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With Halloween just gone I decided to do some catch up on this year's big horror anime - Trinity Blood. I must admit to being a little uninspired by volume 1, which introduced us to a future world split into two factions: humanity, ruled from the Vatican by the Catholic Church, and the Methuselahs, the series' name for vampires. Father Abel Nightroad is a priest in AX - the Vatican's secret services - who acts as an agent to prevent trouble between the factions, and can unleash his hidden power as an awesomely powerful 'Crusnik' - a vampire that feeds on vampires. It was all a bit too familiar in many ways, in places veering too close to existing vampire anime to really establish its own identity. It did have a lot of promise though, with a few references to a secret society aiming to upset the balance between the two powers and some nice set pieces promising better things to come. So does volume 2 bring better things? Well, yes and no. The volume starts off quite slowly with Father Nightroad taking Sister Esther (who he rescued in the first volume) back to the Vatican and reporting to his superiors. Through Esther's wanderings around the city state we are introduced to other members of AX, and occasionally their special powers, as well as some people a bit higher in the Church's hierarchy. However, it's isn't long before the AX agents are back out in the field, firstly with the mysterious Father Hugue being sent to investigate a priest's killing in a politically sensitive city. His best hope of finding out what happened lies in a young nun who witnessed the murder, but he isn't the only one looking for her - the vampire city officials also want to know what happened, and they want to know before the Vatican does. Meanwhile Father Nightroad is sent to investigate attacks on shipping near Albion (yay! it's old Blighty!) along with another Priest |
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called Leon, who is doing jobs for AX in order to reduce his jail sentence for as yet unknown crimes. Their investigations into the attacks lead to some uncomfortable discoveries, but Father Nightroad has more than that to contend with. The main cathedral in Barcelona has inexplicably collapsed, and he and Sister Noelle are sent to investigate. However, what looks initially like simply the age of the building leading to the collapse soon becomes more sinister when a rogue scientist and the mysterious Rosen Kreuz come into the picture. |
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In fact the main drawbacks of the volume are most apparent in episode 7, where it takes Peter Pan references way too far - I'm sure J M Barrie would spin in his grave if he knew he would be reimagined as an evil scientist who experiments on children. But it's also interesting that all the stories on this DVD seem to hold back on the horror aspect, despite some quite nasty subjects driving the plot. Child experimentation, casual killing and loss of innocent life are all touched upon, but never brought enough into the forefront to |
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really give the series some bite. Because of this it
does feel a bit limp in places and you also get the impression that the horror
is being toned down in order to provide more room for action. I must also
say that the romantic aspect of Nightroad and Noelle's relationship didn't sit
right either, it just seemed kind of wrong and slightly unbelievable to have a
nun hitting on a priest. Extras: Clean opening and ending sequences and trailers as usual, plus a few pages describing some locations and terminology from the series. Not bad, but a bit average. Ratings Feature:
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