Blade: The Animated Series was a complete dud in my book. A boring story left me half-asleep. What’s worse is that I had high hopes for this one because Blade is one of my favorite Marvel characters, but by the end of the season, all I wanted was to pull the DVD out and slam it against the wall.
The first episode starts with Blade going on vacation and ends with him hunting down the person responsible for killing his mother in Asia. The second episode is where the plot unfolds, when it’s revealed that there’s a vampire cover-up regarding the murder of Blade’s mother.
As the season rolls on, Blade travels to south Asia looking for vampires that may or may not have answers, and Blade promptly kills them after he gets the information he needs. Blade uses half-witted jokes throughout the episodes that were simply not that funny. At one point, the screen freezes when he comes swooping in from the ceiling to take care of the bad guys fighting civilians and Blade says, “Know what happens next?” It just made me think, “Really? Did Blade just say that?” The art of the anime wasn’t that great either, as there are tattoos on Blade’s head that look poorly designed.
Some of the violent, blood-soaked, vampire-killing scenes made it slightly appealing. The first episode, for example, has these kids that think they are vampire hunters, and then Blade shows up out of nowhere and clears out the room in one 360 degree slice of his sword, sending heads flying.
The story of the show is poorly written just from the way it was wrote leading into the action it was poorly done since it focused more leading into the action then focusing it around the action. The animation looked like art I was doing in middle school. The characters in the show weren’t anything memorable. They looked tacky with their slender bodies and dark clothes, so the colors weren’t eye popping, unless Blade appeared. Also, Blade is tall and, not buff like he is in the comics and movies. Here, he looks like a tooth pick.
Overall, I’d rate Blade a 2/5. Not only do I not recommend the show, but also this could be an anime Marvel could drop from there line up on the G4, and I’m sure people wouldn’t miss it. It lacked everything that made the Wolverine series better.
