Trinity Blood

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Trinity Blood. Even though there are a lot of very visible flaws, I still liked the series. The story takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world were the Vatican rages a war against the vampires. It is a combination of mecha mixed with a Gothic fantasy. Such variety should've produced a fairly interesting plot, but unfortunately, Trinity Blood borrows too much from other anime with the same overused characters as everywhere else.

Abel is almost identical to Vash from Trigun - a gentle blubber mouth, who hides a dark side below a friendly exterior. He is always broke, tends to act silly, but then he turns into a terrifying monster with god-like powers. And just like Vash, he has the polar opposite brother-like nemesis, who is conveniently named Cain.

Besides coping from other anime series, Trinity Blood lacks a well developed story line. Is it about vampires and humans trying to co-exist, or Abel's personal struggles? The series doesn't seem to be episodic on purpose, but there is very little focus and it jumps between the characters without any visible purpose. The ending takes the series a full circle. It seems like Trinity Blood didn't really accomplish anything, because it ends right where it begins. There is absolutely no plot progression of any kind. It's full 24 episodes of none stop action, nuns with big racks and space ships, very flashy animation and very little story line. It's not that the writers didn't know how to write a good story, I really liked the development between Esther and Ion and many of the real historical references gave it an edge, they just seemed to have problems with focus and closure.

After listing to so many negative aspects of the show, one would ask: why do I still like it? Simple, I found the premise and characters very interesting despite the lack of development and copycat ideas. With better writing, Trinity Blood could have been turned into a fully blown saga of apocalyptic proportions. And so many plot twists should've been made into a lot more than just a mere 24 episodes with a huge window for a sequel. The only possible redemption for the series is a long sequel with a more centralized story line. It looks more like a clumsily put-together prologue to something bigger, than anything else.