Black Blood Brothers

Joseph Luster March 6, 2008

When this DVD first arrived, I glanced only at the spine and immediately erupted with excitement. Finally, FUNimation was answering my pleas to dip into the Blaxploitation DVD market, and I was the lucky lad destined to review their efforts. Upon closer inspection, however, the title’s cover revealed an animated vampire man with a big floppy hat, and neither Fred “The Hammer” Williamson nor Richard Roundtree were anywhere to be found.

As long-faced as I was after this revelation, Black Blood Brothers still struck me as something with potential. Maybe it was the silver-foil lettering on all three sides of the packaging (this is coming from a guy that would buy a comic in the 90s just because it had a chromium cover), but something was surely beating and moaning from within the plastic.

Thankfully, my intuition didn’t steer me wrong on with this one. Though BBB employs one of the most oft-used anime scenarios-Vampires VS Humans VS Other Vampires VS Etc.-volume one is an engaging four-pack that doesn’t waste any time getting right to the meat of the story. This could be because the show only runs for twelve episodes, but either way, it’s certainly a boon for yet another tale revolving around pale nightwalkers.

The fanged centerpiece to Black Blood Brothers is Jiro Mochizuki, a silver-sword swinging “Black Blood” (another word for vampire here) that looks part Brandon Heat and part Hamel from Violinist of Hamelin. Traveling with his younger brother Kotaro, Jiro has to deal with the dual threat of similarly black-blooded refugees, and the vampire-eradicating company known subtly as… The Company. Negotiations between the brothers and The Company are sped along nicely by the latter’s “Compromiser,” Mimiko, but yet another source of opposition poses a much uglier threat than your typical bloodsucker.

The Kowloon Children are on the rise, and these vampires just need to suck their victim’s blood once to convert them to their side. The one thing everyone seems to have in common is the desire to reach The Special Zone, an area in which both Red Bloods (humans) and Black Bloods can live in peace, but who wants the Kowloon bloodline to soil that harmony?

These four episodes manage to provide a pretty solid opening arc for anyone interested in getting into the series. Though there’s definitely a lot going on in the first couple of chapters, everything comes together by the third and fourth, making it much easier to appreciate the way they throw the audience right into the middle of everything. Once the branching relationships and conflicts between both human and vampire factions are illuminated, there’s a nice and steady balance of action and story progression to get sucked into.

The animation isn’t too shabby either. It’s a bit foreign to watch something nowadays that isn’t animated by Gonzo, but BBB looks decent when both nothing and everything is happening. Not being completely burnt out on vampires may be a prerequisite for viewing this title, but the odds of regretting it aren’t very high. If the subsequent volumes maintain the same brisk pacing as this one, then we might really have some refreshingly brief moonlight madness on our hands.