The Fall 2016 Anime Preview Guide

Bloodivores

Thirty years ago, the introduction of a new commercial drug intended to fight viruses resulted in an unexpected side effect - the creation of bloodivores, humans who now have to drink blood to survive. In modern society, bloodivores are a persecuted class, and their treatment is an open question. Mi Liu is a young teen growing up in this world known as the “Child of Hope” - half human, half bloodivore, he could potentially point the way to a better future. But in the wake of an attempted bank robbery, Mi Liu finds himself framed for the deaths of fifteen civilians, with nowhere left to run. Bloodivores is based on a web manhua and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 9:30 AM EST.

Jacob Chapman

Rating: 1.5

Congratulations, Bloodivores! You win the booby prize for "least awful manhua-based co-production made on the cheap to dump off on the Chinese market" that I've seen yet! It couldn't have gone to a goofier title. Or a more horrendous title screen.

Just take all that in. What is happening here? Is this the opening to an anime or a hastily produced promo for a YA novel in 1997?

Anyway, Bloodivores is no Hitori no Shita the outcast, but it's still a painful trainwreck of an attempt at supernatural thriller action. The episode kicks off with a wild car chase featuring some turn-of-the-millennium monotextured CG vehicles bonking against each other on the highway at what looks like a mean 35 MPH. I don't expect these more conservative co-productions to knock my socks off visually, but I also don't see the point in trying to pull off way more spectacle than you can handle right out of the gate. This is butt-imation at its butt-iest, with a sickly gray-green color palette and some very confused direction making it all worse. Whoever's behind this episode's storyboarding seems to think that changing the camera angle with jarring shifts in perspective and distance will give us a clearer idea of the big picture, but it ends up having the opposite effect. Nothing about the framing tells us what we're supposed to be focusing on in each chaotic scene, so we have no idea what's at stake amidst all this (poorly animated) action. Is the emotion on this character's face important, or are we just holding on it to save money? I don't know anything about her, so even if her pensive expression was important, I wouldn't have any idea what it meant in the middle of this explosive bank robbery.

Then it's just a slipshod series of edits from the bank heist, its aftermath, a court hearing, an incarceration, an unexpected shootout, all pasted together with head-scratching exposition about the world of Bloodivores, pseudo-vampires persecuted by the government and forced to wear tracking collars because—well, after that it gets pretty muddled. Why should we care about these bank-robbing Bloodivores? How do they know each other? Okay, this guy's only half-bloodivore, and he's in love with pensive-face girl who keeps having ominous flashbacks and spacing out, but that doesn't tell us anything immediately relevant to keep us connected to these characters, as they get rushed through the penal system and into some kind of conspiracy before we even have time to remember their names.

Whew. Bloodivores. It's too confusing, ugly, and self-serious to recommend as an irony-watch for my liking, but at least I can see a spark of ambition in the muddy mess they pumped out this time? Keep climbing that mountain, Namu Animation! Someday you might produce something decent!

Paul Jensen

Rating: 2.5

Well, that was certainly different. I'd normally expect an anime series about modern-day vampires to start with a lengthy and complicated backstory, and maybe with the hapless protagonist getting bitten by a monster just for good measure. Instead, Bloodivores jumps right into the action with a bank heist and a car chase. In a medium that so often falls into predictable narrative routines, it's always nice to see some variety in the way a new story is introduced. I just wish this show's unusual approach did a better job of getting me emotionally invested in all those twists and turns.

By skipping the usual “life before and after vampires” setup, this first episode is able to pack in a fair amount of action. The bank heist in particular makes for good entertainment, as it's not immediately obvious how things are going to play out. That sense of unpredictability adds some dramatic tension to the mix, and the sudden revelation of the civilian deaths is an effective plot twist. Even if it's just the result of a relative lack of background information, the world of Bloodivores seems fairly interesting on a thematic level, and I'm curious to see where the plot is headed.

The trouble here is that I'm not sure I actually like or care about any of the humans or bloodivores involved in that plot. Mi Liu and his partners in crime fit a little too neatly into the roles of cool guy, serious guy, angry guy, and love interest. They're tolerable, but they seem too narrowly defined to really forge an emotional connection with the viewer. The show's action sequences are also a source of some concern, as the competent direction is let down by fairly average animation. It's not a bad-looking series, but none of the scenes hit that level of visual spectacle that we've come to expect from an A-list action title.

Until it adds some depth to its cast, Bloodivores will live or die by the strength and believability of its plot twists. It's done all right for itself in this first episode, but it'll be hard to walk that tightrope of big ideas and unique plot points for a full season. It's interesting enough to merit a few weeks of wiggle room, and there's nothing to stop future episodes from molding these characters into a fascinating group of people. Give it a chance, but be prepared to bail if the writing can't keep up with its own ambitions.

Theron Martin

Rating: 3

“Show, don't tell” is a popular adage among anime fans, and it's something that many anime series could stand to do more of. However, taking that too far can result in cases like this, where doing at least a little “telling” would help a series make sense from the get-go.

That's my main beef about what otherwise looks like a pretty interesting premise. The concept seems to be that bloodivores are people who suffer from a vampire-like craving for blood as the result of a side effect of some drug that's been around for decades. But is a craving for blood the only side effect that bloodivores experience, or do they get any special abilities or penalties as a result? One scene suggests that they are discriminated against, but to what extent? What does their collars turning red mean? And is the BST a task force charged specifically with bloodivore matters, or something else?

