My thoughts of Trinity Blood and it's short lived relationship with Bleach

 

Trinity Blood was 24 episode show about vampire hunters from the Vatican. The show aired in 2005 in Japan and premiered here in America on Adult Swim in 2006. On the same day, something else premiered.

No it has nothing to do about washing clothes.

Bleach is show about magical grim reaper swordsmen that slays soul eating demons.

Back in the day, everyone was comparing the two shows and saying what was better. It's funny since the two shows are completely night and day. One is a battle shonen about battling supernatural spirts and the other is a dark gothic post-apocalyptic fantasy from graphic novels. 

I mean people did compare Bleach to Naruto back in the day and still to this day, which makes far more sense to compare than Trinity Blood since the other two are the same genre. They were part of the Big 3, popular, and printed on the same magazine company. Well that and One Piece but at the time, One Piece wasn't as popular in America at the time for one good reason.

The 4kids dub ruined One Piece from getting popular

It's more popular nowdays with a 2nd, more popular faithful dub, plus we're in the age of legal streaming, meaning everyone can easily watch the newest episode straight from Japan.

Yeah, back in the day lot people did compare the vampire show to the one that has nothing to do with laundry. I think the funniest argument I ever heard is that Trinity Blood is better than Bleach is because the vampire show is full of hot attractive males while Bleach has no hot attractive males. I'm not joking.

However this was said when the Substitute Soul Reaper arc was airing(The 1st 20 episodes).

Heck, even back then, despite the show known for hot attractive ladies that's full of fanservice, we only had Orihime and you think she was the odd one out for being the only one with big boobs at the time. So it was fairly early to judge the show based on how much eye candy there is.

However fangirls opinions did change when Adult Swim did get around the Soul Society arc and they started crushing on the captains and lieutenants. Tho it was funny watching them as they started getting attached to the sweet innocent man known as Aizen who sadly got brutally murdered. Then 30 episodes later, he's miraculously alive.

And he ended up as one of the main villains of the show. Fangirls' feelings were all conflicted that their sweet innocent man was evil.

So did I enjoy Trinity Blood?...Ehh, not really. I tried to enjoy it but it barely grabbed me. The only I was starting to get hooked was the last few episodes that had the child pope get kidnap and then the main character named Abel fights his evil twin bro(take a guess of his name) showed up and killed the main character, then Abel comes back from the dead and fights his bro as the epic battle is starting and then....*sighs* We had a random timeskip where the MC and this good vampire kid go off and swear to kill the evil bro.  Yeah, it ended the most anti-climatic way possible. Oh and the female lead/possible love interest named Esther is crowned queen.

Not only I didn't enjoy the series but it ended on a sour note. You can tell I'm enjoying the show less and less.

The final rolling credits also said in memorial of the author of the series. The guy who wrote novels that the anime is based on passed away during the development of the anime adaptation. At the time, I heard something about one of his friends will pick up from where it left off or something. Even tho I was never got into the series, I thought it was a good thing to the Trinity Blood fandom that it was still running and I actually believed this for years.

While Bleach was getting out of it's prologue arc and entering it's epic Soul Society arc. Trinity Blood was over, so what replace it?

An another slow-paced anime about vampire hunters with the word blood in it's title.

Blood+ was sort of better than Trinity Blood. The problem is the 1st 15 or so episodes were down right boring. The main character and her adopted brothers did nothing but wander in circles as the show moved at snail-paced. Later on, the cast expanded, the actual villains were introduced, characters got developed, we finally got a grasp of backstory instead of annoying vague flashbacks to Vietnam(I'm not talking about the war) The show was actually getting interesting, then there was a big epic show about to happen on a boat and...It timeskip a whole year and they never go back to what happen on the boat. Well it did ended and wrapped up everything nicely but I still wouldn't recommend the show, it took a while to start becoming interesting.


I could never understand why Adult Swim would have these shows were paired with each other. That be like going to your local theater and comparing your mainstream movie action flick with a documentary, or a romantic comedy, or a slasher film.

Unfortunately, even Bleach ended up hunting vampires in a long drawn out 50 episode filler. You could skip it since it's non-canon filler and not worth watching in the slightest. The only redeeming part is the dub snuck in a jab towards 4kids' "jelly donuts". The problem is certain filler characters hang around a little bit in the canon material.

I have seen some people out there, just randomly hating on Bleach and I don't mean constructive criticism, I mean down right hating hating. Making excuses it's the worse anime of all time and it's the worse of the Big Three because of it's fillers.

Ok, first off, there are far worse anime out there. Back then, Bleach was arguably the best anime at the time in comparison till Adult Swim finally started airing Code Geass, Death Note, FMA:B.

Also don't give me that excuse Bleach is the worse of the Big Three due to fillers. The other two has fillers as well. Bleach gave us the Zanpakuto Rebellion Arc, one of the rare moments I actually enjoyed filler while everyone rolls their eyes on Naruto's infamous Ninja Ostrich, also their manga was over for years and they kept adding filler for no reason.

I think remember hearing about Trinity Blood being a compressed adaptation, that it needed to be 3 or 4 times longer than the 24 episode series we got. Maybe that was the big problem with the anime adaptation? I admit, there were too many mysteries. When I saw the anticlimactic ending, I looked up the Wikipedia page and learn a whole ton of info that was never said within the show itself.


There were a few cool side characters that I like. One was this cool robot that works with the good guys while this other is a confirmed prisoner and he's helping out while getting his prison sentence reduce.(Think Suicide Squad but without the headbombs) It seems there was alot untold story about these cool side characters.

I do know the 1st episode introduce this girl and she was never seen again. Did she had a follow up in the novels?

Who knows, if the show got properly adapted, I might enjoyed it. For all I know, it be Bleach did a quick retelling of episode 1 and did the entire Soul Society arc in a episode or two.


Now the past month, Bleach had the biggest of comebacks in recent history when it's final arc is now getting animated and becoming the most hyped anime of the year. I wondered if the other 2 of the Big Three were jealous of Bleach's big comeback as it was airing it's filler-less new season while they are playing their shows at either snail-pace, or loaded with fillers.

Then I wonder if Bleach's other, lesser known rival was filled with jealously and shaking their fist to new anime. However it's TB has long been forgotten since then and only have a small cult following since the show ended. Bleach has also ended for some time and but it still has a large fanbase.

Heck, most don't remember TB but I'm sure it's fans were reading it's new light novels. I don't know if they are still comparing this fanbase to Bleach.

Well this was the surprising part as I was looking it up after so many years, Trinity Blood died with it's author. The scene where Esther is crowned queen was one of the last scenes from the novels. The author's friend, he didn't write anymore novels to continue the story. He just published some notes in a book of what would of happen if the author never died and how the story would continued from where it left off.

So there be no way a season 2 of the anime would come out because there isn't anymore material.

Now there is one thing that continued, the manga adaptation. It was planned long before the author's death and it started shortly after he died. In 2018, it got to the part Esther is crowned and just simply ended there. So yeah, all you guys got is some fan translated book that only had notes of where the story would of go.

I actually feel sorry for the fanbase. It's not just a simple 24 episode anime that didn't get popular over the years, it's a sad depressing story that barely got off the ground. It had a compressed adaptation that ended on a cliffhanger and you can't even read up the source material what happen after. You could read the manga but even that would that would end abruptly at a certain point. You could read the novels before the author's passing but I found that only few of the light novels were officially licensed and brought here to America. There may be some fan translations for the remaining novels out there but I don't know.

It's sad, to find out the series died with it's author.