Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond - Reviews

Leonardo continues his daily life in Salem's Lot and some other characters exist too, but enought of that nonsense, time to cram all the relevant and actually important story into the last 2 episodes.

More enjoyable to watch than the first season I suppose, this time each episode focusing more on the inviduals who know Leo and their story, but don't get too exited now, the show likes to forget the characters in the very next episode and fails to give conclusion to the stories it tries to tell.

Story: Feels like world building for season 3. And very much like S1, all style and no substance. Oh and hope you like having vague power-systems, for the show explains nothing, not even what makes the powers different, how they came to be and what rules dictate which powers and why are the rules different for each power.

Animation is great, lot's of flashy movement and...blood.

Good sound, gives the show more energy.

Conflicting characters, Leonardo is still useless by himself, is Chain mean or nice? make up your mind show, what we learn about the characters is surface level.

BONUS: - Leonardo 'aka' b*tch boy. - Michael Bay movie of anime shows.

*Kekkai Sensen S1 spoilers*

Helsalem's lot is my city

I was always a bit confused a bit by the direction the plot of the original Blood Blockade Battlefront was taken in, for an anime that started out as a perfect example of pure action, fun, great animation, and brilliant characters in something you can actually relax your critical eye around it sure went down a dark path of edginess quick, didn't it? But luckily this time around the cute vampires are gone and the rest of what you love is present.

You have your generic looking protagonist in Leonardo Watch back at it again with his signature special eyes which are still only good for two things: looking up his enemies' defensive skirts and figuring out magic tricks. He does much less of this in this sequel though, as our brockesque lead takes a backseat to the more interesting members of Libra. There's an episode dedicated to almost every important member of the crew that weren't covered enough in the first series, and that's what the story consists of. The episodic style makes a comeback in this way. Every episode has a unique dialogue style fitted to the character the episode covers and some sort of enemy for them to fight. This persists over 8/10 of the episodes, where two-parters focusing on newer characters take up the other 4.

What mostly seperates this from its predecessor in terms of story is the way multiple interesting things are taking center stage at the same time instead of a battle or two happening in the background while the story focuses on the intricacies of leonardo's peace of mind. I do like how there's no overarching plot this time since B^3 didn't do that very well and it works better without it.

The attacks are still as cool as ever, but the first episode steals the rest of the anime's thunder in episode 1 when it coems to animation. Yutaka nakamura's signature sakuga style returns and god damn is it beautiful. The first half of the first episode is by far my favorite thing to come out in the 2017 season, and a contender for best animated sequence all year.

too brilliant not to put here.

Episode 5 had an almost redline-esque car scene, proving nakamura isn't out of bounds when it comes to trying new things. Simply beautiful stuff.

The sound is phenominal and it's one of the only shows this year that's caught my attention. The opening is so quirky and it fits, the ending as well, the OST is used exceptionally well.

I view the characters similarly to the way I did season 1, very creative cast each one of them different, a few newcomers that were fun to watch, but Chain, Gilbert and KK's characterizations shot up quite a lot for one. Plenty of others too but those took the cake for me in their episodes. Not all of them were balls-out action, though their animation budget wasn't wasted even for the more lighthearted ones and didn't fail to make them intense either.

Individually the stories make perfect use of their situations too. I never felt the need for more focus on anything else when chain was phasing through walls to deactivate a bomb or while gilbert was chasing down brainheisters. They're almost short movies, all in a line.

An extremely satisfying ending that still leaves room for more, tons of stuff about the world expanded on, more humor- totally worth it. I love this show. Not much to complain about besides episodes 8 and 9 being a bit weak.

To begin the review, let me say I was very happy with this season for a number of reasons, which will be explained in the review. This was probably one of the few anime this fall season of 2017 that didn't disappoint me. Then again Studio Bones most of the time is pretty awesome with their anime productions so I'm not surprised. And now, let the review begin!

Story- For the most part, this season was very episodic with the exploits of the organization Libra and with Leonardo of course. As some may have noticed Bones changed the director for the Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond, and thus the crazy story-telling has been dialed down a bit. But I think this helps the anime be a bit more focused with the story, especially given the fact that some of the episodes are character focused, like with Gilbert, Chain, Steven, Zed and others. If you don't mind a slow burner of a season, you'll probably like it, but I bet people will binge watch it any way since its only 12 episodes.

Animation- Studio Bones doesn't disappoint when it comes to the animation for this season. I'd say one of the highest points was when Steven and Klaus fought that Blood Breed together. That fight was dope, but its sure a good thing Leonardo can read their true names, otherwise they would have lost that fight.

Sound- The sound also helps the series a great deal, but its no surprise with Bones. The opening and the ending truly fit the theme for the show, plus I love that insert song during the part with Leonardo during the season finale.

