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Blood Blockade Battlefront (known in Japanese as Kekkai Sensen or "Bloodline Battlefront") is a manga created by Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun and Gungrave. It began serialization in Jump Square in January 2009, later moving to Jump SQ.19 in 2010 where it continued until its conclusion in February 2015. It received an anime adaptation from Studio BONES in spring 2015.

Three years ago, the barrier between the Beyond and Earth broke down... in New York City. In one night, the city was destroyed and rebuilt, renamed Hellsalem's Lot (according to the characters, or Jerusalem's Lot in the manga). Demons and monsters are now commonplace in city life, and magic has become both a blessing and a burden. In this city where almost literally anything can happen, human life is very difficult.

The story follows the path of Leonardo Watch, The Everyman. Due to an attack from a mysterious being, his sister, Michella, lost her eyesight and he gained the All-Seeing Eyes of God, two glowing blue eyes that allow him to see things that cannot be viewed with normal sight, through any illusions and all obstacles. It also follows the secret society Libra, which protects Hellsalem's Lot from malevolent inhabitants. Leo joins Libra in an attempt to cure his sister, becoming wrapped up in the ensuing barrier war between the vampiric superhumans known as the Blood Breed, and the rest of Hellsalem's Lot. Along the way, Libra fights other criminals such as Femt, the King of Depravity, or other horrific monsters.

Originally, this was a one-shot story called Barrier War (Kekkai Senso) released in 2008, the story taking place in a contemporary city with an emphasis on vampire hunting.

After a long delay, its finale finally aired in October 2015. The anime was hugely popular in Japan, leading to the announcement of a second season which aired in 2017, titled Kekkai Sensen & BEYOND a.k.a Blood Blockade Battlefront and Beyond.

After the original manga ended, a sequel called Blood Blockade Battlefront: Back 2 Back began serialization in Jump SQ.Crown in July 2015 to 2022. A third "season", Beat 3 Peat was released soon after.


Provides examples of:

  • The Alcatraz: Pandorum Asylum, a prison with 40 million paranormal criminals.
  • Adaptation Distillation: The "Get the Lock Out" storyline removed a few small elements. Namely the explanation for why the elevators to Libra's headquarters were suddenly doors to random other places and Zed's role in clearing headquarters of all the small bugs using his wind powers. They also changed Leo's dream at the beginning (in the manga it was a memory of when as a kid he accidentally locked himself and Michella out of their house and his attempt to climb up to a second floor window while in the anime it was reliving the event that gave him his eyes) and the context of why he was having the dream (in the manga, Zapp was punishing him for a perceived screw up during an op by hanging him upside down from the top story of Libra headquarters for a few hours, causing him to pass out, while in the anime he got knocked out when Zapp threw him headfirst at an ogre during an op.)
  • A Day in the Limelight: Season 2 has multiple episodes that give more focus to the members of Libra who were all Demoted to Extra in season 1.
  • Alliterative Title: The English name for the series, Blood Blockade Battlefront certainly is. Taken even further with the sequel names for both the anime and manga ("BBB & Beyond" and "BBB Back 2 Back" respectively). Averted with the Japanese name, Kekkai Sensen, though considering that the series takes place in New York, one has to wonder if the sequel titles were deliberately chosen to build on the English alliteration.
  • All There in the Manual: The anime barely touches on the most of the characters with some just making one appearance through most of it's short run (despite all appearing in the Dancing Theme). If you want more information, you have to read the manga. The second season places more focus on the supporting characters; with Steven, Chain, Gilbert, and K.K. all receiving A Day in the Limelight.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Werewolf Bureau, which Chain is a member of, is made up entirely of women, with the power to erase their presence.
  • Amusing Injuries: Something in Hellsalem's Lot seems to be preventing people from permanently dying, or preventing them from realizing that the city is a suicidal deathtrap, as thousands are killed in the chaos every day (lots of alien restaurants take No OSHA Compliance to another dimension, and some frequented subways have a staggering 12% survival rate) and nobody bats an eye. This extends to the main characters, who endure injuries that would even kill superheroes and get out of the hospital in a few weeks. However, people can die for good if the villains try REALLY hard (drain their lifespan, slice up their corpses repeatedly, or just lots of magic).
