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Clockwise from left: Sister Esther, Father Tres, and Father Abel.
Originally begun as a series of novels penned by the late Sunao Yoshida, which were later adapted into a manga and anime series. The manga is known for its lush and Baroque artwork by Kiyo Kūjō and the anime adaptation is similarly lavish in its visuals and animation quality.
The anime continuity opens on a time far into the future, 900 years after a disaster which nearly destroyed Earth's population. The Catholic Church has reemerged as a major military superpower and is currently waging a Cold War against the Methuselahs, a vampiric race comprised of humans which have been infected with an alien bacillus. (Said bacillus prolongs the victims' lives, grants them magical powers and super strength — and leaves them constantly hungry for human blood, hence the reason they're considered such a nuisance.)
It is not uncommon for stark, be-trenchcoated heroes to emerge during times like this. However, the main be-trenchcoated hero of this story appears anything but heroic at first glance. In fact, Father Abel Nightroad seems a bit of a ditz, although under the right circumstances, his true form will show itself. (His true form being that of a Crusnik, a powerful red-eyed being which feeds on vampires the way vampires feed on humans.)
This anime isn't just about Father Nightroad kicking vampire ass for the Lord, though. There's also plenty of intrigue going on in both the Vatican and Methuslean camps. And a shadowy conspiracy called the Order of Rosenkreuz, which seeks to bring about The End Of The World As We Know It. Again.
One of the complaints that's been lobbied against the anime is that it's all flash and no substance. It's light on plot, Character Development and background information. (This editor, after watching it, had to visit Wikipedia just to figure out the setting of the story, the hero's history, and who all of the principle players were.) About the only thing this anime doesn't skimp on are the visuals (which are sumptuous) and the DVD extras. If you're looking for some rollicking vampire-killing starring loads of pretty people fighting amidst gorgeous gothic architecture (and don't really care if everything makes sense at the end of it all) then you'll probably find this anime a satisfying watch.
It's probably worth noting that one of the reasons the anime is so light on content, and that the manga is sort of.. hanging... is because the original author died before the series could be finished. And the Mangaka aren't really sure how to finish the series well enough so as to honour the author so to speak, and keep the fandom happy.
This show provides examples of:
- A Child Shall Lead Them (Pope Alessandro XVIII, King Ludwig II (in the novels) and Empress Seth. The former is timid and easily manipulated; the second is a genderconfused 15 years old wheelchair bound ruthless king of Germanicus; and the the latter is Really Seven Hundred Years Old but rules through a proxy due to her youthful appearance.)
- Absolute Cleavage (Worn by a nun, believe it or not. No, I'm not kidding.
 )
- Adaptation Decay (The anime, but mostly the "we gotta end this, at any cost" last few episodes. REALLY. Also turning Cain, Isaak, and Dietrich into Card Carrying Villains!)
- In the manga it is revealed that her real name is Esther White, daughter of Sir Edward White who led the White Rebellion! So Yeah No Queen Esther here!
- That was before The Reveal in the novels too. Esther just thought Edward White was her father but turns out he was a loyal knight who was framed by the murder of the Crown Princess Victoria, took the little baby heir to safety so she wouldn't be killed and gave her up in adoption in the... possibly most dangerous country. The real culprit behind the rebellion was the Prince's mistress who wanted her daughter, Mary Spencer, as the heir to the throne. Mary vs Esther is the entire plot of the Crown of Thorns ROM VI. Manga follows the novels So Yeah. Eventually, she will be Queen
- Alien Sky
- All There In The Manual. (Seriously. The show tells you almost nothing about the setting and backstory. The manga is more clear and forthcoming about these details. The novels are your best bet if you want to have a clue what's happening, though.)
- Alternate Continuity (The novels, manga and anime differ greatly from each other.)
- Alternative Character Interpretation (Just think about the series, any of the characters not fitting under this?)
- This Troper had a moment like this in the light novels with Lilith Sahl! She is even more sadistic than Dietrich!
- Uh what? Lilith gave Abel a chance to save himself because she believed in him blindly... in a time where he was a murderous sociopath who killed millions. The idea, from Saint Elissar, was there wasn't a way to stop the Iblis. How is that sadistic? Now Abel, on the other hand, and certainly megalomaniac Seth...
- Artificial Limbs (Hugue)
- The Atoner (Abel)
- Author Existence Failure (Sunao Yoshida died at the age of 34, with the novel series incomplete and the manga adaptation not even begun yet. His best friend Kentaro Yasui took over on both. Nobody bothered to take over the anime, which ended with a 1st-season cliffhanger, though.)
- Awesome Moment Of Crowning (Esther at the end)
- Badass Longcoat (Most male members of the cast. And with the introduction of Asta, even one of the females.)
