Title: Blood-C: The Last Dark
Genre: Action, Horror, Supernatural
Publisher: Production I.G (JP), Funimation (US)
Original Story: CLAMP
Director: Naoyoshi Shiotani
Screenplay: Junichi Fujisaku
Music: Naoki Sato
Original Release Date: October 22, 2013
There are a lot of places I could go with Blood-C’s final moment, its final adventure, the final time we actually can see Saya attempt to get her revenge on Fumito. I mean, we had the TV series properly advertise and hype up The Last Dark, even if we didn’t realize it until the end of the last episode. But instead of going back to the TV series, I’m just going to mostly keep this to my initial point, and it’s thanks to the movie that I can do such a thing. What did the movie do that makes bringing back talk of the TV series unnecessary? Be terrifyingly dull, in almost every aspect, and be about as much a departure from the TV series, and maybe the entire Blood franchise, than was ever necessary. All in all, we’ll probably never speak of the Blood-C series again, and most importantly, we won’t be bringing up the movie that came with it.
Six months after the events of the last episode, Saya runs into a human turned into an Elder Bairn while on a train. The Elder Bairn, after devouring a few people kidnaps a random young woman, but before he could do what he wanted to her, Saya kills him. With an unknown group seemingly after her, Saya ends up getting into a car with the said young woman and her two friends who happened to be in the area (and helped her up). After escaping from the unknown group, Saya finds out that their leader knows who she is. They take her to their headquarters, and officially explain that they are Sirrut, an underground group trying to stop an organization named TOWER hiding behind the Youth Protection Ordinance Act, and expose their real intentions. They also tell her that Fumito is the one that controls TOWER. That’s when Saya decides to join up with Sirrut, in order to take him down.
I have little good memories with Blood-C. Aside from the second to last episode, where I could not help myself and laughed like crazy, events took place haphazardly, with a lot of inconsequential moments to the story and really poor characters. The Last Dark manages to make the TV series look delightful in comparison. There are so many unnecessary events in this movie that don’t even advance the story that I always wondered why it was there. There are so many character actions that take place that leaves no development, no change in character, no nothing. There’s some good BGM, except some tracks are used at the most inopportune times and don’t flow with the story or events at all. So in short, The Last Dark doesn’t do a whole lot well. Maybe except for the animation, which seemed slick and welcome at times.
The story really all comes down to why exactly did Fumito do what he did to Saya, and does it make any sense? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that because the movie doesn’t want to let you know. It’s good for distracting us and being very convenient. For example, how fortunate was Saya able to meet up with the Sirrut group? Why are we getting Fumito to talk to a girl who never appears in the film again? There are times where telling the story is pretty crucial, and instead, we get distracted by fillers. We get distracted by the staff of the movie trying to emote a sense of terror into Saya, especially with the flashback of all the people she knew back at the island and it looking all distinctive and strange, but is that supposed to be scary or be relevant to the plot at hand? Nope, not really. And by the time we finally get to the real reasons, caring about it is silly, as by then, it’s too late, or just really stupid.
What doesn’t help the story is the characters, which ultimately sinks the anime from being anything good. Saya is who she is — a tough, always serious woman with the ability to kill everything except humans. So we already know she won’t change. This just means all of the other characters have to step in and make her at least look good. Or at least seem like a good character. But nope, we get the pre-Saya stand-in in Mana (you know, the happy go lucky Saya), who manages to worship current Saya to a level that’s weird and also does this at inopportune times (for example, when Saya took out the Watchers, those who enforce the Youth Protection Act, Mana just had to throw out the “So awesome” line that’s not really needed at all, aside from continuing to glorify Saya), Kuroto, the leader of Sirrut who, if it wasn’t what he did at the end, would have just been extremely forgettable, and then you have the rest of the cast of Sirrut, who features the general tough acting guy, the nerd, the hot, mature adult, and a girl. I should add that while they’re talented hackers, we mostly get to see the talents of the girl. It makes perfect sense.
Nothing else really picks the movie back up. The sound for stretches and certain times were ok. There were monsters in the movie, but aside from the last one (and that’s probably because it was a 3D blob of one), there weren’t a whole lot of them, which means the show didn’t showcase what it tried to be good at: the action. It wasn’t too great, but for the most part, it was satisfying enough (though maybe killing a lot of large bats with a sword in the air makes me weak). The animation seems like it has mildly improved from the TV series, with occasional silly moments with character models and 3d, but overall it’s strong enough. The dub is quite tolerable, with Colleen Clinkenbeard’s (voice of Haruno) being pretty strong. There’s even extras where the two twins (Nono and Nana) return to explain a few things in the series. But overall, it’s not a good thing when I can’t care about anything that’s happening in the work. If you haven’t watched the TV series, you can’t really appreciate this movie. If you did watch the TV series, you also can’t really appreciate this movie. I think I’ll leave it at that.
