YMMV / Blood+

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is David a Well-Intentioned Extremist who only shoots the dog for the sake of humanity? Or is he an unrepentant Knight Templar fantastic racist who only kills Chiropterans for the sake of revenge?
• Arc Fatigue: The Schiff and how relevant they are to the main plot. Some fans felt that their presence as artificial Chiropterans took away what made Saya and Diva and the chevaliers special, as well as digressing the spotlight from them. The manga adaptation adapts them out.
• Broken Base: Diva's rape of Riku. Some fans disliked this; others said that this was when the show started really picking up.
• Complete Monster:
  • Original series: Amshel Goldsmith is a researcher obsessed with Chiropterans, The Man in Front of the Man to Diva, and responsible for all the chaos in the setting. Since her birth, Amshel twisted Diva to become a Psychopathic Womanchild easy for him to control, while he used her resulting appetite for death and destruction to profit and increase his own power at the expense of her victims. Living for hundreds of years, Amshel now has the public persona of the CEO of pharmaceutical company Cinque Flèches, and uses his wealth to create a group of artificial Chiropterans known as The Schiff, raising them as Child Soldiers and treating them like equipment, as shown by his indifference to their deaths when they escape his clutches and their shortened lifespans begin to expire. A man with loyalty to none, Amshel even kills his own brother, Solomon, for falling in love with Saya. His false loyalty to Diva is an obvious ruse which even she can see through but chooses to go along with out of loneliness, and when she's killed, Amshel reacts with only irritation and demands to be given her children so he can continue his insane experiments.
  • Manga adaptation, by Asuka Katsura:
    • Amshel Goldsmith is no less vile in this abridged retelling of the anime. Back in the 19th century, Amshel devoted himself to Diva by becoming her Chevalier, manipulating her sister Saya into releasing her and having her slaughter an entire banquet to his delight. Securing Diva for his own selfish needs, Amshel spent the centuries concocting schemes to fulfill Diva's dream of a world infested with Chiropeans, establishing the pharmaceutical company Cinq Fleches to conduct countless human experiments and massacres to achieve said dream. Seeking to have Diva mate with the Chevalier Riku, Amshel organizes an attack on a Red Shield ship to slaughter everybody onboard. With his care for Diva nothing more than possessive obsession, Amshel uses the Red Shield attack to reveal his secret project, the Corpse Corps, child Chiropean soldiers created for the sole purpose of wiping out all of Diva's Chevaliers so that only he can rule beside her. Spreading the Chiropean virus with his D67 drugs, Amshel organizes an opera performance by Diva to be broadcasted worldwide, with her singing activating the drugs' effects and creating a massive Chiropean infestation.
    • Solomon Goldsmith, lacking the redeeming qualities of his anime version, is a sadistically gleeful scientist and Amshel's brother who assists him in his plans. A Chevalier of Diva's who indulges in his scientific curiosities as a way to encourage him to continue living, Solomon oversees numerous human experiments and Chiropteran massacres, even having an entire village turned to test out Saya's capabilities. Assisting Amshel in his plan to claim Riku as Diva's "bridegroom" to see if a Chiropteran can give birth, when Diva goes against his wishes, Solomon bails on his brother's plans. Obsessed with making Saya his bride, Solomon feigns a change of heart to get Saya and Red Shield to help him kill Amshel, even hoping to use Diva to continue his experiments.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • Diva. As Nathan puts it when she dies: "Poor girl...she just wanted to have a family..."
  • Karl in spades. He's insane, but it's been made clear he wasn't always this way. Over a century of abuse drove him mad and only Solomon has treated him like a brother. His death is something more of a Mercy Kill.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Diva, holy shit Diva. Both fanboys and fangirls give her far more sympathy than she deserves, given that while she has a genuinely good Freudian Excuse, she is also incredibly ruthless and often needlesly cruel— not to mention a rapist/murderess who never shows any regret for raping and killing Riku. This is sometimes paired with them villainizing and bashing Saya, and more frequently with trying to excuse away Diva's evil deeds due to her Dark and Troubled Past.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Blood-C fans who regarded Saya Otonashi as weak and dependable to Haji and usually gets her ass kicked. Likewise, Blood + fans regarded Saya Kisaragi as annoying and useless in saving lives and declared Blood-C as the worst in the franchise. It also has a rivalry with fans of the original OVA, who look down at both series as cheap knockoffs.
• Genius Bonus: The term "Chiropteran" is actually one of the actual names of bats, animals that are most closely associated with vampires.
• Growing the Beard: When Saya grows her hair out. Possibly not the most accurate timing as that is subjective but things did seem to get more interesting around the time she was reintroduced with her hairstyle changed.
• Magnificent Bastard: Nathan Mahler is one of Diva's Chevaliers and far more than the silly, foppish man he appears to be. Implied to have been the Chevalier of Saya and Diva's mother, Nathan steadily plays both sides between Diva's forces and Red Shield against one another, protecting Diva during her pregnancy while making sure she faces Saya and that her children will survive. Arranging his own seeming death at Saya's hands, only to slip away completely unharmed, Nathan secures the deaths of any who might harm Diva's children while entrusting them to Saya, his strings so subtle that most are completely unaware they even exist.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Diva crosses it when she rapes Riku so that she can bear his child, and then kills him.