Characters- Ah yes, the characters. They are easily the best part of this particular season, mostly due to the fact that during the episodic format. There's Chain and her history with the werewolf squad, Zed trying to get a job to help out, K.K. trying to go to her son's school on parent's day during her work for Libra, there's just so much character development, even with Leonardo and sister Michella, which is the big reason why this season is a big deal. Although the last few episodes shed some light on Leonardo and where his story will go, I like how its slow and steady, much like how Michella describes her brother like a turtle. We still haven't gotten any backstory with Klaus yet, but a character that important usually has their backstory connected to the main story, so its only a matter of time. 

Overall- Even though this season feels different compared to the last one I don't think that's a bad thing. If a new director know what they're doing, they can do a pretty awesome job. I'm intrigued as well as hyped to see where they're going to take this urban fantasy series next. You can bet I'll be looking out for when the next season comes out, cause I need more!

In case anyone hasn't watched the original Blood Blockade Battlefront, here's the skinny; it's a heavily stylised series which can effectively be summarised as a blitzkreig for the eyes, in that it constantly pelts you with new and unnecessary characters and comedic sub-plots until it's easy to forget what the franchise is actually supposed to be about. The show's attitude to world-building, narratival construction, characterisation and character development are similar to my attitude towards cooking; don't spend too long on anything and hope it looks impressive enough to fool yourself.

Thankfully, this season Bones has decided to actually include things such as, y'know, character-centric narrative arcs, and BBB is all the better for it. Though we're still following Leonardo Watch, the young man who gained new eyes from an eldritch entity and found himself working for a clandestine pseudo-vampire-hunting group in a half-Otherworld New York (the whole set-up is really too bizarre and winding for me to go into more detail here) this time the extended cast is allowed to shine in episodes that explore their backgrounds and personalities. As we're still in very monster-of-the-week territory, there are very few arcs that survive the entire season, more-so vignettes and brief fly-by tours of supporting characters' lives, but it beats the hell out of the weird last-minute-profundity of season one, and I actually found myself being able to tell what the heck was going on most of the time, which helped immensely. Generally, when an episode in Beyond begins a story, it carries it to the end credits rather than dropping it halfway, as did the capricious child that was the first season.

Still, style remains the main draw of the franchise, boasting as it does a carefully-selected soundtrack, a mostly rapid pace and a really interesting way of melding New York topography and gritty underground-resistance imagery with sky-high monsters that, in the BBB universe, are actually fairly commonplace. Characters are, sadly, still more visually interesting than wholly compelling AS characters (and there at least three too many of them), and while the last two episodes are strangely engrossing for a series that finds more comfort in rapid car chases and exploding blood crosses, we're still not exactly looking at Fullmetal Alchemist here, folks. One thing that I would love to see more of in a prospective third season is more of a focus on interpersonal relationships, as the likes of Leonardo and Chain, or K.K. and Klaus, feel like they have more meat on their shared bones than has been picked at in the franchise thus far. 

TL;DR

I'm not quite sure what makes fans of the series think of this as anything more than "just decent", but if you were a fan of the first season (or if you liked aspects of it but yearned for more focused storylines and character arcs) then you should be well-served here. '& Beyond' IS, whatever else I might think of BBB, a marked improvement over the first installment and if we can improve from here then I think this might really be a grower.

And please continue leaving the Black and White and Lord of Despair or whatever stuff for cameos and flashbacks, because they aren't needed and I really don't miss them.

this is a good show and if you like a good fun mature anime that has a good setting fun charectars good writing than this is for you. The mature content isn't the edgey dark content like Tokyo ghoul it's more of a dark humor style. It is enjoyable most of the way through and the outrageous moments are non stop 

the in-depth review is going to cover both seasons and I won't include spoilers 

the Animation is par for the course but the detail of the world and background charectars is what is impressive almost every scene has a vibrant life to it, the world never looks empty except when it's destroyed. Also there are points during fight scenes where the show would go visibly darker, why? I'm not sure I'm assuming so they didn't assault your eyes with bright light out of nowhere. It's not to much a bother but it is there 

Sound is okay nothing special the in show songs do their job nothing too out of the ordinary, but the op and ep for the both season are absolute bangers and they kinda of add to the sense of fun the show already has. 

most of the characters are great except for Klause the self righteous leader he's not very funny except for dry humor parts and his whole part of the show is to progress the plot but understand his character in this instance so it's not too annoying. Most characters have some depth and are consistently funny. 

for the story it's really only about 6 episodes of the main story the rest are fun shenanigans and world building. Most of the time I don't like it when shows have almost pointless episodes but that show has enjoyable characters and writing that keeps me laughing and interested. 

I understand if people hate or love this show simply because despite being funny has some tropes that are annoying to see. Despite being funny the show does nothing exemplary. It's a perfect example of a perfect B rating show give it a watch