Trinity Blood

I've honestly been a fan of this series since it first aired on Adult Swim way back in the day. The first episode I ever caught was episode 5 "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and trust me...I've never looked back. If you still haven't seen this series and you're reading this review then please...stop reading. Just stop. Leave this page, go watch the series on YouTube (Funimation has all 24 episodes free to watch) and when you've finished all of the episodes, then you can come back and tell the world the same thing that I just told you. Please don't look anything else up, just experience the magic as it unfolds.

I'm sorry to say this but, for me, Trinity Blood was a disappointment. It could've been so much better.

* The art is quite good (really good sometimes). I wish they had gone for a darker style, though, there were too many huge-eyed girls and sunny scenarios (with birds singing and all) for my liking. On the bright side, you have to love the main Crusnik's design, and Gunslinger and the Sword Dancer look really good too.

* The characters... Well, this is one of the downsides of the series. Abel, the main character, was really annoying most of the time. The heroine was the stereotypical big-eyed, cute and good-hearted, not-particularly-interesting-or-intelligent anime heroine. The pope invariably made me want to get into the TV and slap the "whiny-ness" out of him. Ion was the typical character who acts without thinking all the time and, although they try to present it as "noble", I just found it stupid. There were some potentially interesting characters, though, but, of course, they weren't developed further than the first short introduction. *sigh*.

* The direction was poor, at least in my opinion: they alternated fast (and quite well directed, yes, I have to give them that) action scenes with slow-paced, serene scenes --without any kind of transition, sometimes--, which kept me wondering about the director's sense of rhythm instead of letting me enjoy the series. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against slow-paced scenes. But you have to know how to use them, and how to fit them into the episode.

* The story was promising (not particularly original, but it had potential). But in my opinion 24 episodes are too few for the complexity they seemed to be aiming for, and in the end you're left wondering why did they include this and that character or storyline if they didn't plan to develop them at all. The ending made me feel frustrated. In case you don't know, the original writer died before he could finish the story, and it shows. The series keeps building up to something and when it ends... well, it doesn't live up to what you expected.

And just another point: I've heard people describe this series as "dark", and I keep wondering why. If you're looking for a dark series, I wouldn't recommend this one at all. You've been warned.

OK, after re-reading this it makes me wonder why I even gave it a 5 out of 10. OK... the series isn't *awful*. I guess you can enjoy it on some level. But it certainly didn't work for me. I kept watching it expecting it would get better, but it actually ended up worse.

Hope it helped.

If you liked Hellsing and want to see another vampire-centered anime, maybe you should give this series a try.

Personality wise, the main character is like a mixture of Alucard and Vash the Stampede, and while I overall prefer Hellsing, the setting and several plot elements from this anime were quite interesting and it would be nice see another Trinity Blood series in the future.

Take Vash Stampede's traits and Alucard's abilities and you have Abel Nightroad - the main character of Trinity Blood.

I didn't like "Trinity Blood" at all. I fought my way through 6 episodes hoping that the anime would still grab me somehow because the description sounded really interesting, but it just got boring as time went on.

The only highlights I remember are the moments when Abel Nightroad uses his abilities and leaves his opponents frozen in fear - but even for those moments it's not worth watching this bland anime any longer.

This anime has aged really badly in comparison with other older Animes.

The movie is great and is definitely worth watching, if you are not obsessed with idealistic stuff. If you're expecting perfection, then don't watch it; don't watch anything at all – it will only add to your feeling of frustration. But if you simply like anime, then it is a good film.

Actually, the basic rule of any movie-lover is to watch movies before reading any comments or reviews on them. Comments and reviews are actually useless; they make you biased, since they present only personal opinions of people who are complete strangers to you. So why should you listen to them if you are clever enough to form an opinion of your own? I was lucky to watch this series without this extra "educational baggage", and I liked it. If I had read the comments or reviews before, I probably wouldn't have watched it, and I personally think I'd have lost a lot. The plot seemed to me good enough; the characters (all of them taken together) were quite balanced; enough action, enough saliva; some very hard to find values, a lot of big words and actions, and some characters developing through the movie, which is on the whole a rare thing in anime and sure, interesting to watch. Some moments were fantastic, some were so-so, some seemed too short, some felt too long. Just like in any other anime film you care to name.

The basic problem of people who hate this movie (I can't even think how anyone can HATE a movie) is misunderstanding of the plot, or rather, not understanding it at all. And instead of trying to make it out, these people flood forums with negative reviews saying that the plot is awful. I actually never read the novel, and I never saw the manga, but still I had no problems with understanding the plot, the characters, their backgrounds and their complexes. I think anyone with some common sense and a tiny bit of imagination can grasp what is going on in there. 8-) And then again, there are dozens of sources that can help clarify some places.

I'm not arguing with people who dislike the director's work, drawing style, color schemes, or scene arrangement – those are sensei, they probably know better, they're the experts. I'm just a humble TV-rat, these things are beyond me, I never notice them.

And there are people who just were not touched by what they saw. Ye gods, that does not make it a bad movie, guys. There are a lot of films that raise problems we are not interested in – can we call these movies bad and advise others against watching them? This film is not a masterpiece (though I'm sure the criteria are different with each individual person among the audience), but it surely does not deserve to be labeled a failure (though the criteria are different again). The ending did seem a bit abrupt, and I can say I wanted more, looks like it ended two or three episodes earlier than it should. But, considering the circumstances, what can I do about it? Just accept it the way it is. There will be nothing more, alas.

My point is: watch the film, if you feel like doing it. If you're not biased, if you're not taught how to think of the movie, you will most likely find something that will compensate for the time you spend watching it.

P.S. (About people who write reviews) In one of the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children reviews (not on IMDb) some guy wrote that it was so stupid when Cloud jumped with that big sword of his; considering the size of the sword and Cloud's constitution, Cloud shouldn't be able to even raise the sword, let alone jump with it so high in the air… (8-(