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Take everything you know about vampires and throw it out the window.  Although they do drink blood, a bite from a vampire will not infect you.  On the contrary, you have to drink the blood of a vampire to become immortal.  At least those are the rules for the vampires in the Black Blood Brothers saga.

Chapter I: Bad Tidings, the first four episodes of the series, introduces the major players in this tale.  Episode one introduces the main character, Jiro Mochizuki, an old blood vampire with a fashion sense reminiscent of the King of Pop.  We find Jiro, along with the mysterious Lord Dragon and Cain, in the midst of the Kowloon Shock, in which a strange new breed of vampire were attempting to take over the Special Zone.  Unlike regular vampires who drink human blood, but do not infect their victims, the Kowloon Children infect, and can kill, those bitten.  A very angry Jiro wades into the riot equipped with the Silver Blade, from which he gets his name.  During the shock, Jiro encounters Cassa, with whom he seems to have a troubled history.

Fast forward ten years, and we find Jiro traveling with his little brother Kotaro, also a vampire.  While Jiro has the usual vampire frailties of intolerance to sunlight and water, Kotaro has none of these.  In fact, Kotaro is Jiro’s exact opposite.  While Jiro is tall and dark, Kotaro is short and fair.  Further, Kotaro does not seem to have any of the vampire powers that Jiro possesses, although he can take a punch.

The brothers are traveling back to the Special Zone, but of course, their trip will not be uneventful.  In route to the Special Zone the brothers find themselves in the middle of a conflict between black bloods, vampires, and red blood, human, soldiers from the Order Coffin Company, the organization in charge of maintaining relationships between humans and vampires.  Later, Jiro and Kotaro meet Mimiko Katsuragi, a compromiser for the Company, who will turn out to be their ticket into the Special Zone.

These first four episodes provides only sparring background in the form of Jiro’s flashbacks, which usually involve a fair-haired woman who could be Kotaro’s twin.  In some way, however, the brothers’ history is connected to the Special Zone, but just as it was quite an ordeal for Jiro and Kotaro to make it into the Special Zone, their stay will not be the end of the story.

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