Review of Blood Blockade Battlefront

I'm honestly pretty disappointed after finishing the 1st season, genuinely makes me wonder if I should give the sequel a try. I went into this with little to no info, but I did have relatively high expectations for it. First of all, the story was,,, "there" at most, as in I guess the aspect of it exists, in a way, but not really. There was almost no plot, and I have absolutely no idea how you can have filler in a 12 episode season of a show that's supposed to be based on action. The worst part about it is the fact that the filler isn'teven fun or offers some important interactions between the characters, it's just a bit cute at times. The premise of the whole world this takes part in is pretty interesting, but I feel like they didn't take advantage of that at all. Nothing is really explained either, throughout the whole thing the information is basically just thrown at you and you have to make do with whatever you managed to get. Not even the end was satisfying, it felt rushed and it still didn't manage to give explanations for the whole thing. It offered a crumb of plot at most maybe, but considering that we didn't get anything else before that, the viewer is just left confused. While watching it I kept wondering if I was just completely missing something that was right in front of me, but nope. I kept re-watching bits to make sure I wasn't having a stroke and, sure enough, there was nothing to clear it up.

The art was ok-ish, I must say the fights were very underwhelming, no spice, no nothing. At times it seemed dull too, and during the final fight, which is supposed to be the grand finale and all that, right, barely anything happens. I swear there are like 2 minutes of actual fighting at most. How did they allow this to be marketed as action,,. The character design is unique, I'll give it that, but that's pretty much it. I can't say it's too bad, just lacking a lot.

Now, the soundtrack I must give proper credit to because it is nearly impeccable. 90% of the reason I even started watching the show is because I had been a huge fan of both the OP and ED for years. "Sugar Song to Bitter Step" is still one of the best EDs in my opinion, such a sweet and upbeat tune!! The animation for the opening and ending was probably the best in the whole series. The OSTs are *chef's kiss*, and they did compliment the mood well (when there was any, because fr there was so little feeling in general). The voice acting was amazing, too, and they did manage to get some really well-known VAs.

The characters, are, well. Same as the story, they're there but not really. We get an actual minute maybe of backstory for the protagonist, and it's not even like that helps with anything, because it doesn't serve as encouragement for him to do something or for his development. Speaking of which, character development is an inexistent notion, Leonardo having no combat abilities and mostly being thrown around by the other characters, who we also know nothing about besides some very general stuff that's supposed to be their whole personality I guess: Zapp is a womanizer, Klaus is a cool strong guy, K.K. is also strong, there's also a girl called Chain who's supposed to be a werewolf? I think? But she never turns into an actual werewolf?? That brings me to another major problem, the fact that the power system is never explained to us. Is it like in MHA where people randomly started getting powers? Or was it caused by the "Great Collapse" that made New York that way? Did they have those from before the whole ordeal? Who knows!! Definitely not us!! Everyone seems to just perfectly control them too, so no training or anything that could cause hardships *that would help with the development even a bit*. A lot of characters appear for one episode with a screen that should apparently answer any and all questions, which, you guessed it, doesn't help much. The villains are something I don't even have much to say about, there's like a guy who has half of his face made out of metal and he pops up here and there, but we don't know why he's a bad guy?? He says on multiple occasions that he does what he wants, but I don't feel like that's a great reason for somebody who's supposed to defeat the main cast. On top of that, we have these twins that are good at first and the girl makes friends with Leo, but her brother is possessed by some evil entity? That is sort of a vampire????? I'll be honest, I kind of gave up halfway through trying to piece it together exactly because it made absolutely no sense to me. I get the fact that this world where anything can happen should technically excuse a lot of this, but the the show not compensating at all through interesting characters or action makes it feel completely bland.

All in all, I can't say it wasn't enjoyable, but if you wanna watch it, I'd suggest keeping it as mindless entertainment, because it's not that worth it sadly, especially if you're looking for something story-based. I still stand by the fact that the music absolutely slaps tho, that's something I definitely recommend with all my heart.