- Bakers Dozen (Cour variant. If you treat the multipart eps as single extended episodes, you get 13 episodes over 24 half-hours. It goes: 1, 2, 3-4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-10, 11, 12-14, 15-19, 20-22, 23-24.)
- The Beautiful People
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Subverted BIG TIME with Dietrich. He's described as extremely handsome (with the face of an angel)... and is also a total psychopath with no regard for human life.
- BFG (Tres sure loves his heavy artillery...)
- Big No (At the climax of episode 22, and to a lesser extent, episode 3.)
- Bishonen (Just about every male cast member is, including the Pope! The manga even lampshades it a few times. And Abel appears so many times with Bishie Sparkles...)
- Bloody Murder (One vampire could cause his blood to spontaneously combust with air. Abel could form a scythe out of his.)
- Blood Stained Glass Windows
- Boat Lights (Abel Knightroad First Volume Manga Cover◊) You Should Know This Already
- Bodyguard Crush we have Tres' devotion to Caterina Sforza in both novels and manga.
- Broke Episode (Abel never seems to have money when he needs it.).
- Burn The Witch (Both Terrans and Methuselah hate witches!)
- Cain And Abel (Guess what Abel's Evil Twin is named?).
- They also have a sister named Seth (originally the third son of Adam and Eve, here turned into a girl).
- Lilith is based on Adam's first wife, who turned into a demon.
- The Chew Toy (Bizarrely, Abel. He takes a lot of abuse for someone who's capable of Badassery.)
- Costume Porn / Pimped Out Dress
- Church Militant (VERY militant. Straight up to 40K levels)
- Click Hello (Tres, episode 2. May also count as Dramatic Gun Cock.)
- Complete Monster: Dietrich and Isaak both qualify. Dietrich murdered his whole family when he was seven years old, and was so brutal that his subjects were happy to see him join the Orden... when he was 10 years old. He also forces Ion into a vampiric rage and tries to force Esther to kill him. The gambit fails thanks to Abel's intervention. Isaak meanwhile, blows up Barcelona to test his weapon, killing thousands of innocents as well as Abel's friend, and then mocks him about it during the next encounter. He also tries to force Abel to choose between saving everyone (by killing Isaak) or violating his principles. Abel chooses the latter, and the only reason the weapon fails is because Abel's friends sucessfully shut it down. He also tries to burn London, while quoting the Book of Malachi.
- A case of Character Derailment and Adaptation Decay. Isaak, in the novels (and manga), doesn't do such thing. Albeit he's not opposed to level cities if he's hired to do it (neither did Abel or Seth by the way, back in the Dark Ages), he doesn't do that to Londonium, in fact he plays as ally to Esther in the three last arcs. More reluctant in the end, but it's in his best political interest for her to be crowned Queen. But he was the one who not only rescued her and Shahrazad twice in István, but also delivered Esther's message to Abel -indirectly- to stop the Arcbishop who was the enemy of that arc, not the Orden. He also saves Abel from Monica Argento in the RAM novel arc, taking a stab meant for the priest.. Isaak's goals aren't revealed, they remain "mysterious" so who knows. Dietrich has a Freudian Excuse: sure he murdered his family when he was six, but they tried to kill him first and treated him as a monster since he was born due to his unusual intelligence. So Yeah... He's a monster now, but it's obvious it's a case of nature and nurture set against him.
- Crouching Moron Hidden Badass (Abel)
- Crowning Moment of Awesome (Episode 14 (I think) of the anime, where Crusnik 02 destroys an airship with a bolt of lightning.)
- Crush Kill Destroy (Tres in Genocide mode)
- Cursed With Awesome (...which is what infection of the Bacillus would be if it didn't require the constant craving for human blood. Given the wondrous powers it bestows, one wonders why all or part of humanity doesn't allow itself to be infected and then just survive on a diet of synthetic blood...)
- Wasn't that Lampshaded during the fairy synthetic vampires arc? I remeber it saying that the succesful coversion rate is extremely low! (Atleast in the light novels I remember that!) So Yeah Also, there is the religious aspect of not becoming vampires!
- You Fail Biology Forever , even though this is in-universe biology! The Methusalehs' whole body are different as they were born Terran and went through a proccess, simmilar to puberty to become Methusaleh! An attempted conversion is most likely to cause the virus to destroy all the blood in the Terrans body, unless they luck out! I mean even if the Methusaleh did not drink that much... So Yeah
- Cute Bruiser (Kaya)
- Cute Shotaro Boy (The Pope, who often finds himself torn between his two older siblings.)
- Deceptively Human Robots (Tres and the other Killing Dolls)
- The Ditz (Abel)
- The Empire (The vampire's form of government.)
