Fall anime 2016’s Bloodivores is based off a Chinese webcomic and created by Emon Animation Company, a recently-established Japanese branch of Shanghai-based animation brand Haoliners. Unfortunately, if episode 1 is anything to go by, this Chinese-Japanese anime collaboration is dead in its own bloody water.
To start: Bloodivores looks and feels ugly and dated. It starts off with a real grungy, ‘90s style guitar riff twanging in the background of a car chase rendered in ‘95’s finest CG, with a Cool Lead Dude in a Cool Black Jacket being protective of Boobs, A Girl. We’re tossed into a baffling flashback involving a bank heist with background information about the world tossed at us in the, well, background: via news reports, via gratuitous hyperviolence inflicted on randos, via angry one-liners, via everything but the main plot.
Things don’t improve from here as we watch our 4 highly unlikable, incredibly flat main characters stumble their way through the plot like dolls getting pushed around by a dramatic elementary schooler. Unlikable and flat are two separate considerations; you can have an unlikable yet compelling, nuanced character. But we don’t have them here. Boobs the Girl, Cool Lead Dude, Beta Hothead, Fourth Guy. And we really, truly don’t have much more to go by than that.
Then we have plot. So our bloodivores (what a godawful name for vampires) wear collars, because the government makes them. The soldiers beat them to death in the streets because they have a tendency to go full feral and just rip people’s throats out in the streets. They’re like this due to side effects of an insomnia drug that caused this bloodivore virus, or something, and the company that made the drug got out of any consequences scot-free, or something. Whatever.
The “bloodivore” distinction is so pronounced that our silver-haired Cool Lead Dude is known as “The Child of Peace” for being half-bloodivore, half-human. This could be cool, but isn’t. Instead it feels tacked-on, because nothing about Cool Lead Dude feels chosen. He’s robbing a bank for money but is some celebrity kid? When we watch him launch himself at his dad, a Chief o’ Police with all the paternal instincts of Genji Ikari, and yell at him about his bloodivore mom, it’s hard to care.
Then we have all the little stupid moments that make the plot feel so clumsy. Okay, so they’re robbing a bank, and they don’t want to hurt anyone, but they missed this one kid in the bathroom. This one kid, the most innocent kid of all time, which we know because he’s carrying his teddy bear into the bathroom with him, walks out of the bathroom. Beta Hothead wants to kill the brat. Boobs the Girl won’t let him. Cool Lead Dude sides with the love of his life, Boobs the Girl. Fourth Guy is waiting outside in the car. How boring can you make a bank heist? This boring.
Cool Lead Dude hacks a computer. You know because the screen says “HACKING” and he’s in a Hacker Coat and just, I’m cringing worse than when I watched Kiznaiver, because at least there were production elements to that anime that were worth something.
The quartet gets marched into court and sentenced to execution basically right away while Beta Hothead screams about how he didn’t do it, and no one cares, and I literally can’t remember the details because I care about the stakes that little. The stakes technically couldn’t be higher: corrupt companies destroying the world! Societal injustice against bloodivores! Government collars! Bank robbery! DEATH! And according to next episode’s preview, NOT death! It was all a ruse! Dead Man Wonderland!
Yet Bloodivores feels tepid, despite the stakes, the technically high-octane action and the germ of a promising dystopian idea somewhere deep, deep in there. The 4 main characters are worthless, the animation is bad, the plot is mediocre at best and cringeworthy at worst, and it’s hard to care about anything that’s happening. This is worse than Endride.
Should you watch Bloodivores? No. If you want cool and kind of mediocre but still fun vampire stuff, just watch Seraph of the End or something. But if you do want to watch Bloodivores for yourself, you can find it here on Crunchyroll, every Saturday at 9:30 AM. Do you have a different take on Bloodivores? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