  • Animal Motifs: A monkey for Zapp and a dog for Chain. The Japanese expression "like a dog and a monkey", analogous to the English "like cats and dogs", applies as well considering how well they get along (or don't, rather).
  • Apathetic Citizens: The people living in Hellsalem's Lot have reached the point where they aren't bothered by much for long, as long as they aren't directly affected by it. An apartment blowing up above their heads? They look at it in mild interest for a few seconds before continuing with whatever they were doing.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In the two-parter episode Desperate Fight in the Macro Zone, Riel turns into a gigantic rampaging monster thanks to the biological experiments of Gemnemo.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Chain defeats a massive man in a drinking contest (the same one who mugged Leo earlier and she noticed, but did not intervene), seeming without effort; cue The Stinger showing her hunched over the toilet with a massive hangover the next morning puking her guts out.
  • Balloon Belly: Zapp sports one near the beginning of one episode after eating a lot of KDFC. Leo wonders how the hell it could happen and how Zapp could somehow not notice.
  • Big Applesauce: New York City has been transformed into Hellsalem's Lot, but it still acts as New York City, only with aliens and demons walking around in plain sight, and with monster attacks being an everyday occurrence.
  • Bilingual Bonus: The character introductions.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • In season 1, Leo manages to save the day and foil the King of Despair's plot, but since the barrier has been destroyed, White has to sacrifice herself to reestablish a new barrier. Black promises to live on for his family's sake. And that's for the Anime, the Manga is still continuing with a sequel said to come around.
    • In season 2, the ending is much more sweet than bitter. While White is still dead, her spirit is heavily implied to still be watching over Leo, as a dream about her when he's near-death gives him the drive he needs to survive. After the threat in the final episode is thwarted, the anime book ends on another Monster of the Week similar to the ones faced in Season 2's first episode.
  • Black Comedy: Brody and Hummer's experimentation by Aligura is pretty gruesome: Brody was liquefied into living blood while Hummer's blood was drained from him in a painful way... THEN Brody was inserted into Hummer. The images are as gruesome as you'd expect in the manga, but in the anime, Aligura explains it via cooking show terms and use of Heinz ketchup. Hilarious!
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Zapp said that he watched a samurai slicing radish with a katana at Yo!tube, with a screen looking like Youtube.
    • Leonardo works for Dogimo's (Domino's) Pizza.
    • Hainz (Heinz) Tomato Ketchup.
    • Blur Moon Beer. (Blue Moon)
    • Kentudgy Fried Chicken (KDFC) instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
    • Peiniken (Heineken) on a certain sign that shows up many times throughout the series...but below the mention is a picture which is not beer.
    • Leo has a Codac digital camera.
    • Peps (for Pepsi) shows up all over the anime.
    • "Jack & Rockets" is Johnny Rockets, a mildly popular real life burger chain that's actually mostly found in New Jersey.
    • "Whol Foods" appears in the background of one episode.
    • Leo is seen using Skypo (Skype) near the end of season 2.
    • Though they don't get a alternate name, Leo uses a computer at the end of season 2 that is clearly supposed to be an Macintosh computer, with an OS that's a dead ringer for Apple OS. Leo also uses what looks a lot like an iPhone.
    • At the end of Season 2, Leo uses a bottle of Jack Dani's, a clear stand in for Jack Daniels with the distinctive bottle to go with it.
    • A Freeze-Frame Bonus on Chain's phone in Season 2 Episode 7 shows that her phone is using Noogle Maps.
    • The Stinger of "Bratatat Mom" shows that K.K.'s son and the daughter of the Blood Breed are now in contact with each other on Lacebook.
  • Blatant Lies: In the end of episode 5, Leo keeps saying that he's going straight home to rest, when really he just wants to make amends with White.
  • Bloody Murder: A majority of Libra members use their blood to fight in one way or another. Zap can turn his blood into a sword, and can light it on fire. Klaus uses Brain Style Grid Blood Fighting technique, which uses harsh punches and binding techniques. K.K uses Blood Bullets. Stephen A. Starphase freezes things with his Esmeralda Blood Freeze.