- Eyes Always Shut (Brother Matthew)
- Fan Dumb (Lots of the fanfics can get in this territory!) http://www.fanfiction.net/ Look up Trinity Blood and see what I mean
- Foreign Language Title
- Fridge Brilliance ((First Volume Light Novels)In the novels how different physiology allows two female Methuselah to wear Stripperiffic outfits in winter! Lampshaded in that it gave them away as Methuselah!)
- Gonk (Brother Phillipo)
- Guns Akimbo (Tres)
- Gun Kata (Father Tres, episode 2)
- The Gunslinger (Quite a few characters, but mainly Tres, to the point that Gunslinger is actually his callsign.)
- Handsome Lech (Antonio)
- Heel Face Turn Dietrich
- Hermetic Magic
- Heroes Want Redheads
- Heroic Vow (Abel to Lilith, Esther to Shahrazad).
- High Pressure Blood
- Ho Yay (This varies, depending on how you look at it. Abel seems to have a thing for Tres, especially in the manga. Also Radu and Ion.)
- (Radu and Dietrich too. Radu couldn't shut up about how beautiful Dietrich was while he was being tortured. Albeit, admittedly, Les Yay is more generous).
- Hunter Of His Own Kind
- I Know Kung Fu (Tres loses his guns during a fight, and instead head-butts his opponent in the face.)
- Implacable Man (Tres, again.)
- Improbable Aiming Skills (Tres. Tres. Tres. Oh my God Tres! Though to be fair, he is a robot.)
- Improbable Weapon User (Crusnik 02 wields a huge, wicked, multi-bladed scythe. Made out of his own blood.)
- Incurable Cough Of Death (Caterina Sforza in the ROM novels and the manga)
- Knight Templar
- Lady Of War (Astharoshe, Sister Paula, Monica Argento, Shahrazad al-Rahman, Mary Spencer)
- Large Ham (Brother Petro, who seemingly can't go five minutes without making a grand proclamation of justice.)
- Les Yay (Esther Blanchett and Shahrazad al-Rahman's very special friendship in the novel and specially the manga adaptation, cue to a lot of Fanservice. Jane and Mary in the novels, considering that Jane has dark curls as hair and Mary is a redhead and Esther's older half sister, it seems to be a common pattern).
- Little Miss Badass (Seth, Kaya)
- Lolicon (Seth Nightlord & Mirka Fortuna.)
- Lost Technology
- Love Makes You Evil (Caterina Sforza in the novels and Manga. When Abel shows too much concern on Esther for her liking. She subtly wants to arrange her accidental death twice, later on, in Stories Untold, she realizes the grave consequences of her actions and uses this hatred and jaded love excuse to her favor to be allowed in the Orden. In order to destroy them from within).
- Could also apply to Gyula and his wife.
- Machine Monotone (Tres, Brother Bartholomew)
- Meaningful Name (Wow, there are several!)
- Abel Nightroad (Yeah biblical Abel reference) (Also, his The Atoner personality makes it more meaningful as he treats himself like its meaning! Breath! Vapor! Nothingness! Temporary! Ephemeral! Transient! So Yeah)
- Esther Blanchett (Biblical Esther reference) Revealed to be Esther White in the manga, the White Rebellion!
- Edward White is not her biological father, but a knight faithful to the Crown Princess who saved Princess Esther and was framed by the real conspirators of the crime. Also Blanchett/Blanchette is a French heroine of a novel with the same name.
- Hercules Tres Iqus (Number 3 out of 10 Killing Dolls created by Geppetto Garibaldi)
- Cain Nightroad (Biblical Cain reference) (Possible Cainites sect reference with the Orden)
- Augusta Vradica (Augustus Caesar meets Vlad Dracula)
- Seth Nighroad (Biblical Seth reference) (Possible Sethites sect reference with the Empire)
- Suleyman (Solomon reference with a possible goetia twist)
- All codenames (Except maybe Dandelion?)
- Nope, even Dandelion. He's a dandy, and his name is Leon. That's it.
- All members of the Vatican are connected to Renaissance important politicians or members of the Church: Borgia, Caterina Sforza, Medici, Alphonso D'Este.
- More Dakka
- Ms Fanservice: Noelle Bor (codename: Mistress!) before she dies!
- Also, Monica Argento (codename: Black Widow!) (You mean you did not think she had a tinge of this trope while attacking Eshter and Shahazard?)
- Minored In Asskicking (Professor Wordsworth)
- Naughty Nuns (In the distant future, the Vatican has given up that whole "celibacy" thing.)
