blood likes to flaunt its huge budget by putting gloriously detailed screen after gloriously detailed screen between action scenes... and I, for one, am not complaining as I thoroughly enjoy that kind of thing, but I also know some of you won't like it. Also, the lack of a definite ending will make some distraught, though there is a tribute to the now dead original creator Trinity Blood I find touching.

That brings us to the production which is the main component to Trinity Blood's success, and call me shallow, but it's one of the reasons I started watching anime. In short, it's non-stop beautiful. Earlier said large budget allows some of the most seamless mix of cartoon drawings and effects in existence, it also allows for a very pretty opening title song sequence and ending credit sequence, both of which are definitely worth your time. The voice acting is pretty much flawless, if a wee bit generic, and the music accompanying the story is majestic to say the least. Although it's hard to pin down an exact audience this show would appeal to, I would recommend at least trying Trinity Blood, it's quite tasty I assure you.

My Rating: 7.7/10 (Very Good)