STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2008
STARRING: Crispin Freeman, Wally Wingert, Dave Wittenberg, Kari Wahlgren, Benjamin Diskin, Christopher Nissley, and Abby Craden
CREATED BY: Jun'ichi Fujisaku and Michael Hack
FEATURES: Inside Blood +
Extensive Interviews
T-Shirt
Manga Sampler

For a lot of anime fans, you can keep Daniel Day-Lewis. For them, there will be Blood +. Blood: The Last Vampire is one of the most influential and popular anime films in the history of the genre, so it wasn't particularly surprising that a television series developed from it but we all know that TV spin-offs of great movies are a mixed bag at best. The first season of the very dark Blood + aired on Adult Swim on The Cartoon Network and is now available in two forms on DVD - a sampler "Volume One" with just the first five episodes of the show and the far superior "Part One" which features six discs, including all 25 episodes, a manga sampler, a collectible box, and even a T-shirt to express your love for Blood. It's not a perfect anime experience, but Blood + definitely has its twisted, gothic charms and the collector's box should make fans of the show very happy. It's a surprisingly addictive show that fans of anime and novices to the genre can love in equal amounts.

Blood + tells the story of Saya Otonashi, a girl who thinks she's normal but has no memory of the past year of her life. One day, Saya is approached by a stranger and given a katana sword. (If you're only exposure to Japanese culture is through dark anime, you might think stuff like that happens all the time on the outskirts of major cities.) Of course, Saya gets her sword just in time, because our amnesiac heroine is soon attacked by a monstrous creature called the Chiropteran, a chameleonic creature who can discuss itself as a human before getting very ugly. They feed off blood and are trying to take out the world one bloody claw at a time, but Saya is the chosen one that can stop them.

Chosen ones, average girls forced to be heroic, slicing blades in slo-mo - Blood + isn't exactly breaking barriers in anime or any sort of fantasy fiction. Once you get past the nagging sensation that you've seen this kind of storytelling before, the execution of Blood + is impressive. The colors are vibrant and the screenwriting is strong enough to make jumping from one episode to the next very easy. Like a lot of anime, the first "Part" of Blood + is essentially one long story, separated by some pretty rocking Japanese theme music (that you can luckily chapter skip because no one wants to hear it more than a couple times in one sitting) and some credits every twenty-or-so minutes. Each episode ends with a cliffhanger, so don't be surprised if you sit down to watch a little Blood + and don't get up for a few hours.

As for the DVD, the box set is the real keeper. It's hard to imagine who would be interested enough to buy the first five episodes but not commit to the entire volume. Do yourself a favor and skip the single-disc because all that will happen is you'll own two copies of the first disc eventually. With the full box set, you'll get a very cool T-shirt, a kind of skimpy manga sampler, and over an hour of special features on the final disc. The bells and whistles - great box design, cool collectible shirt, etc. - may be the initial draw for curious anime fans, but it's the show itself that will keep them checking release calendars for the inevitable "Part Two."