Zero: Black Blood discussion
 

Over-Time has the first two episodes up now. I wouldn't be too surprised if we get them all by the end of the week.

I think it's off to a good start. It's another Garo project that doesn't seem to have a lot of direct involvement from Amemiya, which does leave it kind of lacking in some of the visual flair that I look for in Garo. That's not to say that the action is bad - CGI armor haters certainly will have nothing to ocmplain about - but if you want a ton of crazy wirework and insane visual flourish it's not really here.

The plot is interesting, though. Zero and his new buddies are up against an enterprising Horror who's trying to foster coexistence between humans and Horrors. The new characters, Kai and Yuna, are an interesting pair. Kai is definitely not your conventional Makai Priest, but he's pretty fun. Yuna is far more interesting, though. We find out in episode two how and why she's wielding a Makai Sword and... it's pretty hardcore. I won't spoil it.

Honestly, I don't think this will go down as the most awesome Garo project ever, but Ray Fujita is good as always and it's definitely fun so far.

Annnd stickied

Suddenly topless training in EP.4. :D

I'll back waiting to comment once I've seen the whole thing subbed. For now, I'm going to try to place where I've know Yuna's actress from while watching ToQger...




...OHHHHHHHHHHHH...Mio is imagining being a Makai Knight! How cute :lol

GARO is my favourite toku show ever, but it's also about the only part of the GARO franchise I can honestly say I love with very few reservations. The second, and third, season made some much needed and necessary changes to the original season while making general improvements here and there but the problem with those was, that the general fixes usually came at the price of breaking something that was crucial to my utter adoration of that first season.

Meanwhile the films were really the worst of the bunch, often being artistic experiments more than actual cohesive stories - I think I stomached three films? Maybe two and a half? Which were also so utterly superfluous they made the Rider crossover films seem like essential viewing.

I bring all of this up, because I honestly tried my best to AVOID everything about this show going in, in the hope that I could go in with a fresh pallet in the vague hope I wouldn't end up disappointed all over again. Either this is a really great show, or that helped a lot, because I LOVED this opening episode and only had a few minor issues with it.

Firstly it kept the trend of fixing whatever was broken before it, in this case we return back to the original horrors and practical suits, weapons and action (well for the most part). In terms of general production values, this episode was fantastic.

Mio is one of my favourite of the ToQ and seeing her all sexy legged, sword wavering badassery here, yum yum. Plus, best introduction ever for a guy rocking a bad moustache and fighting with an umbrella? Who knew they could make that cool! Shame his actual character seems annoying as all fuck. They would have entirely overshadowed Zero this episode if we didn't get that scene of him fending off an entire gang of Horror while munching on chocolate.

My problems with the episode? Firstly, the pacing. Generally opening episodes of toku are always the best ones until the final run of the season, as they have to be the tightest and most focused in order to introduce everything and give the world context. Here however...I guess not so much.

During the four minute long cold open, a man coughed up some blood, Zero complained about his drink and a man dramatically looked at the camera and said 'HORROR'. If you include the credits, that was six minutes of the episode right there. It picked up a LOT after that, but considering these episodes are only twenty five minutes long - and there is only going to be six of them, that is quite the chunk of time to waste.

The second disappointment was our new major villain. I mean really, you bring back the gorgeous practical suits and introduce your new main villain shooting poorly realised CGI feathers? Come the fuck ON!

Totally didn't realize that. I wonder if this helped land her the ToQGer job, considering Kobayashi also wrote this miniseries.

Black Blood 02.

Much better than the first episode, and the first episode was pretty great. It reminded me of some of my favourite GARO episodes. From the strong horror elements, to the well implemented use of more maturer content to the strong story focus, and logical world building.

Not one hundred percent sold on Kai OR Yuna yet, but they both pull their weight in fight scenes. Especially so in Yuna's case, after her badass as all fuck flashback.

I liked how Yuna wasn't nearly as effective when fighting a real Horror. You could really tell that she was letting her rage overcome her and it could make her a real liability later.

Without Yokoyama around all the actions toned down quite a bit.

First two episodes and I like this already. Too bad it is going to be six episodes, but I'm sure it will be okay since that girl is going to end up becoming the first female Makai Knight. It is also nice to see actual armor on screen and not CGI armor.

Okay, got three and four down. I'm seeing a lot of TOWSITD influence in here, both in the cinematography and the plot. I'm actually kind of surprised by how much of Yuna's backstory they're lifting out of season 3, especially given how recent that was. It's hard not to see all the parallels.

It's still a good show, though. It's just hard not to feel like it's a little pedestrian for a Garo project.

Where is Rei's bike when he needs it. :)

Black Blood 3.

Wow that really was quite bad. I mean it wasn't downright terrible, I'm a HUGE urban fantasy guy, my favourite book series ever is the Dresden Files so like learning about the way the community works, and that cool scene with the kid and the barrier were great. But even TOWSITD provided more than a couple of novel scenes when it came to storytelling and world building.

And I'd come to expect from GARO, even in its darkest moments, the best action out of any toku show ever, however that is just not the case here. This is probably the most "toku" GARO has ever felt and it really suffers for it. GARO seemed to take props more from American comics, than it did Japanese media, and it created action sequences that were just something else. But this episode was full of lame, clunky, clumsy fighting and it only gets worse once Zero dons the armour. I mean how is possible that the armour makes the fighting LESS interesting? I dunno, but the show manages it.

Black Blood 4. THAT SHIRTLESS SCENE OF ZERO :lol

This episode was pretty good, I guess the last episode was just a missfire. The general continuity problems and seeming budget restraints aside, Claude didn't make me want to claw off my own face in the same way Cain does, and to a lesser extent Yuna. Gimme a GARO prequel about Taiga and then a Black Blood prequel about Claude! - also give him a proper jacket next time please.

