Review of Strike the Blood

It's like Monogatari if Monogatari scaled up it's ecchi and it's harem, but made everything else significantly worse. I normally don't really care all to much if ecchi is in a show, or even if it serves as one of the main focal points as long as there is other stuff of value to latch onto and enjoy; but strike the blood is a massive nothing burger of, well, nothingness. There isn't one thing in particular it does that is bad per say, but there isn't anything I can single out as good either. Story 6/10: I'll admit it, I'm generally not a huge fan ofmini arcs but the first few episodes had me pretty intrigued about the plot and the world around it. We start off on this artificial island somewhere (I don't remember) out in the ocean, where vampires, werewolfs, and other fairytale like creatures are quarantined among the general public and blend in with society there. Pretty interesting premise. However, the major problem with this show, is after introducing the big figures, governing bodies, plot elements, all that expository stuff, it's pretty much never mentioned or thought of ever again.

Strike the blood presents the audience with interesting ideas, and a cool setting for them to take place in. It's a shame that this anime has a fundamental problem with following through on it's exposition, and we never actually get to see how cool the setting is or how any of the things that make up their world really work.

Art 7/10: I mean, it was alright I guess. It was never awful or anything, but the character designs all felt boring and uninspired. I saw the exact same highschool building I've seen probably a thousand times across all of anime ever, and nothing in the world stood out as unique. The fight scenes looked pretty cool, and they where kinda flashy, but they never lasted to long and usually didn't require a ton of movement or direction. Nothing worthy of praise, nor scorn; next.

Sound 8/10: I have a heavy bias towards music as a deciding factor in scoring an anime, and if the second intro slapped as hard as the first one did, this show would probably be a 7. Unfortunately it didn't, and I couldn't distract myself with a banger tune as I slogged through the second half of this show with my brain coasting on autopilot. The rest of the OST is mostly meh, you could've copy pasted it from a visual novel and I wouldn't have noticed. Some of the battle OST is hype, but nothing special enough for me put in my Spotify playlist.

Character 6/10: If you generally like haram, you would probably put this higher and I respect that; the inverse is true if you generally don't like haram. I personally don't really care for it, but wouldn't really consider it a red flag when choosing what to watch either. I would complain that everyone loves the MC, and he's basically Jesus if Jesus was a dragon summoning immortal vampire (yes, the MC is all of those things) and a gaggle of tsundere anime bitches that all fall in love with him after a single episode, but that's just how haram works and we all know it.

I was going to write my short opinions on everyone in his haram, but it would just be to damn long. Just take my word for it when I say it's pretty dry, and leaves a lot to be desired. There's also a dude mixed in there as well, but I actually thought that was pretty funny for them to include.

Enjoyment 7/10: The ending to the mini-arcs was usually pretty satisfying, but slogging through it fight like such a chore. There is nothing of substance here, I enjoyed the first arc or two, and I think the introduction to the setting in those arcs was really strong, but after that it got so SO repetitive. I felt like I was just waiting for this to end the whole 2nd and 3rd act, and to top it all off, the way this ended was extremely underwhelming.

Overall 6/10: God, I was so bored at points in this anime, and I can stomach anime being quite a bit of less than desirable things, but I have a very low tolerance for boring. On another note, this show presents us with a very interesting world that we never learn about due to pretty awful writing. None of the characters really click, the art is never particularly special, the music isn't really that interesting (aside from the first intro, that was fire), and watching this felt like work. Painfully mediocre and easily forgettable, just watch something else.