blood manga

[Panzer]

FINALLY MORE BLOOD!
picked this up at a bookstore at a mall near my house. it continues several decades after the anime left off and its pretty good. very dark and ominous looking book.

[jennwenn]

Wait?!!! In English? Who released it?

[Drizzten]

What's it's title? Is it in a graphic novel format or is it a single volume? How much was it?

[Panzer]

the comic is in english by viz comics. the title is blood the last vampire 2002. i'll go home an look at the authors name i forgot it :)

[Drizzten]

Oh Holy Crap! (http://series.viz.com/blood/)

Man, I can't believe I didn't make the connection when I found and posted this link (http://series.viz.com/blood/essay_01.html) in this thread (http://animeboards.com/t31416/s.html). I'm losing my touch.

Thanks for the heads up, Panzer. :)

[Dryden-san]

I have read the manga, and my verdict is...

Don't let a hentai author do your sequel unless the original was hentai. Not that there's anything wrong with gory, vampire lesbian sex-indeed, I'm sure that's reason enough for some people to buy it right there-but it's still like getting the guy who draws Bondage Fairies to make a sequel to Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar.

I was hoping for some more background, or drama or character development. Y'know the things the movie was lacking. Oh well. Maybe I was just expecting too much. Except for the sex and panty shots, it really is pretty close to the movie in tone.

[jennwenn]

Oh damn. Well I *was* gonna rush out and buy this but now I'm just let down. Talk about destroying a good story. Sheesh.

[Dryden-san]

Well sh*t, don't let me stop you checking it out at least. Spend an hour in your local bookstore reading it or something (that's what I did). Maybe you'll see hidden depths in the story that I missed.

I hate it when people take someone else's opinion as Truth without even seeing it for themselves. I grant you it's sometimes necessary when there's no other way to preview a title, but Blood shouldn't be hard to find, by any means.

[EVA fiend]

I picked up the Blood graphic novel a couple of weeks ago..., I haven't seen the anime.., so all I can say is that the manga is weird...., not really my cup of tea..., :|

[Eddy]

The movie was just cliched and far too quick.

[AchtungAffen]

I've read it about 2 months ago. Has a lot of fanservice though. And in the explanation notes I've found there are several books (not graphic novels, it seems) about blood and stuff. Seems like these books describe Saya's origin and the bugs (don't remember that techopiridian or whatever name) as the genetically engineering by a rich guy or something. Does anyone know anything about these books?

[jennwenn]

Originally posted by Dryden-san
Well sh*t, don't let me stop you checking it out at least. Spend an hour in your local bookstore reading it or something (that's what I did). Maybe you'll see hidden depths in the story that I missed.

I hate it when people take someone else's opinion as Truth without even seeing it for themselves. I grant you it's sometimes necessary when there's no other way to preview a title, but Blood shouldn't be hard to find, by any means.

The mere presence of lesbian vampire sex and fanservice in a story like Blood is enough to put me off. That pretty much tells me the mangaka destroyed the story and its not my thing. (And I'm glad you pointed this out to me.)

Of course I won't totally banish the idea of buying the manga out of my mind simply because of others' opinions. If I saw the manga, I'd flip through it and give it a chance. I'd just know more of what to expect before I saw it.

However, one reason I come to AB is for info on anime that I'm not familiar with, so I tend to at least partly value the opinons of posters here. And I DO judge which anime to watch based on what other people/reveiwers tell me is good, so why not do the same with bad ones? I wholeheartedly agree with you though. No one should judge by others' opinions alone, but I'm thankfully not one of those people.

[AchtungAffen]

Well, as seems nobody knew what I was talking about I'm transcribing and translating the "translating notes" on the last page of my Argento edition of Blood's manga:


The first popularly known production of Blood the last vampire was the animated thriller (48min) first shown in Japan on November 18 of 2000, being the first theater production made in a totally digital way (it means, after the pencil process, everything else was done by computer). Its productor (Production IG), was a precursor on this field, having tried the technique with Blue Sub. Nevertheless, and as Benkyo Tamaoki said, the original concept of Blood belongs to a novel by Mamoru Oshii. The film is located on an US military base in Yokota during 1966, in the midst of the Nam war. On the report of strange suicides inside that community, Saya is sent to investigate undercover as a student. The original novel was "Blood The Last Vampire: The night of the beasts" edited on october 30 of 2000 and written by Mamoru Oshii. The history begins in 1969 when problems in a student manifestation lead to the "Inmortality Project" to be investigated. The other 2 novels were "Blood the Last Vampire: Blood claims darkness" and "Blood the last Vampire: Efimerous(sp) Shangai"; both written by Junichi Fujisaku.
The following stage was on December 12 of 2000 with a video game for PS2 (going around the donkey servers right now hehehe), something similar to an interactive movie, set on Tokyo wich presented many different endings.
The player incarnates as a 17 yo student, that since a long time hears voices on his head and has strange dreams, and of course, Saya is behind his heels.
As a final point, we have this manga, serialized in the Shonen Ace Next of Kadokawa Shoten, between Nov 2000 and May 2001; month in wich is also published this recopilatory volume. The author, Benkyo Tamaoki, born in Tokyo in 1973, and one of the most prominent hentai artists of these eras, characterized by his excelent creations wich combine excelent artistical level and very worked out plots with a lot of character developing. Each one of this qualities, nevertheless, don't avoid that he perofrms perfectly the quote of erotism to reach the traditional objective of this genre: jerkoff. This is just the capacity of combining plot and erotism, what made Benkyo be one of the few hentai authors to have [B]female[B] fans. His....



Well, I could continue for pages but have to go. Hope this helps. And, anybody heard about those books the article talks about???

PS: Forgive all my grammar and other english errors, I did the translation on the fly, almost literally, so it might be hard to understand.

EDIT: OMG I almost forgot the most important part of this:


Even Benkyo has tried to explain all the story, personally I think he never explained everything or at least not in a correct order, so here you go:
-First of all, the term Chiropteran comes from greek "chiroptera" (Winged hand), the cientific name with wich the bats are designated (because they have their hands deformed as wings), but in japan this word is not used, but they call them "Yokushu", a word that has no literal meaning but is written with the kanjis of wing and hand. I think this decision of keepin the cientific name has 2 consequences. First and most obvious is to demonstrate the chiropterans aren't traditional vampires; the second comes from the quote we see the fat rich guy say "This is going to be the hand that opens the door!!" where is giving this new human race a divine-celestial quality, giving the capabilities to enter through the gates of heaven, or even become God
-Combining multiple interpretations of each author, we can determine that the original Saya, the one we see on the 1892 picture (the element wich repeats on all productions), was the result of a cloning experiment where genes from a race of monkeys as base was used. The result was a supernatural being with extraordinary capacities, a superhuman. But of all the beings created from this Saya did not posess these characteristics. After being modified to become "bio-weapons" ended up with the deadly chiropterans.
-The different Sayas seen on the different works are probably different beings, but this detail has never been made explicit, its only said she is a construction and as that can be replaced. The american organization wich hunts the chiropterans used genes of the original girl to (with new and ehnances cloning methods) to get a tool without will and memory to help on their fight.
-Its just because all of this that this manga presents a final product. The character finally knows the truth about her origin and rebels agains her captors


Bye!

[BakaMaster]

vampire lesbian sex...intriguing

they should make a series out of Blood, there is hardly enough *good* vampire anime

[Drizzten]

I got the DVD for Christmas as a gift, so I'm able to watch it when I want to now.

I simply cannot fathom Saya's character being involved in a lesbian scene. Of course, we learn next to nothing about her life from the anime that she could be any kind of person when not combating the demons. I'll keep an eye out for the manga nonetheless.

I found a BtlV book on Amazon.com written by Benkyo Tamaoki.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1569317798.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

[AchtungAffen]

That looks like the cover of the manga. Try searching for the author Mamoru Oshii.

[takaru]

I bought the manga a week or so ago and I read it right away. Yuri doesn't bother me and it's not like it was a PWP. Plus, it's not like you have to buy the rest of the volumes because there are none.

[Adriel]

My thoughts on the Blood Manga: Didn't care for it. It felt like a doujinshi rather than an official continuation. I don't have anything against Yuri, but the manga's tone was so vastly different from the film's that it was jarring. The plot was just as vague as the movie, though there was a bit of clarification on Saya's origins. I didn't like Akiko; all she did was whine about what a "horrible" life she had. She had the problem, not her family, and they didn't deserve what she gave them.

[AchtungAffen]

She ended up lobotomized, didnt she?

[BakaMaster]

i just finished reading it, it was not as bad as I expected..though much of the nudity was not needed and it really didn't pick up plotwise until the last 30 pages. At least it explained more stuff then the movie did.