  • Book Ends:
    • This is subverted in chapter 11/episode 6 with Leo's trip for takeout, with Leo even lampshading why he bought enough for two the second time around.
    • Season 1 begins and ends with Leo's letter to Michella, only this time he finishes the letter, whereas in the first episode he only finished partway.
    • Season 2 begins and ends with Femt attacking the city with Demonbeasts.
  • Brain in a Jar: Phillip, the Battle Butler who covers for Gilbert after he gets a broken back, has his brain removed from his head so that demons can acquire information on Libra.
  • Brick Joke:
    • In the beginning of episode 1, Leo says, "Get used to abnormal and it will become normal." When the episode ends, Femt snaps, "Dammit! He (Leo) is normal!" And then at the end of the season, both he and the King of Despair complain that he is so normal when he refuses to play their games.
    • In episode 10, after Zapp's attempt to haze Zed by taking him to a sushi restaurant goes wrong (Zed has no issue eating sea food), Zapp tries to back out of going in by saying tuna is unlucky for him. Near the end of the episode after trying and failing for ages to find another restaurant that doesn't have something crazy/murderous about it, they eventually settle on the sushi shop. Where Zapp promptly gets food poisoning from tuna.
    • Early in season 1, Leo gets captured by Aligura, one of the Kings of Hellsalem's Lot. She alternates between casual light conversation with Leo and beating him up when he doesn't give her the responses she's looking for. At the end of season 1, he ends up in a similar situation with Femt who alternates between casually talking to Leo and beating him up he doesn't give the responses Femt is hoping for. It's Played for Laughs and Leo notes that he's having a serious case of deja vu.
    • Near the end of episode 9 of the second season, Zapp gives Chain a massive dressing down for being unavailable during a potentially world ending crisis (she was on a drinking bender with her 4 fellow werewolves) and pretty much leaving Leo and Sonic to save the day. He does pause for a bit in shock from her monstrous drinking, but Leo then points out Zapp was out for as bad a reason: Zapp had tried to get a stranger (earlier revealed to be Leo's friend and unwilling accomplice to said crisis) into paying for his meal after complimenting him on him working out, even pressuring him that he can get Leo to pay him back (though it's unknown if Zapp's compliment was genuinely false or if he did actually notice his minor changes at the time.) The guy finally had enough and so he punched Zapp... sending him through a wall and hospitalizing Zapp, which time he sexually harassed multiple nurses who filed complaints). The last shot of Chain in the episode is her looking very angry. Then in the after credits stinger, Zapp was sent to the hospital again, having been beaten to a pulp. The only evidence is that there is markings from 5 pairs of hands.
  • Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: After Black reestablishes the barrier, a butterfly can be seen fluttering past Leo before fading into the light.
  • Call-Back:
    • "If you must take it, take it from me!" Originally heard from the mouth of Michella in a flashback when she sacrifices her vision so that Leo can have the Eyes of God, it's again heard word-for-word in episode 9 in a flashback when Black offers his body for the King of Despair to use so that he'll leave White alone.
    • The Final Episode has this.
      • The duo from the demon talk show in the 1st episode make a return.
      • The "ordinariness" of Leo is lampshaded to hell.
      • The idea of games should be played on boards is invoked by Klaus.
      • Klaus also stands up to a being much stronger than he is...and gets his ass handed to him.
      • Leo manages to save the day as well by using the All-Seeing Eyes of God in a timely manner, like in Episode 1.
      • The restaurant where Leo eats in gets destroyed...again.
      • Leo and Klaus also have a talk after the former saves the day, much like in the First Episode.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Most Libra members do this whenever they use their special attacks.
    • At one point they all call their attacks at the same time, and the text for their attacks are overlapping and unreadable, with one character moaning in the next panel that their names all got garbled from being shouted at the same time.
  • Canon Foreigner: White, the girl that Leo regularly visits at the hospital, and her brother Black were created specifically for the anime, and have no manga equivalents. Even when season 2 shifts gears to cover more of the manga we still get reminders of White after she dies for good, and Black contacts Leo near the end of the season.
  • Casual Danger Dialogue: Every episode to feature a fight abounds with it. Zapp is frequently a source.
