If I had to give a genre to this anime I would say it is a shounen. It has many shounen elements, but at the same time it gives some kind of reflection about the genre. Staz often wonders if he is a hero, what it is like to be hero and things like that, it is pretty interesting in its own way. Aside from that, the anime is mostly made of fights and the heroine is just the perfect stereotype of the maiden in distress characters.
Except everyone is a monster and lives in the Demon World.
As you may have guessed from what I just said, the plot is absolutely nothing special. The thing I found to be interesting about this is that the setting is a bit different from what you see usually. From the very start it is told that everyone is bad, the only “good” person of this whole anime is the girl and even that is unsure. Everyone else are demons and are assumed to be bad guys from the very beginning.
Where it goes back to being an ordinary shounen is that everyone, even the enemies, become friends in the end and all is well in the better world possible.
Nothing too special on that front.
The characters are not exactly anything special either. The damsel in distress has some borderline “bad” tendencies, which is pretty amusing.
As a main character Staz works well. He is a character you can easily identify with. First, he is an otaku. Second he does not see himself as a hero. Last, he has some problems with his family. (Who doesn’t?)
As far as the other characters are concerned, I am not sure anyone is worth mentioning, they are perfect shounen sidekicks and as sidekicks they have a very simple personality. The only ones I might want to mention would the Staz’s brother (a plotting bastard, just the type of character I love) and the big villain, the Demon King himself. Except I can’t say he is a very special type of character either. Perfect villain, he plays his role of Demon King perfectly. I am curious as to what his motivations are. But I guess that’s for another season, if there ever is a new season. It should.
I don’t think I would recommend this to anyone who is not a hardcore shounen fan. I had a hard time sitting through fights and my mind drifted off somewhere else while they took place.
It did not completely bore me, but I cannot say I completely fell in love either. As its settings were implying, Blood Lad is nothing special.