It isn't Garo until you see nipples. :p

I'm kind of amazed at how well Claude could keep up with Ring, even without any armor. Either he was the ultimate badass or Ring has seriously upgraded in power since then. I assume it's the latter because Rei is one of the strongest Knights there is.

The fight with Ring was where most of my issues with the episode arose, where the hell was Claude's armour? In GARO every Maki foot soldier had an armour, it may have been a generic bronze one but it was still there. And why the hell did he turn into a rainbow when he died?

The fight was fun, much more entertaining than when Zero randomly jumped on a bike for no reason last episode, but those issues were really weird.

I'm guessing they didn't have the budget to whip up a CGI armor suit for just one scene.

Skittles.

Rekka's dad didn't show his armor, nor his title.

I get the budget thing but it's up to the show to give an in show reason, but it just didn't. Rei literally summons his armour to take on footsoldiers in this very same series, so it made it all the more glaring that Claude didn't summon his armour even when facing down the big bad of the series.

Just caught up with episodes 3 and 4. I'm enjoying seeing Rei again and the new characters are okay with me (two lots of Riria at the same time? Yes please.), but the story isn't clicking with me as much as I wanted it too. The base plot I'm really enjoying, but then all the added bits have way too many parallels with TOWSITD for my liking.

Ring's random English comments though :lol they feel like something right out of a fighting game.

Expect to see more of that in season 4. :)

What, whole story elements just ripped straight out of it? :confused:

Last 2 episodes are up on Over-time!

thats kool but garo i made sure that i stuck with tv nihon for garo.

Black Blood 05.

Ever watching something where EVERYTHING feels off and you literally cannot place why at all? Yeah, that was this episode for me. Definitely would have liked a series about Yuna and her father though, although this series has been pretty decent overall.

Black Blood 06. Well that was depressing.

The general production values were nicely ramped up for this finale but Ring was a crap villain until the very end and he was the worst kind of bad, because this episode proved that there were loads of things that could have made him interesting if the show had had any real character focus of any level of substance throughout its short run time. Instead he just shot feathers, shouted in English and wore ill fitting suits. But then terrible final villains is nothing really new with GARO is it?

Overall, eh, it was a decent way to kill a few hours as long as you don't really expect much substance or much of a shake up to your world. With Black Blood being only six episodes long, with very little plot or character focus, it didn't really have enough to it to make many mistakes in the first place. If this was as long as TOWSITD, or the second season, I probably woulda been more sour by the end, but as it stands, it was just okay.

Episodes 5 and 6

Well, that was certainly... generic. The ending - and really the miniseries itself - wasn't all that bad. There just wasn't really much about it that stood out in any way. The whole plot with Yuna, Iyu, and Ring was pretty stock, very few of the new characters left any lasting impression, and the action was solid but far from the best we've ever seen out of Garo. I'm not saying it was bad, but there honestly wasn't anything really great about this either. Honestly, it just kind of goes in the "forgettable side project" pile next to Red Requiem. Here's hoping Makai no Hana turns out better.

We watched 3-6 today and I have to be honest, the first two episodes showed promise while these last 4 just threw it all away. There were some good ideas here, but the episodes were just boring. This story could have been told in an hour long OVA rather than a 2 and a half hour series. Even 3-4 episodes were have been better than 6.

Zero was cool, as was Ring, but the rest just felt off. The fight choreography felt lacking. Something just did not feel right at all with the series, and I'm not exactly sure what it is. Oh, and that song got really annoying by the fourth episode. It was like one verse and was heard for what seemed like five times an episode.

Also, Cain and Yuna seemed rather pointless while Zero seemed pretty invincible. I mean, the man got hit in the head with a fire extinguisher multiple times and did even have a bruise from it. Nothing really came out of Yuna having her father's bone in her arm and Cain was just a total asshole. There was nothing to like about his character at all. No one grew at all during these six episodes.

It is sad, but I have to give Zero a 4/10 stars. There is zero reason to ever revisit this show.

I had the exact same feeling, something that seemed to only grow with each episode.

I guess I'm in the minority of people who liked this series. I do wish it was more about Rei though I suppose his character's pretty much fully developed. I loved the plot with the community and found Ring to be an interesting villain. It would have been nice to see Yuna actually become a knight, maybe in a later series as the "women can't be knights" plot point is not only annoying but also it feels like they were shoving it in our face as if they were going to defy it.

Finally got around to finishing it this morning. I too enjoyed it, but it did feel like it was missing something - possibly due to the short length. I liked Ring and the moral grey area of what he was doing, which made for a nice change from the usual "super god horror" we've seen in the last few Garo titles. I even thought his CGI form at the end wasn't that bad.

Wish it had been a bit longer though. Because I could do with more Yuna in my life (ToQger isn't enough :p) and Cain didn't really amount to anything here.

I think maybe the short length of the show was the thing that made it feel so off for me. It could have filled a mini arc just exploring the concept of the setting, and then Ring really was quite operatic but was barely able to touch upon what could have made him great before the show ended leaving behind a villain who was pretty terrible and felt half finished.

About the only thing I am glad about, is that Cain only got six episodes, that was more than long enough.

ToQGer?

Riria, the actress who played Luna, is also Mio/ToQ3 on ToQGer.

Loved majority of the mini...save for the fact that like Yami, the horrors were just normal horrors, and Ring was just a massive white version of them. No unique/stylish/specific horrors, just commons. That's what pulled me into the first Garo more so than Kouga did (though Kouga was fine, just that before he did that whole lighter thing I thought his original moveset was rather lacking). Still a good mini though, just curious when this takes place timeline wise. Not that it matters to much.