  • Cloning Splits Attributes: Dr. Luciana Estevez is able to split herself into a large number of clones, but the more clones there are, the physically younger each one becomes. This makes the hospital where she works look like it's staffed by a bunch of preteen girls.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: In the story where Aligura sends a giant metal machine that eats everything in it's path to track down Dog Bowl, when it gets punched really hard into the air and explodes into a ton of debris, Leo notes that hundreds, maybe hundreds of thousands, died from the fallout as casually as though he were commenting on the weather. This never comes up again.
  • Contrived Coincidence: One episode in season 2 has a very rich girl who is obsessed with music looking for a very specific very rare set of headphones that are supposedly the best out there. It just so happens that Zed's breathing device looks exactly like said set of headphones. She sends some thugs to take them from him. Normally he would be able to mop the floor with them, but it just so happens he is very drunk at the time and gets mugged rather easily.
  • Credits Gag: The series title in the first opening ("Hello World") is seen through Leonardo's eyes, giving a Leaning on the Fourth Wall vibe. In the first season finale the title is seen through his damaged eyes.
    • In the first episode, the series title forms through blood boiling up.
  • Cross Attack: Klaus' fighting style involves creating crosses from his blood.
  • Crossover: The second season of the anime has a crossover with Japanese mobile game Merc Storia.
  • City of Adventure: It's clearly stated that the city is full of advanced technology, ancient magic and criminals of every stripe. Much of the city is full of impenetrable magic fog, resulting in entire parts of the city having never been seen by human eyes.
  • Dancing Theme: The anime's first ending theme features most of the characters dressed up and dancing on a stage. While most of them aren't very good dancers, they're still having a great time.
  • Darker and Edgier: While not exactly very a dark show, season 2 leans harder into Black Comedy than season 1 did, and in the English dub at least, there is more profanity.
  • Demoted to Extra: Though he wasn't a huge part of season 1, Femt has much less screentime in season 2. He appears at the beginning of the first episode of the season and then appears at the end of the last episode of the season. He even Lampshades it by asking if everyone had missed him when he shows up at the end.
    • Characters not named Leo, Klaus, or Zapp got very little focus time in season 1 of the anime. Season 2 made up for this by giving just about everyone A Day in the Limelight.
  • Double-Meaning Title: The title of episode 8 and 9 is "Z's Longest Day" (part 1 and 2). Part one clearly refers to Zapp who is having a hell of a day since his master came to Hellsalem's Lot. But part 2 refers to Zed, Zapp's master's other pupil who crash lands a plane with a vampire on the front into a building, has to help fight said vampire, then gets left to Libra by his master without any foreknowledge. The episode even show's the episode title halfway through the episode right before revealing his name.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Depressed by the fact pointed out by Zapp that a large amount of Libra's funds go towards his life support systems (being half fish, he needs either a giant fish tank or special gear to breath) and the fact that all his attempts to get a second job ended in failure (due to the fact that he's nonhuman and has zero work history), Zed goes to a bar and gets really drunk. It just so happens that later that night he gets his breathing device stolen when a certain character confuses it for an extremely rare set of headphones, and he is too drunk to stop them from taking it.
  • Electronic Eyes: Leo's eyes become this when using his powers.
  • Expy:
    • Klaus' cross looks like a miniaturized Wolfwood's Cross Punisher.
    • Zapp looks a lot like Sherry Walken-MacDowell's appearance in Gungrave Overdose. Their outfits essentially mirror each other's in both color and structure, and they're both Ambiguously Brown with white hair. Would also make more sense, since Yasuhiro Nightow is known more for retooling his own designs than making new ones based on older anime characters.
    • Deldro Brody is basically Carnage. His partner, Brody, looks an awful lot like carbon!Greed. Not to mention also being a notorious criminal made of red liquid, capable of creating impenetrable armour and forced to share a body with a polite, cheery young man voiced by Mamoru Miyano.
    • The Sonic Speedmonkey is essentially this series' version of Kuroneko-sama.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: K.K. runs into a Blood Breed who is at school for his daughter's Parents Day event. Even though he takes her and flees the city as soon as she makes it known who she is, he seems to genuinely love her despite Blood Breeds generally being completely heartless.