- Nice Hat (Many, but Empress Augusta's is the most notable)
- Nightmare Fuel (Especially in the novels)
- No Ending (At least by the original author, who died before the novel series was finished. His friend, Kentaro Yasui, author of the Ragnarok novels, was asked to continue the series.)
- Nuns Are Mikos
- Obfuscating Stupidity (Abel)
- Ominous Latin Chanting (This is taken to eleven when it becomes Ominous Latin Music! Whenever you hear it, you know someone is about to get their ass handed to them!)
- Only Mostly Dead (Abel, after his unsuccessful bid to defeat Cain)
- Our Vampires Are Different
- Person Of Mass Destruction (The Crusniks.)
- Power Limiter (Abel has imposed one on himself. His Evil Twin hasn't, and the results show why Abel has done so.)
- Seth and Lilith limited it too. Since releasing 100% power would mean the Nanomachines taking possession of the host which is what happened to poor Cain. Sadly, the Anime forgets this fact and the other little detail that Lilith has no nanomachines in her bloodstream or she won't be dead <i>or</i> that Abel got his head blown off to be in stasis during Throne of the Roses. So Yeah
- Pre Asskicking One Liner (Whenever you hear Abel's voice change uttering the words, "Crusnik 02. Nanomachine output 40%. Activate." You know someone is about to get wrecked in a horrific manner.)
- Prehensile Hair (Vanessa. Holy fricking crap, Vanessa.)
- Princess Curls (Cardinal Caterina sports a magnificent pair. So does Helga von Vogelweide of the Rosencreutz Orden)
- Really Big Gun
- Really Seven Hundred Years Old (The Crusnik and Methuselah)
- Requisite Royal Regalia (The crown Esther is, well, crowned with, and she also had an ermine cape in the manga)
- Roaring Rampage Of Revenge
- Say My Name (Esther and Ion, stuck in a cell together. You wouldn't think they'd have to cry out the names, what with being in the same cell, but they do.)
- Scenery Porn
- Schizo Tech
- Screw The Rules, I'm Doing What's Right (In the episode Overcount I. The Belfry of Downfall Cardinal Caterina Sforza breaks Vatican protocol in seeking to stop a weapon that could destroy all of Rome. As a result she placed under house arrest and is hinted that that she might have been executed. However,. she is cleared when the weapon is used.)
- Sexy Priest (The AX agents seem to be ranked according to how attractive they are. Abel of course is first. Tres may be an exception, as he was designed that way.)
- Shotacon (Ion Fortuna) The ending of the anime has Abel x Ion! If you think about it... Abel (priest) Ion (looks like a boy) So Yeah
- Sliding Scale Of Vampire Friendliness: On the friendlier side. Only cruel or debauched vampires go on blood guzzling sprees. Most live off cloned blood.
- Stripperiffic (Most female vampires. Sister Monica and Sister Paula also, despite being nuns.
- Sweet Tooth (Abel would like thirteen sugars in his tea, please.)
- Shout Out (Episode 2 of the anime has Tres throw it out to John Preston by pulling a similar "bust into badguy hideout, kill the lights, and blow everyone away while standing in the same spot" entry.)
- Tear Jerker (Lots and lots of them: Gyula's death on Esther's arms, Ion's last farewell to Radu, Shahrazad's death on Esther's arms, Alessandro's death on Esther's arms...)
- Tin Man (Tres has his moments)
- Tsundere (Astharoshe "Asta" Asran, and using that nickname without permission is an easy way to trigger the tsuntsun side. Ion Fortuna. Esther Blanchett to a degree is a tsundere type B, usually she's polite and kind, but she has her triggers specially around Abel in the novels.)
- Unknown Rival (Brother Petro and Tres, who really couldn't care less.)
- Unorthodox Reload (Tres)
- Unrequited Love (Sister Noelle, for Abel.)
- Winged Humanoid (The Crusnik when they're at 80% and over.)
- Walking The Earth (Abel and Ion at the end of the series.)
- Well Intentioned Extremist (Some members of the Orden, particularly Balathasar, are like this. Esther could have been one in the beginning, specially in the novels. Also Süleyman).
- White Haired Pretty Boy (Cain)
- Whole Costume Reference (When Esther is crowned, she wears a Pimped Out Dress just like one Elizabeth I of England wore, but it wasn't her coronation dress)
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity (Cain, who apparently went crazy after fusing with the Crusnik nanomachines at 100%, thus demonstrating why Abel's voluntary Power Limiter is a very good idea.)
- X Meets Y (Hellsing meets Trigun meets Chrono Crusade!)
- And also "Alucard meets Vash" to some extent.
- You Fail Biology Forever (Fanfics that have people being converted into Krusniks despite the nanomachines being only able to be in the bodies of Test Tube Babies!)
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