Blood Blockade Battlefront

Episode 10

With world-ending calamity on the horizon, Blood Blockade Battlefront has only one episode left to relax and indulge its silliest roots, so by god, it's going to indulge. This is the kookiest episode in the whole show, animated to the fullest with terrific physical comedy as Zed, Zapp, and Leo take a tour through the most horrific eateries I have ever seen. I feel bad for condemning Zed as "boring" when we last met him, because he's a perfect straight man against Zapp, with a kind and expressive fish-face ripe for great gags. Anyway, because Zapp is ichthyo-racist (and has a mighty inferiority complex), he decides to take the new guy out to lunch at a sushi place, with the peacekeeping Leo in tow. This backfires when Zed reminds Zapp that fish in the sea eat other fish all the time, so there's nothing cannibalistic about this transparent attempt to haze him. Instead of giving up and trying to make friends with Zed, Zapp decides to up his hazing game. Poor Leo has no idea what he's in for.

From there the episode devolves into madness as we discover just how horrifying some of HL's fine dining establishments can be. Not grossed out by the alien regurgitation restaurant, Zed? Well, how about the clam chowder place where the chowder eats you? How about the place with tiny naked masochistic fairies in the food, pleading to be eaten? How about the place with ordinary mush that lobotomizes you and probes your pleasure centers into enjoying the food? Zed is up for everything, but Leo won't have any of it, forcing Zapp to drag them from hellish restaurant to hellish restaurant until Leonardo reaches his limit and introduces us to my favorite new character in the show: The God of Chow. It turns out that the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods can in fact make contact with higher spiritual beings, but when Leo prays to this corpulent figure as he floats through the cosmos, the God of Chow can only offer him useless platitudes like "Do not play with your food!" "Be mindful to eat a balanced meal!" and "Do not eat after 10:00 at night!" This causes Leo to go completely insane, ranting that they have all been condemned to "Divine Famishment" by the God of Chow because Zapp tried to use food to haze an innocent man.

Your mileage may vary of course, but this was comedy gold for me. With every passing minute, this episode destroyed its own envelope of culinary horror played for laughs. By the time the gang finally found a decent place to eat, was owned by an Artie and Charmaine Bucco, I already knew I was in for more madness. For as much as its contiguous story and characterization holds BBB together and keeps it from just pushing all the same buttons as Space Dandy, this pure artistic glee for its own sake is always welcome, and if the episode was 100% beautifully animated gross-out comedy, it would still be an A by me.

Of course, it isn't just that. There's always more connective tissue stuffed into the corners of a Blood Blockade Battlefront episode, and while Leonardo and the warring Z's are off permanently destroying their appetites, the rest of Libra are digging up worldbuilding details for the last huzzah. Apparently, Libra's nature as a "covert" organization also means it is an illegal organization. I don't know why this came as a surprise to me, but it sure did. (It was sort of established in the first episode's police raid, but I just assumed that Klaus was being arrested under suspicion of working with Femt. It turns out that the police aren't really cool with Libra existing regardless of their allegiance.) No, it seems that Hellsalem's Lot police (those useless stooges we saw getting destroyed by vampires and ignoring alien rights abuses in past episodes) are cooperating with Libra just long enough to try and arrest them when they get the perfect chance. Mostly, they ignore Libra's actions and call in favors to hold over their heads when things get too hairy for the force to handle, not unlike the police department's relationship with the mob during the Prohibition Era. Speaking of the mob, they've called on Libra to suppress a mafia force of 1,000 alien brothers, who've intercepted 1,000 Chinese-made bionic suits. This sounds like a much bigger deal than it actually is, and mostly serves as a tail end punch line to the episode's shaggy dog A plot with Leo and friends. Mostly, it's just in there to establish Libra's relationship with the police, since that will probably come up in the finale.

Libra also has a complex relationship with another organization: the League of High Order Spiritualists. This partnership is much more friendly, since the LOHOS are a philanthropic group of humans with slight superpowers awakened by their proximity to the Beyond. Most other anime would call them espers, but BBB opts for the label "casters" instead. "Casters." Now where have we heard that before? Yes, the LOHOS are responsible for sealing off Hellsalem's Lot and forwarding the peace treaty between humans and Beyondians. They maintain a registry of other casters like themselves, and hundreds of their number gave their lives to create the barrier that makes HL what it is today, so they have a lot in common with Libra as a group interested in self-sufficiency, balance, and sacrifice of the powerful to protect the weak. It is interesting to see them characterized as a faintly religious group, mostly through their style of speech, manner of dress, and association with churches, cemeteries, and hospitals. The police are a martial force by contrast, populated by humans in giant robotic suits that dive down from helicopters. Faintly religious orders are usually more insidious in anime, while the mech-wielding brotherhood of soldiers are given more benefit of the doubt. Seeing that script flipped says a lot about Libra and where their values lie, fierce reputation aside. That said, the LOHOS do have a traitor in their midst.

Black is an active member of their ranks, as it turns out. The organization knows his parents were killed in the effort to seal off Hellsalem's Lot, and they know his sister is in recovery at the hospital, but they have no idea why the barrier to the Beyond is fraying, which means the monster inside Black's head is using them all for his wicked schemes. (It's either that or the LOHOS is secretly evil and lying about it. I wouldn't be a fan of that twist, but I can't deny the possibility of that cliché in the corner.) With that bomb dropped, the only thing left is for White to betray Leo, and because this is a Yasuhiro Nightow story, this betrayal has to happen in a cathedral. Admittedly, Black and White are anime-original characters that bear more resemblance to roles from Rie Matsumoto's Kyousogiga, but between White's spiritual resemblance to Wolfwood and Black doing his best Legato impression in this episode's spookiest scene, I am super-curious about who conceived what in the Black and White story, between both these two creators and the series composer, Kazunao Furuya.

Next week is a recap episode, but if that means we get an episode this insanely fun with a fully-realized two-part finale, I'll be happy for the week off. Leonardo finally knows what White really wants from him, but after everything he's been through, what choice can he possibly make?

Rating: A

Blood Blockade Battlefront is currently streaming on Funimation.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.