  • Van Argiano and the American government cross it when they plan to turn people around the world into Chiropterans and then choosing who to send The Cavalry to, effectively control the world.
  • James Ironside crosses it when he tricks Moses into hunting down Kai with the false promise that he can cure him and his friends of the Thorn.
• Narm:
  • A lot of the rather loopy moments Carl has make it hard to take him seriously when we should, since he's a psychopath.
  • The scene in Episode 7, "I Must Do It", where Saya has removed her shoes because they've filled up with rain. Either it's a nice touch as it makes her look more hardcore doing her sword practice barefooted and the sloshing water reflected by the sunset is gorgeous to look at, or it's just silly that her tennis shoes have turned into a pair of birdbaths and she hasn't emptied them.
  • Speaking of shoes, Diva making a huge fuss about lacing up brand new sneakers that are perfect to go into action with as opposed to dress heels, only to strip off her dress and leave only the sneakers on just as she's about to rape Riku to death.
  • The very fact a major political character is casually named Bread.
• No Yay:
  • Diva/Riku. First, although Diva looks sixteen, she is really over 150 years old, while Riku is only fourteen and looks even younger. Second, Diva's obsession with Riku is just plain creepy. Third, there is the fact that she rapes and kills him.
  • Saya/Young Hagi. In the flashback, she innocently tells him to help dress her, and, later, he says he'll even be her "friend" at night if that's what she wants. Keep in mind that he is only twelve at the time, while she looks sixteen and is really in her forties. Not so much of a problem once he gets older, though.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Riku. A lot of people feel about this way towards the kid, as his ability to hear Diva and the Chiropterans pre-transformation is left unexplained and his time as a Chevalier is unfortunately cut short thanks to Diva. In fact, his death is still considered the most hated point of the plot, as it came out of nowhere without any build up and those who loved the anime wished the kid would've sticked longer until the end. The manga does rectify this, but only during the last volume, leaving some of his potential still untapped.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The series kept teasing the idea of Kai getting turned into Diva's Chevalier but ultimately does nothing with it despite the dramatic potential of Kai getting torn between his love for Saya and instinctual loyalty to Diva. It's likely the writers decided to drop the idea when Solomon wound up taking the role of Diva's rogue Chevalier in love with Saya.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The anime version of Diva is supposed to be a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who turned evil after being twisted by the evil men in her life, and is genuinely sympathetic for most of the story... until she rapes and kills Riku, a 13-year old boy. The show still tries to give her an Alas, Poor Villain moment as Saya cries for her after killing her, but by that point a good chunk of viewers lost any ability to feel sympathy for her. Notably, the manga writer seemed to agree, as the manga heavily rewrites Diva to make her more genuinely sympathetic, and in particular removes this action entirely.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • While it's generally considered for adults in the Western hemisphere, it's worth noting that the show aired at 6pm in Japan when it was first released. Yes, around the same time as family-friendly shows such as "Sazae-san". Did we also mention that this show is filled with tons of gore, rape, and even opens up with a scene featuring innocent men, women, and children being slaughtered with blood spewing everywhere? What on earth were the networks thinking???
  • The manga. Despite being very different from the anime, the gore factor makes the anime's violence seem tame in comparison. And it was published in a shonen magazine.
• The Woobie: All three Miyagusuku siblings qualify as this, especially after the death of George.
  • Saya has been around for over a century and realizes she's the one responsible for her sister's release and as a result, everything that's happening. Over the course of the years, she's had to deal with all the blood on her hands, loses her father, and has to do an Emergency Transformation to save Riku, something she absolutely regrets doing. When Diva raids Red Shield, she and Kai do everything to keep Riku safe, but was unable to save him and witnesses his corpse shatter. A year after the chaos, she discovers Diva is using her dead brother's face. After finally pursuing her, she finds it amounted to not much. Returning home, she needs to go through 3 decades of slumber, meaning she'll miss out on what her active loved ones are doing and some of them will be dead when she awakens.
  • Riku is a sweet boy, being his siblings' Morality Pet. Then he loses his adoptive father, breaking him. He loses his new friend Mui, who he met after he and Kai got separated from Saya in Vietnam, has to be revived after he finds Diva, mistaking her for his sister, only to die again after being horrifically raped, despite everyone doing everything to keep him safe. And he was only 14.
  • Kai is broken over his father's death, gets separated from his sister for a bit, sees her going insane, finds that his brother needs an Emergency Transformation, loses Irene, and not long after, loses Riku, witnessing his corpse break into several pieces despite doing everything to keep him safe. While this helps him grow, he's separated from his sister for a while and finds she's become incredibly cynical. After, he finds out his brother's killer is taking his form. When everything finishes, he brings his sister to the crypt and sees a photo of them and their dead brother, tearing up as he's lost a lot on the journey.

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