Trinity Blood Vol. 1

The war between the humans and the vampires is escalating. The only hope lies with The Vatican, a now extremely powerfully organisation. The Vatican dispatch the priest Peter Abel Nightroad to travel the world to end the vampire threat. But who, and what, is the travelling priest?

The Trinity Blood anime is one of those rare cases where the anime is, in some respects, better than the manga (the review of which can be found here). The manga is a victim of its own level of detail - while each panel is lovingly crafted, it became near impossible to actually tell what was happening. With the anime, colourful animation helps bring everything to life while retaining most of the manga's detail, which is a major plus.

In terms of structure, the anime is a fairly faithful adaptation.  Nightroad himself is still an incredibly skilled warrior, acting like a complete dork between his bouts of bloodthirsty slaying. The parallels with Trigun's Vash, right down to the pointy hair, clutz attitude and cool fighting alter-ego, are plentiful.

While Trinity Blood ticks all the boxes for a gothic vampire series and tries to inject some humour into the proceeds, the nagging feel this first volume leaves behind is that there is nothing new or exciting about this series. You have the likeable fool with a much darker side, end of the world scenario and more vampires that you can shake a stick at with one big boss vampire ruling them all. There is just nothing here that makes this anime standout from the legions of others currently assaulting our DVD players.

Fans of Trigun and gothic settings may well find Trinity Blood some what interesting. But until the series starts to bring home its own ideas or gives us some major plot twists, it’s hard to recommend beyond the core fans. Hopefully with future volumes, Trinity Blood will improve itself and become a must watch, the potential is there, but at the moment it’s a passing interest.