Trinity Blood
(Reviewed on 05/17/2006)
The Confessed ROSSMAN
Trinity Blood -- The newest in a long line of "secret society versus Western vampire" shows to come out of Japan (but even this healthy genre is dwarfed by the "tentacle rape magical girl" category... make of that what you will). TB is basically a good mix of Vampire Hunter D (Bloodlust, not the shitty 80s movie), Trigun, Chrno Crusade, and Hellsing (sic)... And by "good mix" I mean it mixes elements from all those shows into its plot and characters, not that it's a GOOD mix. TB tries way too hard to be the next Trigun (future setting, lone man on a mission who acts all goofy all the time but who's really, supposedly, a bad ass)... but I thought that Trigun was gay too, so I guess that Trinity Blood succeeds. Go fig.
Anyway, the plot to TB goes a little something like this: It's the faaaaaaar future, and the world has been almost destroyed by nuclear annihilation. Well, it's really come back from the brink as everything is pretty spiffy now (cities seem to be thriving and technology is kick-ass advanced), and the world seems to be split between two (sort of) benevolent super powers: the Vatican and the Space Vampires (i.e. Methuselah). There's an uneasy truce between the two, and it appears as if there has yet to be an all-out war... And by "appears to be" I mean just that -- we, the viewers, are left in the dark about SO MANY goddamn things throughout the course of this show that it's frustrating. About as frustrating as walking down a Methuselah city block looking for/needing a quick bj, when the only whores you find have sharp sharp teeth. Damn frustrating. But I digress.
Okay, uneasy peace between the holies and the hell bound, gotcha. Well, apparently in the middle of this long, drawn-out story strides the main character, Abel Nightroad. Nightroad's a warrior priest of the Vatican, but as you'll see by the end of the first episode he's not entirely un-damned. Nightroad is something even MORE powerful than the average Methuselah, but he still waddles around most of the time like he's got something stuck up his ass, and he's not sure whether he should like it or not. So we follow Nightroad around as he rights wrongs, punishes naughty Methuselah, and gets tons of hottie nuns to fall for him (oh, and some warrioress vamps too), and then... Well, and then nothing really. There's kind of an ending, but the series really just cuts off. Yeah, not as bad as Berserk or His and Her Circumstances do, but it just ceases. It desists. It kicks you in the sack. And the final story actually had some bite to it (pun intended, doy!)... And by "final story" I mean that Trinity Blood is unfortunately set up like the original Full Metal Panic -- there is kind of a main plot, but the story is made up of lots of 2-5 episode arcs that come and go. Me, personally, I don't like that kind of thing one bit. I prefer one giant arc, or if your going to make 6-7 smaller arcs, at least make them interesting and worthy of my time. Most of the later story arcs are 4-5 episodes long, with 2-3 episodes of filler material. That's a big "what the fuck" right there.
Now onto the characters. There's the already mentioned Nightroad, the pussy Pope (now I realize that throughout the ages some of the elected Popes have been stupid, evil, or just plain greedy, but the TB Pope is the WUSSIEST POPE EVER), the Pope's sister and brother, about a dozen other warrior priests, a handful of nuns, a few soldier vamps, some aristocratic vamps, and the vamp queen herself... And pretty much ALL of them have at most 5 minutes really dedicated to their character development. There's one point halfway through the series when a recognized character bites the big one (and we really don't even see them die, we just have to imagine it), and Nightroad is all dismayed and distraught with grief... But I was like, "Umm, really, I don't give a shit. Yeah, she was hot, but we knew her for like 30 seconds." Terrible storytelling. Bad bad bad. With all the characters we're presented with, and all the background info that the setting itself demands, this really should have been a 52 episode series. Wait... though this thing had trouble with too many draaaaawn ooooout storylines already. Ugh, I guess it just needed a better script writer and director first and foremost.
Was there anything about Trinity Blood that I liked, you ask? Oh yeah.
What? Oh, you want me to tell you? Well, I liked the music a lot. Very Nobuo Uematsu-like. Grand and gothic, like Final Fantasy VI's orchestral account. I also liked some of the small touches that they put into even the background art (the "Casino INRI" gag made me laugh like the retard that I am). I liked the cool speed effects that they used for the vampires when they moved faster than the eye could see too. And I liked the end of episode 19 (a serious "BONED!" moment for the bad guys), and the twist thrown at us in episode 23. If only they stuck to their guns and let that play out to its fullest possibilities. Instead, it felt like a slap to the face. I'm being vague in case you still want to see this anime even after what I just told you. God you're stupid.
In the end the negatives completely overpower the positives (and speaking of positives, if you're going to have a character in your show repeatedly say an English word or phrase over and over again throughout the series, PLEASE make sure that he fucking pronounces it correctly! That goddamn cyborg guy kept saying "positive" like "poe-shee-teev."... And how come that shitty cyborg has such crappy aim? Why build a machine that terrible and imperfect?!). Nothing is explained (from Nightroad's background, to his enemy's reasonings, to why they only dedicated a minuscule 2 minutes in the final episode to show how the whole mess got started, leaving out all the relevant information. Seriously, that flashback should have been at the very least 3-4 episodes itself. Urrrrrrrrrgh....
CHI-CHI Says NO!
Yeeeeeah... This show was pretty gay. What's with the Japanese and their love of wimpy and gay heroes? Yeah, I guess Fr. Nightroad was kind of a bad ass when he wanted to be, but what's the point of even acting like a gimp if you're not? His lame acting skills didn't really throw any bad guys off his scent, they just made me hate him... LOATHE him actually. Seriously, he acted like a vampiric Pee-Wee Herman for 98% of the show. Just imagine Pee-Wee Herman running around, laughing in his own gay way, as the lead throughout the course of Blade... The movie would try to be serious and cool and dark, but you'd grow tired of his immature antics as he spent most of the movie telling other vampires "I don't make monkeys, I just train them! Ha ha!" and then whipping his dick out and spanking it at a porn theater... Eeeeeeew.
The Negative ROBOT PEDRO
Why didn't both the hu-mans and the vampires both kill each other off?... That would have been the only bueno way to end this muy malo piece of animated hu-man excrement. I curse this show with an android curse that will haunt both it and the creators of this filth and their families for 12 generations. 13 generations if nobody ever apologizes for it.
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