  • Eyes Always Shut: Leonardo Watch is a great example of this trope, as his All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods let him see through his eyelids.
  • Fantastic Racism: While most humans in Hellsalem's Lot don't mind the Otherworlders, people on the outside are so afraid of them that many chain restaurants and the like pulled out of the city en masse out of the fear that images of Otherworlders with their products would lead to bad PR. There's also a cordoned off humans-only area of the city that's indistinguishable from how New York was originally, complete with a roof that keeps the fog out and projects a blue sky. This is all despite the fact the overwhelming majority of Otherworlders are completely harmless. Zapp explains a bit of this to Leo in an episode and his tone and word choice shows his disgust at the companies and peoples' prejudice against the Beyondians.
    • Zed experiences a lot of this, as he's neither human nor Beyondian. Season 2 reveals that he was an experiment who was left abandoned after his admittedly kind creator passed away.
  • "Fantastic Voyage" Plot: Sonic ends up traveling inside a gigantic Riel's body in order to kill Gemnemo in Season 2.
  • Fictional Currency: "Zeroes" are apparently the Alterworld's preferred currency, but American dollars seem to also be referred to as Zeroes on occasion.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The movie Leo takes White to see is a parody of Twins (1988), which she tears up at. At the end of the next episode we're formally introduced to her older twin brother, Black.
    • White also tells Leo that she's a ghost. Which is apt since she's part of the barrier sustaining the city, so the moment the barrier disappears, she goes as well.
    • At the end of season 1, we get a shot of Leo's sister at the lake with a man walking up behind her. At the end of season 2, we learn that man is her fiance.
    • Season 2's credits show flashes of one shot characters who appear throughout the season, including Dr. Gamimozu, the closest thing the season has to a Big Bad.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Quite a few in the second season's ending mostly due to how fast paced it is. But in particular there is a few shots near the end of it that pass by in a blink of the eye. Notably a picture of Leo, White, and Black together shows up.
    • In the OP of the second season, after a close-up of Femt and Aligura, a figure that resembles White can be seen going through the crowd at the carnival.
  • Fun Size: After getting shrunken down from his giant size, Riel becomes small enough to become bird prey.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: A dramatic unintended example. K.K. is taking a business day off (sort of) to go to her son's school for Parents Day. Eventually she realizes that someone else related to her work is doing the same thing. And that someone is a Blood Breed. She pulls a gun on him the moment they are alone, but ultimately lets him go home with his daughter who he legitimately loves.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: Almost all of the members of LIBRA call their attacks in a foreign language.
  • Groin Attack: Zapp gets subjected to a spell that will mutilate his nether regions if he doesn't find his sorceress lover's pet cat in time. Another woman gets a Gory Discretion Shot by the same spell casted on her breasts for assuming that the cat got eaten.
  • Healing Factor: Gilbert possesses one, but it only activates when he sustains a fatal injury, such as being sliced in two.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Happens to Zapp when a glass shard hits his forehead as a result of Abram's curse.
  • How We Got Here: Episode 10 starts with Leo and Zapp crying tears of joy over burgers at Dianne's Diner, but before they can eat the restaurant gets destroyed by a giant object with thousands of monsters outside the restaurant. Cue opening credits. Most of the rest of the episode shows Leo, Zapp, and Zed's misadventures in trying to find a restaurant (but stymied by Zapp's attempts at hazing Zed) and running into various shocking establishments. Meanwhile, Klaus and Steven investigating a potential threat as the B plot which happens to be said monsters.
  • Hypocritical Humor: When Zapp lures Klaus into an underground fighting ring so he can pay off a gambling debt, Leo immediately figures out what's happening, and calls him out. He then proceeds to start gambling on the fights himself.
    Leo: "ZAPP, YOU DIIIIICK!" (Beat) "Twenty Zeros on Klaus please."
  • I Know Your True Name: The large weakness of the Blood Breeds, this show's iteration of vampires. Having magic into their DNA, this is likely why knowing their True Name is their weakness as it allows someone like Klaus to seal them away. Leo's eyes allow him to see their real name, which he then texts to Klaus.
