Yes... I was waiting for something to fill the demon-lord shaped void in my heart.
Of all the premieres I've seen so far (which is hardly all of them),
Blood Lad's is the one I've enjoyed the most. Perhaps it's due to that
Hataraku-ish vibe everyone's been pointing out, or perhaps it's just
good comedic material, but I found this episode to be quite charming and well-executed. In fact, another series I was strongly reminded of was
Soul Eater, a comedy I also highly enjoy, and honestly I see more stylistic parallels with a show like that than with
Hataraku, even if the latter shares a lot of characteristics with this one. For all the demon lords (or bosses), interest in the human world, and even leads that share the same seiyuu (
Ohsaka Ryouta back to voice the vampiric hero Staz), this is a
more flamboyant anime than
Maou-sama!, and just a tad less classy, though by no means worse off for it.
The characters are quirky, which is always way more fun to deal with than flat ones, and the premise itself is rather whimsical. Staz is a vampire who's
too much of an otaku (and too lazy) to go around sucking blood, but he is nevertheless a mafia-esque boss in the demon world with considerable power and influence. When the helpless Yanagi Fuyumi (
Nomizu Iori) accidentally finds herself in his turf, he's overwhelmingly (and a tad creepily) overjoyed to be able to talk to a Japanese human woman and develops a rapid attachment, only to find that she's been eaten within ten minutes and turned into a ghost. I already really like Staz, because weird and ridiculous as he can be,
he's hilarious. Once Fuyumi is no longer alive he loses his interest in her (beyond swearing he'll bring her back to life; it seems like he wanted to drink her blood after all), and he's completely neutral about her. He's also a total dork and is ready to quit his job to head for the human world (for otaku reasons, not blood ones), and generally one of those characters you can't help but like for what he is.
Fuyumi isn't as established yet, and she's used for quite
a lot of fanservice (and I can already tell there's going to be
plenty of that) but I like her nevertheless, and her comedic timing is quite spot on as something of a
tsukkomi character. I like that she's kind of just there, not nearly as freaked out as she should be, and taking things in relative stride. I suppose the mystery now is why it was she who got through the
black curtain and who set it up in the first place, but whatever happens now in Staz's bizarre quest to bring the girl who's blood he wants to drink back to life, I'll definitely be sticking around for this one.
No comments:
Post a Comment