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An anime about vampires at war – many series have started off with less promise than that. Immediately, one thinks of Hellsing, Blood: The Last Vampire or Vampire Hunter D - esteemed company, to be sure.

Does Black Blood Brothers live up to its comrades? The story of different strains of vampires with different abilities, BBB tells of a struggle between the Kowloon Children and the rest of the vampiric world, and of Jiro, The Silver Blade, who defeated them in a war called the Hong Kong Crusade. Jiro has a little brother, Kotaro, who joins him as he heads to The Special Zone in Japan, a place where vampires live peaceably.

All is not well, though; Kowloon survivors of the Hong Kong Crusade have infiltrated The Special Zone, and have hatched a nefarious plot (is there any other kind?) to bring The Special Zone under Kowloon control.

There is more to the story than that. Years ago, during the Kowloon Shock, Jiro knew a young woman named Alice, a vampire called The Sage. Alice was killed, and Jiro changed. Little bits of this story are revealed at a time, and as the story of The Special Zone comes to a close, we learn what really happened to Alice, and how it relates to Jiro.

There are several good things about this DVD. As the last part of the series, it has the best fights and biggest plot points. We get to see The Dragon King at work and Cain turn into a wolf. The animation is beautiful, and Jiro is lovely to look at. That said, it also has lesser points. Every meeting of characters serves as an opportunity to ramble off everyone’s lengthy, lengthy titles. Kotaro is obnoxious; he yells a lot, and usually nothing more than a name (or sequence of names back and forth).

Jiro’s costume looked something like Allucard’s with a red sorting hat thrown on top and a pair of steampunk goggles for good measure. Combined with his dialogue, the character had no sense of cohesiveness, and this empathizing with him more difficult.

So does it measure up? No. The end of the story is a bit of a letdown, and leaves several plot threads dangling. I both wished for more and for it to be over. There are no good extras, and all in all, it was just a disappointing delivery for a show that had the potential to do so much more.

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