  • Informed Attractiveness: Dog Hummer is supposed to be ridiculously handsome (enough that, as shown by episode 5, he has the female segment of Libra swooning over him, and yet, due to the art style, he doesn't seem to be any more handsome than Zapp or Leo.
  • Irony: K.K. is forced to choose between working with her team to take down a large drug cartel before they flood the streets with a new drug or go to her son's Parents Day event. She ultimately does both by using remote controlled drones to support the team as they make their way to the gang's well connected leader. Then it turns out another parent at the event K.K. is at is doing the exact same thing. Except he's on the opposite side of the conflict, a Blood Breed working for the cartel leader and is his last line of defense, controlling a suit of armor from a distance.
  • A Million Is a Statistic: The narrator casually explains, "It is said that several million died or were injured... but the authorities stated the actual number was unknown. I'm sure it became too much of a hassle halfway through!" after the Monster Truck exploded.
  • Living MacGuffin: Leonardo bears the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods, a powerful ability that allows him to see things that no human or even Otherworlder should see, and through even the most powerful illusory magic. It's explicitly stated at the start of episode two that a lot of people will be after that kind of power.
  • Loads and Loads of Rules: Prosfair, a chess-like game that gets exponentially more complicated the longer you play.
    • To make things even weirder, it's played in it's own pocket dimension with a ridiculous concept of time. Ninety-Nine hours of Prosfair is a matter of minutes outside of the game.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: Rather, "Love Makes You Tear Up New York With a Monster Truck" and "Love Makes You Combine a Serial Killer With a Hot Guy" in the case of Aligura.
  • Meaningful Name: White and Black's parents insist that they're the "two-in-one" who work better together. Their real names of Mary and William MacBeth are named after co-regents of England, Ireland and Scotland, who ruled the English Isles together.
    • Also Klaus V Reinherz, since Rein(es) Herz in German means pure heart(ed).
  • Mugging the Monster: In "Z's Longest Day - Part 1", some Otherworldians try to extort cash from Zapp. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
  • Oh, Crap!: Zed has this expression when he realizes his teacher ditched him and left him in the care of Libra.
  • Oracular Head: The two thugs that robbed Leo of his wallet fail to pay the bill in a pub after Chain beats one of them in a drinking contest and steals it back for Leo. They both end up having their organs sold and are left alive with only a head on top of a jar.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires, known as the "Blood Breed" were created by writing magic directly on DNA. They lack traditional weaknesses, and are functionally unstoppable by the means available to any of the factions in the city barring (perhaps) Femt. However having access to their True Name can allow a particularly powerful Blood User like Klaus to seal them.
  • Our Werewolves Are Different: Chain Sumeragi is an 'invisible werewolf'. She has never exhibited wolflike qualities, although she has turned invisible.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Zapp Renfro can drain blood bags dry in a matter of moments to fuel his abilities.
  • Put on a Bus: At the end of season 1, Black leaves Hellsalem's Lot due to the painful memories. In season 2, Leo is seen videochatting with him in the second to last episode, and in the final episode, it turns out he came back and got a job at Dianne's Diner (because he got mugged as soon as he got back.
  • Plotline Crossover: Episode 3 of season 2 is essentially 3 unrelated stories (Leo gets mugged and Chain, who saw the mugging and ignored it, decides to get Leo's wallet back, Zapp has to find a prostitute's cat or his dick will explode, and Steven has a dinner party). At the final moments of the episode, they converge when Steven runs into his maid while taking a walk after the party went south, and she and her kids have the cat that Zapp is looking for along with the decapitated (but still living) heads of the men who mugged Leo, with the episode ending as Leo drives towards them while helping Zapp look for the cat.
  • Production Throwback: In the second season of the anime, one can spot character dolls of Milly and Meryl on a shelf.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Subverted, see the Shown Their Work entry.
  • The Reveal: White is technically no longer alive; part of her is energy being used to keep the barrier surrounding the city stable.
  • Rule of Cool: This is a Yasuhiro Nightow series, after all.
  • Running Gag: Dianne's Diner gets destroyed repeatedly, with Vivian, the waitress, horrified every time it happens. Leo also ends up in the hospital a lot due to the events of various episodes, with each visit ending with him speaking to the doctor, going "Yeah!" in response to his words, and then leaving.
