Blood+: Volume 1

One very notable thing about this series is the beautiful soundtrack. Produced by Academy Award winning composer Hans Zimmer ("The Lion King", "Rain Man", "Batman Begins") with music by Mark Mancina ("Speed", "Twister", "Training Day"), the background music provides a rich layer of atmosphere to the action. There are gentle and moody pieces for the piano and cello, and sweeping action themes that sound very intense and theatrical, with pounding drum rhythms and tense strings. Sony released two soundtracks for this series in Japan, and they are worth tracking down.

I really enjoyed "Blood+" volume 1. Each episode has just the right balance of horror, action, and mystery to draw me in and keep me looking forward to more.

Video:
"Blood+" is presented in 1.33:1 full screen and looks wonderful. The picture is clear, crisp, and the colors are vivid. This is the first anime DVD release from Sony that I have watched, and I must say that they produce a great disk.


Audio:
Sony gives us two audio tracks to choose from here. A English Dolby Digital 2.0 dub, and a Dolby Digital 2.0 Japanese track. Both sound wonderful. This series has a lot of action and absolutely amazing music, and both tracks handle it well. We also get subtitles in several languages. Usually anime only comes with English subtitles, but here we have English, French, and Korean . However, I do have one complaint, and it's really my only big problem with the entire disk— the English subs aren't true translated subtitles. Instead we get "dubtitles," or a transcript of the dialog that is used for the English dub instead of a translation of what is being said in Japanese. In this case, there is a difference. It is not a huge one— for the most part, the dub is faithful to the original dialog. However, there were just enough cases where I could tell that the subtitles did not match what was being said to really bother me. For example, a character would say, "Wait for me!" while the subtitles would say, "I'm coming for you!" Or characters would obviously say a name, and the subtitle would read something like "yeah…".

Extras:
This volume works as a sampler disk to encourage people to purchase the "Blood+ Part One" box set which was released at the same time and contains the first 25 episodes of the series. All of the extras are included over in the box set, so there are absolutely no extras on this disk. Not even trailers.

Film Value:
"Blood+" is a fun series. It has plenty of violence and action, a compelling mystery, political intrigue, and a hint of humor. The character designs are attractive, and the music is really beautiful. It deals with the subject of vampires in a way not typical in anime. Aside from the issue of the dubtitles, which really isn't as bad as it could be, thanks to a decent dub translation, this disc is an excellent introduction to the series.

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