Blood Lad Review: Otaku Vampire the ani- oh crap we ran out of time

So I decided to watch the show Blood Lad after watching funny scenes from anime and seeing this in it. I had previously seen it in a countdown of vampire anime or comedy anime and had meant to watch it. So because I felt a little burnt out on anime I took a hiatus after watching 1 1/2 episodes of Kiss X Sis... don't judge me, a girl I knew in middle school loved the show. 

After returning I decided to watch a comedy show to get the anime juices flowing, it was that or one piece which i started during an all nighter (25 episodes in one night while doing work). Blood Lad won and I began watching, over the past three days I have been watching the show more and more and kept loving all the characters. The show somehow manages to make every character have a likable personality on top of being quite funny. I loved the characters and found myself wanting so much more, yet suddenly the show just ends and I am left sitting there questioning why the show hasn't received more. From what I have seen there is a manga series, yet the anime just stops really abruptly and goes 

I'm sitting there going seriously, just after revealing all this shit and telling us all this info as well as setting up whole new plot lines it just ends and leave us out to dry. The series was very funny and was wonderful to watch yet leaves a bitter taste in the mouth when it ends. I feel the same way finishing this as I did when I finished Deadman Wonderland in one night. Both end just as things are set up and don't get a sequel. Can we please just try to give series an ending or license more time. Blood lad only got 10 episodes while Deadman Wonderland got 13 episodes, both series have nearly the same amount of chapters and I saw much more accomplished in each episode of Blood Lad than I did Deadman Wonderland which at points just dragged on with a particular plot point dragging for multiple episodes before being resolved when it could have been solved in a shorter length of time. Though this also comes from a difference in genre, Blood Lad is more of a comedy shonen while Deadman is a horror type show. Not so much horror as Higurashi but still with the horror element, So horror will have more suspense while comedy shonens can really do what they want when they want.

The sound in the show is really only noticeable in the opening and ending, some scenes use it but not many. The opening is quite catchy though, my favorite part being when it picks up pace and Fuyumi's tits bounce to the rhythm of the song as the camera pans up to a fight between Staz and Wolf. I just noticed that I haven't really talked about the characters which I have praised so much. This is in part due to the massive cast of characters with most of them coming back at some point and being great on their own. 

The main characters are:

Staz

An otaku vampire that is obsessed with human culture and is an extremely powerful slacker. He essentially could represent anyone who is like me and can do pretty much anything but likes to loaf around and go with the flow.

Fuyumi

Fuyumi is the klutz of the group, she dies in the first episode and is a ghost, she is cute and innocent. She is also well endowed which every girl in this show seems to be save for the three eyed bar keeper and Staz's little sister who is like 9 so that is to be expected.

Bell

Bell is a fun character that manipulates space and uses frames to do so, she is a treasure hunter (though we never see her go for treasure), a traveler/guide and a friend to Staz after a while. She is a fun character that can get what she wants in most situations. She is also well endowed. 

Something to add to this I noticed her, then the rest of the cast did one thing most anime/manga don't do. They changed clothes often. I have watched a lot of anime and most times they wear the same clothing through the whole series, rain or shine, ripped to shreds, covered in blood, it doesn't matter. But in this show all the characters changed clothes at times when you would expect someone to change. For instance after their boxing match Staz and wolf are given clothes by Wolfs underlings. In another moment Staz's shirt is covered in holes from his brother scenes earlier but only in places which he had been shot. Then after the fight he has more holes because the teeth of his enemy pierced him through. He changes his shirt off screen but it makes sense because he is fairly close to his house. All these changes were natural and occurred when they should, though Bell could just change her clothes at will due to portals. 

Blood Lad was a wonderful show that though lacking in some regards payed attention to itself and if you look close enough there was fore shadowing to many of the events that happen later on. It was a smart series that though at points felt like it crossed the line with ridiculousness kept conscious of this. Overall I loved it.

