Blood-C / YMMV - TV Tropes

Abandon Shipping: Saya and Tokizane ended up sunk after it is revealed that Tokizane is a Jerkass who only joins the experiment just to get money and is disgusted by Saya's nature.
Alas, Poor Scrappy:
- Once it's revealed that all of Saya's friends are actors who were hired to spy on her every movements, they basically lose all sympathy and fall into scrappy territories. That said, it is possible to sympathize with Nene... when an Elder Bairn grabs her by the legs and rips her in half by the crotch. Even for someone like Nene, her death is infamous for how painful it looks.
- One could also feel a twinge of sympathy towards Nono, when she's betrayed by her own twin sister Nene as the two flee for their lives when Fumito orders Cerberus to kill off the cast. At least in Nono's case, her death in comparison to her trecherous twin is instantaneous.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Saya. All things being what they are there is a lot of room for debate as far as her personality is concerned. Fumito seems to believe that she doesn't really give a hoot about humans, theorizing that she made a pact with somebody in a distant past to never kill humans. That having been said, in the last episode of the anime, she still does try to save her "friend" Kanako even after it was revealed that the woman only wanted to use Saya for her own benefit. Also she does stop the massacre of the town fairly quickly—even though by then it was too late. Also she sheds a single tear for her friends and enters a Heroic BSoD that lasts for days. And in the movie she has multiple Pet the Dog moments with various characters, though they are subtle and downplayed.
Arc Fatigue: A complaint in which most critics were unanimous is how much time it takes for the series to abandon the "Elder Bairn of the Week" routine before delving in an over-arching plot.
Audience-Alienating Era: This show kickstarted this for CLAMP given the mixed reception and the poor BD sales. This is also coming right after the mixed reception of both the endings of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- and xxxHolic.
Awesome Music: Despite the show's mixed reputation, its soundtrack is still great all thanks to Naoki Sato. The best ones are "Destiny" and "A Price For The Winner, A Punishment For The Loser". The opening and ending themes, "Spiral" by Dustz and "Junketsu Paradox" by Nana Mizuki herself, also deserve a mention.
Better on DVD: You can watch the whole show in one sitting uncensored as long as you have the stomach to handle all the gory details.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: When Saya sings while going to school or home. And sometimes it's about her day, laundry or her dad. Oddly enough, Fumito never reveals the reason for imposing this trait on Saya, if it has a reason other than For the Lulz.
Broken Base:
- By the first episode, the fans were already divided in camps between either Blood: The Last Vampire, Blood+ and Blood-C, debating on 'which' Saya they like the most and which story is better.
- Fans either considered the initial premise to be too formulaic (it's a series about a katana-wielding spirit hunter in a little mountain village, at least at first) or actually better than the Mind Screw it was revealed to conceal.
- While CLAMP fans celebrated to see Watanuki in this series (to the point it is often the only reason they watch it - see Just Here for Godzilla below), many believe that he feels shoehorned into Blood C, as he does nothing for the plot, the wish he grants to Saya ends up having no discernible weight, and his presence causes the series's setting to forcefully weld with xxxHOLiC, which is not an easy jive. This is reinforced for his appearance in the movie, in which all he does is giving Saya a new sword and looking important.
- The last two episodes really cause a more diverse response where some think that it's brilliant while others think that CLAMP has gone too far with their trademark Complexity Addiction. It doesn't help that the entire sequence of the Elder Bairns butchering a lot of the townspeople in the last episode looked like more Crosses the Line Twice.
Captain Obvious Reveal: The commentators on Nico Nico Douga are dead right on Fumito being the mastermind, that the whole town being a set-up for his experiment and that he's drugging Saya with coffee and marshmallows which results to her memory loss. Most of the viewers already figure this out by episode 8 due to him, narrating with Saya in handcuffs as seen in the flashbacks. And when episode 11 rolls in, it doesn't come out as a surprise.
