Black Blood Brothers- The Complete Series and Dragon Ball Z Kai Season 1 Part 2 Blu-ray Reviews
An excessive amount of backstory and exposition hurts “Black Blood Brothers.”
The second volume of “Dragon Ball Z Kai” delivers plenty of action-packed fun.
Black Blood Brothers- The Complete Series Blu-ray:
The story of this 12 episode anime series takes place 10 years after a vampire/human war in Hong Kong against a group of hated vampires known as the Kowloon (who infect vampires and humans). The “hero” of the story if a vampire named Jiro who was a great warrior in the above mentioned war. The central story involved Jiro and his little brother Kotaro attempting to travel to the Special Zone where vampires supposedly live. Of course, this journey is easier said than done as the two encounter vampire refugees, an armed team that prevents vampires from entering the Special Zone illegally, human/vampire mediaters, a coven of vampires, and the re-emergence of the Kowloon Children who want to infect others.
After an intense opening war sequence involving Jiro dusting vampires with a silver sword, I thought the show was off to a fine start. Unfortunately, the show never got any better than that. The series, which can be described as “Blade” meets “I Am Legend,” is simply poorly executed. There are some interesting ideas here (like the Kowloon), but the excessive amount of scenes of characters rambling on about overly complicated backstories and exposition really bogs the story down. As most writers should know, rule number 1 is to show not tell.
Two other major issues I had with the writing: Too many forced plot twists/surprises and too much time devoted to characters deciding whether or not Jiro can stay in the Special Zone.
Summary: There’s better vampire shows and films out there than “Black Blood Brothers.”
Video/Audio:
The widescreen 1080p picture quality is virtually flawless. It can be argued that the hand-drawn animation has its flaws, but the episodes transfers are stunning.
This Blu-ray set contains English and Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0. The English track is solid thanks to a good dub. The Japanese audio track is equally fine. Both tracks are worth playing, but I do wish the subtitles were yellow or a brighter white.
Extras:
* Trailers for “Casshern,” “Eden Of The East,” “Nabari no Ou,” “Full Metal Panic!,” “My Bride Is A Mermaid,” “Dragon Ball Z Kai,” and “Corpse Princess.”
* Here’s a real shocker- all 12 episodes contain by Japanese voice actors and actresses, the creator, a writer, . It’s very refreshing to hear their views work first hand instead of mere English dub laid back, lots of cheering the author and creator most insight actors/actresses ramble on
* Textless opening and closing songs.
* 5 TV spots.
* 2 sneak peeks at the show.
* 4 commercials.
Dragon Ball Z Kai Season 1 Part 2 Blu-ray:
The second part of season 1 contains episodes 14-26. In this batch of stories, the battle between Goku and Vegeta continues, Vegata turns into a Great Ape, Bulma, Gohan and Krillin (and later Goku) travel to Namek to find Dragon Balls, secrets of Planet Vegeta’s destruction are revealed, and Vegeta, Frieza (and his men Zarbon and Dodoria) are also on Namek searching for the Dragon Balls men Zarbon and Dodoria. There are several key subplots involving Dende, training, Namekians, and fight recovery.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Dragon Ball Z Kai” is just as fun (if not better) than the original episodes of “Dragon Ball Z.” There’s no question that the re-edited versions of the episodes have better pacing because they cut out all the filler (as the sticker on the disc so boldly claims). The truth is the filler of DBZ is what hurt that series to begin with. It is both unnecessary and exhausting to see fights being drawn out for a countless amount of episodes. With ‘Kai,’ the fights (in this case namely the battles with Vegeta) are most fast paced, the characterization is still present, and the saga storylines move from briskly. What more could you want?
Summary: In my opinion, the ‘Kai’ series is a great way to present the “Dragon Ball” franchise to a new audience while also pleasing longtime fans with Hi-def picture quality and Hi-def audio tracks (and a nifty new opening to boot). It’s a win-win for everyone.
Video/Audio:
The 4:3 1080p picture quality looks gorgeous. The show will probably never look better than this. It’s amazing how much brighter the colors are than the previous editions.
This Blu-ray set contains English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0 audio tracks. The English dub sounds better than ever, the fights have more life to them, and the biggest improvement of all- the Japanese track is as clear as can be. As many DBZ fans know, previous DBZ sets have had old, low quality, scratchy original audio tracks, but here fans get a top notch original language track.
Extras:
* Trailers for “The Slayers Revolution,” “Samurai 7,” “Initial D,” “Nabari no Ou,” “Dragon Ball GT,” “Fullmetal Alchemist,” “Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu,” and “Sengoku BASARA: Samurai Kings.”
* Textless opening and closing song (DVD versions)
* Textless opening song (Broadcast version) and closing song.
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