This is a fairly obscure anime which is a shame because it's quite good. Story: The plot is a little confusing at times, with flashbacks and such but overall a good story about friendship and betrayal with some pretty strong emotional scenes. It also has some pretty great japanese folklore in there with ghosts, monsters and other very creepy stuff. Art: It has some really lovely traditional animation and a style to the characters that I really like. The backgrounds are gorgeous and the action scenes are pretty great. I mean it has /ninjas/. Sound: You should definitely watch this in japanese with the english subs.The english dubbing is not very good at all. Did I mention the haunting music? One song in particular, you will know it when you hear it. The rest of the tracks are okay but fairly typical 80s stuff.

Character: Characters motives are not always a hundred percent clear. For example, in some anime you have characters shouting out how they feel or what their plans are, or their thoughts and plans are revealed in a voice-overlay of their internal monologue. Blood Reign does not have this which I personally like because it allows for the audience to figure it out on their own. I can see how some people might not like this.

Enjoyment: This is a film that will leave an impression on you. There's sadness, great action scenes but also a few puzzling/weird/creepy moments that will leave you thinking.

Overall: If you like monsters, horror and/or ninjas I say check it out. If I had to compare it to anything else to give you a better sense of what
it's like I would say the mood is abit like Berserk and the plotting is similar to Ninja Scroll.