Critical Backlash: Blood-C was one of the most controversial and downvoted series in its heyday, being economically enough of a failure in Japan to propel CLAMP to a new dark age and basically causing the Broken Base between Blood: The Last Vampire, Blood+ and a part of the very CLAMP fandom to join in their dislike for this new adaptation of their saga. However, specially after the release of the movie, which helped to fill many holes in the series and made many critics to change their mind, it's actually not rare to find recent reviewers who see it as not deserving all the hate it gets.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- The Dog! A lot of people speculated that it's Kimihiro Watanuki due to his voice actors (both Japanese and English) and that he mentioned owning a shop where he grants wishes. And not to mention, the ONLY character who is on Saya's side and knows what the hell is going on.
- Nene and Nono were apparently popular enough to warrant a series of OVA shorts tying in with the movie, in which they are fourth-wall breaking ghosts who give blackboard lessons recapping the characters, events and key elements from the anime.
Fandom Rivalry:
- With Blood+ fans, who regarded the series as the worst of the saga and that Saya Kisaragi is annoying and useless when it comes to saving lives. Likewise, Blood C fans who regarded Saya Otonashi as weak and dependable to Haji and usually gets her ass kicked.
- It also has a rivalry with fans of the original OVA, who look down at both series as just plain bad spinoffs.
Fridge Horror: When realizing that CLAMP works take place in one, big, overarching universe, one has to wonder if their works (potentially even the doujins) suffered a Red Skies Crossover in the background at the hands of the Elder Bairns.
Genius Bonus:
- Anyone curious about the term "Shrovetide"? This is actually an obscure term from Catholicism that describes the beginning of Lent. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it is a time of "taking away the flesh". Of course, Catholics mean this figuratively, whereas this show obviously means it literally.
- Viewers unfamiliar with Japanese culture may be unaware that the "Elder Bairns" are actually based on Youkai. Look them up here if you like.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Saya's happy relationship with her father. She often sings how much she loves him. Nana Mizuki's father died in 2008.
- People were complaining about Saya's incompetence in saving lives until it's revealed that Fumito drugged her with coffee and marshmallows to suppress her abilities, personality and memories.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Saya's life is being orchestrated as "Truman Show" Plot and an experiment and everyone (except Saya, Fumito and Yuka) all die at the end in the hands of a wacky monster. Then, the 2012 movie, The Cabin in the Woods, has the similar premise as well which includes a guy being stabbed by an unicorn to boot! Of course, the movie used to be shelved in 2009 before being released in 2012.
I Knew It!: Many viewers had already figured out that Fumito is indeed drugging Saya with coffee and marshmallows which resulted to her memory loss and is the mastermind behind the events of the show since he is the one narrating during Saya's flashbacks.
Just Here for Godzilla: A huge part of the fandom is composed by CLAMP fans who came after hearing that a post-Kei Kimihiro Watanuki appears in it.
Memetic Molester: The commentators on Nico Nico Douga makes Fumito into this, saying that he likes drugging the coffee and also the Guimauve he gives to Saya. After Episode 11 and 12, and they were pretty much right about that...!
Memetic Mutation:
- Blood-C: BEST COMEDY OF THE YEAR, MAN!
- "Protection." Gonna get "protected."
Misblamed: CLAMP gets usually blamed by Blood franchise fans for tainting the series's plot with their characteristically controversial writing shenanigans. It got worse when it was leaked that Junichi Fujisaku, one of the pioneers of the saga, worked in Blood C only to direct the fight scenes, thus allegedly limiting his chances of getting the series right. However, it turned out in an ANN interview that, while he certainly wasn't in charge of the screenplay, the series's story was outlined by himself before CLAMP was involved, and more specifically, that the bizarre reinventing of Blood featured in the series was his own idea. It's very telling that Junichi Fujisaku is again in charge of the screenplay of the 2015 stage play and 2017 live action movie while CLAMP are only credited as original co-creators.
Moe: Saya again. Up to eleven levels in the manga.
Moral Event Horizon:
- Fumito showed his true colors when he had the main cast (except Yuka) and the rest of the civilians killed brutally. But shooting Saya in the eye and taunting her as he flees really sets the mark off.
