Blood Soul

(RU-bu) Vampires; Unfortunately writers have not been kind to our sharp toothed and blood thirsty friends, as they are constantly subject to antagonism, animosity, resentment and moral bias in most franchises that they appear in, Blood soul is no exception. Naoyuki Fujisawa’s manga takes place in a world where both humans and demons exist, with the humans living in constant fear of the demons, to their salvation comes the Van Hellsing church, an order who prioritizes its main job as the ‘purification’ of demons with the ambition of one day creating an all human world. Our protagonist here is Red, a fallen vampire lord out for bloodafter losing his powers several years ago. Despite its attempt to be something new, bloodsoul unfortunately ends up bringing nothing new to the table, it in fact took several chapters from the ‘how to make a manga story’ textbook. We have our protagonist who has a unique or special ability with revenge as his main motive, all brawn no brain, and even makes use of a sword (fang) as his weapon in an age where machinery is highly developed. His personality is rash as expected and most enemies serve as nothing more than gore fests. The art is also fairly generic along with the character design, nothing really much to add. The panels however were nicely detailed; combat was extremely easy to follow as each panel immediately followed the next action seamlessly. Despite its short length it still managed to show a little background on the protagonist but this was only as to show his reason for revenge which goes without saying as it is the story’s driving force. If 6 episodes is a small length for an anime then you can only imagine what 6 chapters of a manga can be interpreted as. Given the short length though it really could have aimed higher, the poor story and characterization becomes its biggest letdowns along the way with the author going for gore as a fail-safe plan to draw attention. Ultimately it isn’t a complete waste of time but the cliché atmosphere makes it something that can easily be forgotten but given its short length it serves as a decent quick read on the bus coming home from work. (Reviewed for the club "Reviews for the unreviewed")