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[series:3272#628] | ||||||
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(Seven episodes watched): My first impression of Bloodivores was that this protagonist guy, Mi Liu was a little too cool and calm under pressure for me, and was at odds with the police, so I didn't like him (and why do the characters have Chinese-sounding names?).* But whereas first impressions are often spot-on, if the show is mediocre and makes no attempt to instill any impressions other than those that first struck the viewer, in this case my thinking about him came around. Mi Liu isn't a complete scofflaw, and doesn't want to hurt anyone. At the halfway point of episode one I was uncertain if the plot here was going to be complex and sophisticated enough for me, but a couple of clever twists were added to it which left me hungry for answers (and so did the preview of episode two). How will Mi Liu and his companions avoid the fate that has been assigned to them? Hasn't it already been carried out, in a police van? And what in the world is going on at the prison that they will apparently wind up in? I was left thinking that this might just wind up either too crazy or two generic for me to take seriously, but for now I had been left hungry for answers, which is exactly the effect a first episode is supposed to have. The trick behind getting people interested in a new drama is that you have to leave them with questions which they want answers to (and be good enough a show that they are fairly confident that they will get answers sooner or later). Bloodivores does the leave-you-with-questions job pretty well. Episode two had a WTF effect on me, because there were all sorts of bizarre twists which I needed an explanation for. How are the four Bloodivores still alive? What the hell are those things that attacked them? Why was an impostor created to imperson one of them? One twist I'm not entirely optimistic about is the supernatural ability which Mi Liu suddenly displays--that might easily be a cop-out meant to skirt around having to develop interesting characters or tell a believable story. The action and animation weren't all that fantastic either. But in general I was enjoying episode two as we find ourselves in a Gantzian situation which demands some sort of explanation. Unfortunately, Bloodivores doesn't do a very good job of answering the questions that it raises. While my initial set of questions remained unanswered, new ones were added. Where did these incredible abilities which Mi Liu and a couple other people, called 'Hemovores' (or something like that) develop come from? I find it hard to believe that a faulty medicine could somehow enable people to ignore the laws of physics, and as a result I'm at risk of losing the ability to suspend disbelief. Some sort of explanation is needed for fantastic twists like this--they can't just be hurled at the viewer and the viewer be expected to accept them without a second thought. Amazing twists are fun if there's at least a chance that a credible explanation will eventually be offered up, but when the viewer gets the feeling that no such explanation will be forthcoming his/her interest starts to die off. The amount of interest which this show managed to summon from within me seemed inadequate to keep track of all the complicated details. Characters with fantastic abilities appear (like a guy who casually parries sword strikes with his bare hands), but since there isn't any sort of explanation of why that is, I have no idea what's really going on and whether it's worthwhile to keep track of who's who (in which case I usually don't). I had a bad feeling from the start about what appear to be dragons appearing in the OP sequence, and when they finally appear in episode six I don't know whether to be thrilled, to laugh, or to just scratch my head. Why didn't Mi Liu say something like 'what the fuck are dragons doing here?', because that was exactly the thought that was going through my head. Don't just hurl insane plot elements at us and expect us to figure them out ourselves. Come to think of it, the vampire element seems to have been forgotten since several episodes ago; and I don't recall any explanation for the apparent execution that took place at the end of episode one. Just more weird stuff, which likewise never makes much sense. I guess I kept watching as long as I did because this stuff is so freaky that I really wanted some sort of explanation, even if it probably wouldn't be a very good one. But with only a week or so until a new season began, and myself still far from finished with the previous one (as usual), and this show being rated as one of the worst of the season by several ANN reviewers, I finally decided to give up. If a credible effort had been made to tie all the bizarre stuff together, and at least hint that a believable explanation for it all would be forthcoming, this might not have been a bad show. But that was not what happened. *apparently this show was intended for release in China as well as Japan. Last updated Saturday, April 28 2018. Created Thursday, November 03 2016. | ||||||||
