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| "I'm an guy and I like booooobs." "I'm a girl and I like... pretty." |
Studio: Brain's Base
Director: Miya Shigeyuki (Buzzer Beater)
Main Cast: Ohsaka Ryota as Blood, Charlie Staz, Nomizu Iori as Yanagi Fuyumi
Writer: Konuta Kenji (Toshokan Sensou)
Music: Hayashi Yuki (Robotics;Notes)
Who doesn't love a dumb comedy? I know I do. I love my smart anime too, but sometimes I enjoy turning my brain off and watching characters entertain me with their stupidity for a while. Even then though, I like to have someone to care for, someone to latch on to so I have some investment in what's going on. Also, the comedy has to be there, as inherently subjective as that is. Because, if you don't have comedy in a dumb comedy, you left with the dumb. And no one wants to watch just dumb. I hope. So, does Blood Lad give me someone or something to care about while being funny? Let's find out.
The plot of Blood Lad follows the demon world equivalent of a gang leader, who goes by Staz. He's a vampire who loves human culture and likely appeals to the target audience as an insert character. He plays video games, watches anime, reads manga, and collects memorabilia from the glorious nation of Japan. He meets a completely average girl with big tits, Fuyuna, when she wanders into his realm. He then quickly has "mysterious feelings" for her that are most definitely him falling for her at first sight. However, she accidentally dies in an attack on his turf by a would be usurper, and he vows to bring Fuyuna back to life. She's still around though, being her airheaded self, now as a ghost. We also meet a couple of other characters that join the party. One is a busty sorceress named Bell (Birdcut, Sarah Emi), whose dimension breaking curtain Fuyumi used to enter the demon world. The other is an aptly named werewolf, Wolf (Terashima Takuma), who is a childhood friend and rival gang leader to Staz.
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| Tits McPlotDevice |
And if these characters were interesting, that would be great. They're not. Staz is functionally equivalent to the shut-in otaku stereotype. His social awkwardness is about the only comedy mine they've dug for thus far, outside of the basic jokes about vampires. Fuyuna is a non-entity and serves as little more than a walking plot device with breasts. Bell is worse, as she is a walking, talking (never shutting up) plot device with breasts, who serves only as a means to transport the cast to where the plot demands they go next. Wolf is probably the most tolerable, as he gets Staz to show some actual emotion and almost make me care about his quest to restore Fuyuna to life. Of course, that all gets derailed when Fuyuna interrupts a fight he and Wolf are having, which is the first action she takes on her own in three episodes.
What makes matters worse are the failed attempts at comedy. In this case, the failure isn't just the uninspired jokes, it's the delivery. Let me make a few things clear to aspiring comedy writers. Yelling alone does not make something funny. Yelling can be funny, but it doesn't make something funny. Yelling random actions is annoying. Yelling how awesome you are as a mage is annoying. Yelling how stupid the main girl is starts satisfying, but becomes annoying. Yelling, when it is done too often, just becomes noise. That's what irritated me to no end with this show, there was so much yelling that it blurred into a bunch of noise that became grating on the ears. When the show is quieter, like bits about a mimic trying to copy Staz so his territory doesn't get stolen, I found it to be entertaining. Probably because my ears were getting a rest.
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| Bros before hos, right? (Wrong.) |
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