Presumably most or all of these points will be answered with time, and presumably we will eventually find out more about why this quartet of young bloodivores robbed the bank. That they didn't seem to know about the deaths, and that the Next Episode preview indicates that they weren't actually killed off when seemingly gunned down in the final scene, suggests that the quartet is being railroaded in a Deadman Wonderland kind of direction (in fact, the last third or so of this episode has a strongly similar vibe), even though the way the one character's father acts seems to suggest that two different things are going on here. The series is labeled as a “vampire survival action” series, so apparently things happened the way they did at the end in order for the quartet to be put in the survival scenario, but to what end? Hopefully it will prove to be something more than just the standard “amoral rich people get their kicks from watching this stuff” scenario, but it could be interesting finding out.

Whatever the case may be on that, it doesn't look like the animation is going to be the series’ strong suit. The main cast of characters are visually pleasing enough, but in several places the animation seemed stiff and a few scenes where vehicles flip over felt too unnatural. It also looks like it may not be anywhere near as graphic as its name suggests.  Still, there are enough potential story threads in play here to keep my interest, and I am curious to see how this rare Chinese/Japanese cross-production (the producer is the Japanese branch of a Chinese-held company) plays out compared to more purely Japanese productions.

Nick Creamer

Rating: 3

First off, yes, this show is actually called “Bloodivores,” and yes, all the characters refer to vampires as bloodivores throughout. This is indeed extremely ridiculous, and it is certainly harder to take the show seriously for it. And the bloodivore title isn't the only silly thing here. Every element of Bloodivores’ production seems aimed at fostering a very specific idea of cool - the show opens with thumping rock music as the heroes drive away from their big bank robbery, and wear visor shades while hacking into encrypted mainframes. If you are not precisely within this show's “the Matrix will always be the peak of style” target demographic, nearly all of this show's stylistic choices will parse as camp.

That said, dorky style is far from the only thing Bloodivores has going for it. I was initially expecting this to be a routine action show, but this episode was actually a fairly respectable and fast-paced crime thriller. The episode moved quickly through a professionally constructed bank robbery, and then bounced through the punchy beats of an interrogation, sentencing, and climactic confrontation with Mi Liu's father. Bloodivores didn't seem guided by shounen “this is a world with a Power, and the good guy with the Power will have to fight all the bad guys with the Power” sensibilities - it played more like a heist movie or live-action TV drama, meaning there were moments when I legitimately wasn't sure what would happen next.

As far as execution goes, the show has a fairly strong directorial voice, but extremely limited animation. There were lots of awkwardly held stills this episode, and nearly all of the walk cycles were light enough on inbetweens to not really parse as motions. On the positive side, the show has a nicely moody color palette and was lifted by some striking individual shots - the gang cast in silhouette against the glass walls of the bank, or Mi Liu lying defeated in the twilight of the prison corridors. Bloodivores was actually reasonably pleasant to look at.

Overall, I'd recommend giving Bloodivores a look if you're interested in a somewhat different take on the seasonal mid-tier action shows. I'm guessing the show's future twists won't be as novel as this first episode was, given the preview is already talking about secret facilities and death games, but the show demonstrates a confidence in storytelling that helps it stand out in a crowded field. Its overt attempts to seem cool might parse as goofy, but there's nothing cooler than telling a story well.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 3

I really have to hand it to Bloodivores – they successfully found a way around using the word “vampire” in a vampire story. Because that's what bloodivores are: people who survive by consuming blood, or “blood eaters,” just as “carnivores” are meat eaters and “omnivores” eat everything. It definitely makes the premise a little more palatable for those of us sick of moody bloodsuckers, something which is helped by the fact that this episode runs more like a statement on police brutality and prejudice against the Other than a typical vampire tale. The premise, that a medication created to combat an as-yet-unrevealed illness had the side-effect of turning people into bloodivores, is somewhat similar to that used by romance novelist Lynsay Sands in her series, but is still unique enough to give this premier a bit of an edge over other vampire stories.

What's more interesting than the premise is the way the bloodivores are treated. We're thrown into the story after they already exist, so there's no lengthy backstory, just a world where some people consume blood and as a result have to wear special collars to identify them. The collars have a light at the center; when it shines red, it seems to signal that they are a danger to humans. Although an early newscast tells us that the pharmaceutical company that created the vampires isn't being sued or blamed, presumably because they did cure the disease and save lives, that's clearly not how people at large feel: there are two scenes in this episode of police beating a bloodivore, in one case possibly to death. The BST, or Bureau of Special Threat Management, exists to “protect” the people from them, and even though one of the protagonists, Mi Liu, is known as the “Child of Peace” because of his mixed bloodivore/human heritage, it's clear that no one really expects him to amount to anything, least of all his own father, who heads the BST. Mi Liu is apparently looking for his mother (the bloodivore) and to that end is committing crimes with his friends Anji, Chen Fong, and Win Chao, but their latest bank heist, which is more concerned with documents than cash, goes south when Anji's collar activates, summoning the BST via GPS. Sometime during the point where Anji and Mi Liu split from the other two, all fifteen of their hostages, including a small child, are killed, leading to a sentence of murder for the four teens.

Clearly there's a lot more going on here than anyone is saying. The hostages were all alive when Anji and Mi Liu left; in fact, saving the child was what triggered Anji's collar. Win Chao seems unhinged, and did beat the bank manager, but he also says that he didn't kill them, and since he was with the practical Chen Fong, that seems believable. Mi Liu's dad (who seems to have some Roy Mustang-style powers of his own) definitely doesn't care for his son, and given the obvious police prejudice against the bloodivores, it seems highly unlikely that the four kids received a fair trial. That the BST later went out of their way to make it look like they were killed in a shoot-out (the preview shows that they're very much alive or in some specialized hell) is also suspicious. Are they about to be experimented on? Why have most of the bloodivores we've seen been male? Is there likely to be more social commentary about persecution of the Other? This will be worth another episode or two to figure out where it's heading and to see if it can balance out its need to be dark and deep with an actual compelling story.