Sengoku Night Blood Series Review: Colourful Nothingness

Overview:

Yuzuki is a normal girl who one day gets transported to a different world that kind of resembles the warring states period in Japan only I’m pretty sure there weren’t werewolf or vampire pretty boys fighting that particular war. Turns out her blood resembles the missing Himemiko who used to protect the world with her power.

Review:

The first episode of this was pretty formula and ho-hum. Establishing scene of ordinary girl playing on her phone and then all surprised when she was transported to another world. However, instead of actively seeking any kind of explanation or answer she just kind of placidly goes along with whatever guy as the story unfolds. Really, I get that these sorts of stories aren’t exactly known for compelling story telling but this one doesn’t even try.

Mostly, I have to wonder why the characters are vampires and werewolves. Other than the slight attraction to Yuzuki’s blood and one scene during the final episode where her special blood is actually used for something, it is almost completely irrelevent to the story.  The various pretty boys either have pointed ears or wolf ears and mostly spend a lot of time standing around talking or reassuring Yuzuki as she goes through the motions of getting carted around, protected, kidnapped, kidnapped from the kidnappers, collected, abducted again and then rescued. Yep, she’s useless from start to finish and has one of those completely bland personalities where her only defining trait is she wants to help everyone else out.

Of the harem of boys very few of them actually have a distinct personality and there are so many of them that by the end they’ve all just blended into a very colourful mess of names and faces. Very colourful because they all took wardrobe advice from the costume designers of a final fantasy game. The excess of names thrown around in episode one didn’t bother me because they are mostly names we’ve heard in other stories set in the time period and I assumed (wrongly) they would eventually get fleshed out. Unfortunately, this show isn’t much interested in doing anything.

See, they set the story in the warring states period and alternative history containing vampires or not, one would assume that the main focus of the story would either be the whole war thing or at the very least Yuzuki getting home. However, both of these points are strictly background or not addressed at all and we end up with a final fight where all the warlords team up to beat up some monstrous thing that just kind of appears to abduct Yuzuki while she stands around looking helpless.

There’s also this weird filter thing they keep doing with the light when Yuzuki is looking at certain characters. I’m not sure why they use the effect or what its intended purpose was but mostly it made me rub my eyes to check and see if I was tired and the screen was blurring.

Basically, this is watchable and maybe if you really like watching the story of a girl we know nothing about other than she is nice having conversations with guys we know nothing about other than they are a vampire or a werewolf and have the name of a Japanese historical figure, then maybe you might enjoy this. For everyone else there are plenty of better shows and this is a very skippable affair.

Episode Reviews:

• Episode 1: Diabolik Lovers Meets the Warring States?
• Episode 2: My Teenage Self Would Have Loved This
• Episode 3: Sake, Herbs, Bees and an Attack
• Episode 4: Heroine Gets a Fever,There’s An Original Development
• Episode 5: Why Have Vampires and Werewolves If You Don’t Do Anything With Them?
• Episode 6: That Was A Long 20 Minutes
• Episode 7: It Isn’t Dropping If I Just Stop Watching
• Episode 8: Pass the Parcel?
• Episode 9: No Bad Guys Here
• Episode 10: And She Goes Back to Hideyoshi
• Episode 11: Once a Damsel in Distress
• Episode 12: Do We Celebrate Yet?

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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