- Episode 11 showed who Kanako, Tokizane and the Monoe twins (the latter two who turned out be alive) are really in real life: they're assholes who don't care about Saya and they only played their roles for their selfish desires. Then, they taunted Saya for being a monster with Kanoko forcing her to drink her own blood while she's in shock.
- While the two are terrible people, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would approve of Nene elbowing her twin sister Nono to the ground to use as bait for the Elder Bairns when the two tries to escape. Once the plan fails, some would find themselves either cheering or cringing at Nene's agonizing death shortly afterwards.
- Yuka doesn't give damn what is happening around her when she and Fumito are discussing her plans to be the Governor of Tokyo while the massacre is happening. And she definitely doesn't care about Saya, let alone looking at her with deep disgust.
Narm: Episode 12. In two words: the Bunny Blender. The whole town being slaughtered by the Elder Bairn kind of loses its own bite when the creatures doing it look like giant pink and cream rabbits with 'arms' as ears. Not to mention the bit where one stuffs a load of people into a giant bag, then another turns its hand into a blender-type thing. Would be horrific... if it didn't make a typical electric blender sound.
Nausea Fuel: Episode 9, which shows all of Saya's classmates except Itsuki and Tokizane, brutally eaten and killed by the Elder Bairns, and episode 12, where Fumito orders the destruction of the town after his experiment on Saya failed, killing all the inhabitants.
Never Live It Down: Despite Fumito's manipulations and the movie, Saya would always be seen by viewers as a Failure Hero who couldn't protect people.
The Scrappy: Saya. In the first 4 episodes. This goes along with her singing (yes, we know that Nana Mizuki has a lovely voice, but for God's sake, do we really need her to sing about laundry or her dad?). Later, her failure to save people pretty much nails the mark. However, the last 2 episodes and the movie revert this.
Signature Scene:
- Nene and Nono's death scene has been burned into the minds of pretty much everyone who has seen this show, with Nene's death in particular universally regarded as one of the most brutal death scenes in anime.
- The equally infamous massacre of the villagers by the Elder Bairns that occurs in the same episode has also become incredibly memorable for Crossing the Line Twice.
So Bad, It's Good: Even its detractors consider the series still fairly entertaining for being so characteristically quirky and so soundly misguided from how they believe an adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire should be.
Squick:
- How Saya defeated the eyeball-head Elder Bairn in episode 5. By punching its eye/head and all that blood sprayed on her while the monster screamed.
- Nene’s second death. While she did deserve it, her death is being torn off into half which started in the groin. It doesn't help that in one second, you hear a nasty sound when Cerberus forces Nene to do a split, and the next second she’s screaming in pain before her legs finally separates from the joints.
- The way the Bunny Elder Bairns ate the townspeople in episode 12 like how one ate a woman like a corn in a cob, another twisted some guy’s neck like a soda bottle and there’s one who skewered a lady from the mouth to the groin. Worst of all is when the townspeople are put into a giant sack and one of the bunnies turns its arm into a giant blender and turns the people into bloody smoothie. This made you wonder if Eli Roth had something to do with this.
Strangled by the Red String: Deconstructed with Saya and Tokizane. At first, they don't have any meaningful conversation until Tokizane witnessed Saya's slaying of the Elder Bairn at episode 7. By then, he kept Saya's secret and after the school massacre in episode 9, he comforts Saya and confesses his feelings to her which Saya lampshades why. Until the last two episodes revealed that Tokizane is just hired to play as the "brooding love interest" and he hates it because he only wants money and dislikes Saya's nature.
Superlative Dubbing: The Spanish dub of the series was met with critical acclaim and was widely recognized as one of the best made in Spain in years. In special, Carmen Calvell's starring role as Saya turned the heads of everybody and was called one of the highlights of the show.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Both the movie and the 2015 stage play, specially the last one, which explained several storylines not answered in the anime or movie and was successful enough to grant an 2017 live-action movie which is a prequel to the franchise.