Animation: 7 (moderately good animation, at times the shots felt reminiscent of monogatari but lacked the quality)

Characters: 9 (quite enjoyable characters that I would like to see more of)

Sound: 6 (the opening and ending are good but the OST is almost nonexistent)

Enjoyment: 8 ( I really enjoyed the show and smiled at many scenes)

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Overall: 7.5

Post Spring Break Aftermath and Warframe

Well spring break was last week and surprisingly I did not watch a second of anime or read a single word of a manga though when I got back to school I ended up finishing Dive in the Vampire bund which is so short it doesn't warrant a review so it receives an 8/10, seeing as its a manga I can't judge it on normal standards so it is just judged on visuals, story, and personal enjoyment. Moving on from Dance in the Vampire Bund which will be done in another review once I finish the series (one more omnibus to go, already skipped ahead to the new series). I also started up Black Bullet again and will go through that in the next few days.

Now how did I spend my spring break I hear the uninterested crickets in the crowd chirp, well I spent it as any normal nerd would and spent the whole time playing games while talking with friends, save for a day when I toured a mall while bored and a day I went hiking because of the partial hippy I am. The games I played were WoW, OSU!, Minecraft Tekkit, and lastly Warframe. There were other games but these were the main ones. I spent the first half of break playing WoW, leveling a death knight and later a pandaren monk. Interspersed between leveling was me tending to my home in tekkit, making an automatic coal generator with a condenser, setting up hundreds of power flowers, setting up a shop, losing said shop 3 times, being raided, making a new base, etc. Also tossed in there was OSU! which is a rhythm based game for those who don't know, it is like guitar hero but with circles and lines.... wait that guitar hero, well instead of them coming down at you they appear all over the screen and go to the rhythm of the song. So that was my week up until Wednesday.

Wednesday was the day that I decided to play Warframe, I had the game downloaded for probably 6 months and had never touched it. Boy was I missing out, the game is loads of fun, it is like if destiny was actually good, I know amazing concept. The game came out in 2013 and is amazing, you are a tenno and you have a warframe which is essentially a body of armor, this armor has different abilities and thus you as a tenno can play whatever class you choose. If you want to be stealthy make the loki warframe, if you want to be tanky make the rhino warframe, etc. These warframes are made in the foundry with blueprints you find while playing the game, these aren't just given to you though, you have to work for them, which means playing the game a bunch. You have to find a total of 4 unique blueprints for each warframe and then you have to find all the ingredients, so it takes a bit. The game goes on a 3 weapon loadout system with you taking a primary, a secondary, and a melee. Now I spent 98% of my time meleeing because it is badass, I get to run, jump, parkour, and slice/mash my way through people while blocking like a Jedi master. You feel amazing, and the game has so much more, there are stealth missions, slaughter type missions, kidnapping missions, and assassination missions on top of other objective mission like mobile defense, defense, and survival (note the previous titles are not the real titles but a simplified layman's term for them). The game is exceedingly fun, hell it even has space combat with the archwings as well as pets and little sentinel companions that do more than talk to you (they are meant for fighting and don't talk like dinkle bot from destiny). The game is so much fun, the last mechanic I will mention is the Clan mechanic which is robust and adds more layers to this amazing cheesecake, the clan mechanic is like having an entire living population. You have a clan dojo which people can access if they make the key, it is a place where you construct a safe house if you may and make it as nice as you want with as many commodities as you want. You can have tons of research facilities which allow you to make a bunch of items only clans can make, one of which is a solar rail which allows people to access dark sectors around planets, the only negative being that you must pay a tax to use this rail which is a portion of all the loot you get in your stay at that dark sector. You can deploy spectres which are AI to defend your rail, as well as contract other people to defend it from rival clans who can start a war by deploying their rail in the sector. There is so much to the player economy and behaviors it leaves me awestruck. I one time needed polymer bundles on a brand new character and I was playing a mission on mercury to get it, when I told a dude why I was there he took me to neptune and did 20 waves of defense so I could get all the polymer bundles a man could ask for. The players are very nice and helped me when I had an issue. Now all that I have just covered is only scratching the surface of this game so I suggest you play it for yourself to see if you like it, it is free on steam and their website.