  • Satanic Archetype: The King of Despair, who makes deals with White and Black before subsequently screwing them both over. Which is appropriate, as it is highly implied in the finale that he IS in fact Satan.
  • Scenery Porn: The attention to detail of the scenery is bar none one of the highlights of the show. From the grandness of the city skyline in the intro to even the mundane items like the subway and the show delights in showing this to the viewer. Episode 6 is a stunning example as it heavily features several real locations in Central Park that are animated with a level of detail rarely seen anywhere.
  • Shout-Out: So many they've been moved to their own page.
  • Shown Their Work: Every now and again physics will apply to the fights. In episode five, Brody and Hummer punch a giant machine hard enough to stop it in its tracks, but thanks to Newton's Third Law, they get pushed back with the same force they applied to the monster and go flying across the city.
    • This is also the case with their attention to the details of the New York City Greater Metropolitan area, in one instance in Episode 4 Leo is talking to a young boy on the subway and later on travels to the central station on a different train. Both of these trains were very different in design, but as of the show's airing both are currently in service in the New York City subway system.
  • Sleeping Dummy: Leo does this with a bag and a pillow so that White can go watch a movie with him.
  • Smart People Play Chess: Stephen and Klaus, the most level-headed of the bunch, are playing chess in the first episode. Klaus even moreso in the following episodes, since he's shown playing a complicated chess variant popular amongst humans and demons.
  • Smug Super: The Blood Breed are this extensively. Magic literally encoded into their DNA, they're able to handle all but the most experienced vampire hunters with ease because of their powers. Said smugness vanishes the instant someone figures out their True Name and thus can seal them away.
  • Something Else Also Rises: Used dramatically in episode 8, with no less grand a metaphor than the sun rising over the earth out in space and a detailed thermographic image showing the body temperature of Zapp's "hot zone". Although the anime doesn't shy away from showing the same Raging Stiffie in detail in the very next shot.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: All the time. A good example would be in episode 5, where in the wake of Aligura's rampage we're shown her monster truck disintegrating, and raining its parts on the city, all with while with Leo narrating that the casualty count was in the hundreds of thousands. All while a jaunty jazz tune plays in the background.
    • Episode 6 has a lovely soft-rock romantic ballad... with a chorus that goes like this (it's played over both a lighthearted friendship montage and a scene where a character is brutally beaten):
      Bruising / Baby we have got to stop this cruising, 'cause it only takes us nowhere / We are bleeding
  • Spell My Name With An S: Is the city called Jerusalem's Lot, or Hellsalem's Lot because of how the Japanese voice actors pronounce the "J" in Jerusalem as an "H"? Or should we go with the official manga translation of New Jerusalem?
  • Spoiler Opening: Spoiler closing rather. Season 2's credits feature elements from every single episode of the season, though none of them really spoil anything without context.
  • The Stinger: Most episodes end their credits with one of these.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: We get a few explosions at the very beginning of episode one.
  • Two Beings, One Body: Deldro Brody and Dog Hummer. You don't want to know how they got like that.
  • Unholy Matrimony: Several villainous couples, including Gilica and Tonio, as well as Aligura and Deldro Brody before their relationship hit the skids in a very big way.
  • Vague Age: Neyka's age is hard to pin down. In season 1, she looks like a young girl, in season 2 her facial features are a bit more mature, but it's hard to say. But in the manga, she goes to a bar to hang out with friends by herself, so it's hard to say how old she actually is. Especially because she barely shows up in the anime and doesn't say a single line when she does.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The credits of the final episode of Season 1 shows the aftermath of a climatic battle.
  • Whole Costume Reference: Leonardo's pizza delivery get up is identical to Peter Parker's, complete with moped.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Zapp tries to haze Zed by bringing him to a sushi restaurant expecting him to freak out due to him being part fish. Zed's perfectly fine with it and points out that creatures in the sea normally eat other creatures from the sea. Though in the end, he admits he does not eat fish, but he did not want to fall for Zapp's obvious hazing.


Alternative Title(s): Kekkai Sensen

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