Tear Jerker:
- The Soundtrack Dissonance of the ending song, with an energetic song playing as Saya stands alone in the various locations seen in the anime, emphasizing that in the end, Saya will always be alone, like she has been in her other lives.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Though most of the characters are hired by Fumito to act as Saya's "friends", the biggest one is Tadayoshi, who happens to half-human, half-Elder Bairn. It would be interesting how much he has been under Fumito before the events of the TV series. Only those who have read Blood-C: Demonic Moonlight would know what he is before he worked with Fumito.
- This goes the same with Yuka. She's a 28-year-old woman who only joins the experiment so she can be the governor of Tokyo and doesn't really care about the gruesome events in Ukishima. She even appears in the movie but only in two scenes where she eventually got her wish in the end. It would have been interesting on what kind of role did she contributed to Fumito's organization and possibly, her interaction with Saya if only these two ever meet again.
- Itsuki gets hit with this as well. The movie reveals that he was working as The Mole for SIRRUT, but this is only brought up after he was killed off and we learn very little about what he was trying to accomplish in infiltrating Fumito's scheme, making the whole thing feel like an afterthought.
- Pretty much everybody from the CLAMP fandom and out of it believe that, if they wanted to put Kimihiro Watanuki on this story, they could have used him for infinitely more things than just giving cryptic hints from the sidelines in a dog's shape, specially given that those hints are never cleared up.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- While the majority of the viewers and critics agreed that the series's exposition, characterization and pacing were a mess, most of them also thought that the premise of a "Truman Show" Plot that mixed a version of Saya with ancient monsters and mysterious conspiracies was, if not a genuinely interesting take on the Blood saga, at least quite appealing in its own right, and would have wished it to be better played.
- The flashbacks in Episode 1 and 11 that referenced The Last Vampire opened the door to a connection between the film and Blood C, but the concept was never exploited further and was left as just a Broad Strokes implication on the fly. Some people believe that making it clear and showing it explicitly would have made a very strong story, especially if was there a version of the Red Triangle in the Blood-C universe and what was it doing while their favourite operative was being imprisoned and brainwashed by unknown forces in a Japanese village.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Towards the end of the show, the entire cast are revealed to be actors who are requested by Fumito to play as Saya's friends and family for his experiments and most of them are actually assholes. You won't feel sorry for them when they're being slaughtered brutally. Saya herself is hard to root for since she's portrayed as a Failure Hero who can't even protect civilians in the first place despite that Fumito is responsible for hindering her true abilities. And with the whole town massacred, well, they're basically doomed already.
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Everybody in the cast, most especially Nana Mizuki, really did their best on their performances for both series and movie. Too bad Blood-C didn't do well very much for a long run. At least, Mizuki's singles for the franchise sold well in the charts.
Tough Act to Follow:
- Given the cult success of Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+, perhaps it's no wonder that Blood C's reception has been sadly mixed with the low BD/DVD sales. The movie, however, fared better than the TV series. The stage play also received good reception which also led to a live-action film with the cast and staff from play returning.
- Unfortunately, the live-action film didn't receive much attention as it didn't make much money in the Japanese box office and was criticized for being more of a stage play than an actual movie particularly with the fight scenes. Likewise, the movie is more connected to The Last Mind than the TV series and The Last Dark since several characters from the play appeared in it which can make those who haven't seen the play very confused.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: At first, the show presented Saya as a skilled warrior against the Elder Bairns, but the problem is that she fails in protecting and saving people. The most blatant example is in episode 8 and 9 where she just watches (we are not shown if in shock or merely surprised) several of her classmates die before she attacks, and at the end, all of them except the class representative are dead. Her mourning of their deaths was supposed to come out as sympathetic but given the track record of how many people died throughout the show and the Idiot Balls that she and these people had been holding on, it's not. Even after it was revealed that she was under specific brainwashing all the time and the events were being controlled from the shadows, it's not easy to forgive her for what is too easily perceivable as sucking at her hero job.

YMMV / Blood-C

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