Staz and his friends took viewers in an adventure typically shounen, voluntarily using clichés and codes to parody the genre. A great success at the time, eight years later, could it be possible for a Blood Lad Season 2 to be released?
What happened so far in Blood Lad
Staz is a famous vampire in the Demon World, controlling the territory Demon World Eas and being bloodthirsty and ruthless. However, the truth could not be farther from reality: our protagonist is an otaku, indulging in everything anime, video games, or manga and fantasizing about Japan. Plus, he does not drink human blood. One day, Fuyumi Yanagi, a Japanese high school girl, accidentally wanders into the Demon World through a portal that appeared in her bedroom, much to the excitement of Staz. It does not last long as she is quickly eaten and killed by a carnivorous plant and turned into a ghost. Staz vows to return her to her human form and both depart in search of a spell strong enough to fix the situation before Fuyumi completely fades away.
They learn from Hydra Bell, a treasure hunter, that they need the Book of Resurrection to achieve their goal. She also tells them that someone stole her ability to open and close portals such as the one in Fuyumi’s room. Staz decides to go meet his friend and rival Wolf, the boss of Demon World West, to try and recruit him in his party. Wolf challenges the vampire and before a winner is decided, Bell interrupts them to announce that she has in fact the Book of Resurrection. The group cannot read it and has to find Staz’s brother, Braz, to decrypt the inscriptions.
The latter asks Staz to defeat Akim, a creature created by scientist Franken Stein. While Staz and Wolf are gone, Braz and Doctor Stein look for a substitute for Fuyumi to help her from fading away too soon. Fuyumi is taken to Neyn, Bell’s mother, who reveals that she merged with her human doppelganger making the two girls half-sisters. The group goes through some more adventure and shenanigans ending in a non conclusive note.
What is going on with Brain’s Base?
Blood Lad premiered on July 7 and ended on September 8, 2013. It is directed by Shigeyuki Miya, written by Takeshi Konuta with Yuki Hayashi (of My Hero Academia fame) composing the score and Kenji Fujisaki for the character design. The series ran for 10 episodes.
Blood Lad mixes action, comedy and fanservice, using the cliché’d tropes often going hand in hand with those genres. Therefore, it can be seen as a parody, but the show often experiences difficulties sticking to its original goal to mock the genres it uses. Trying to use so many styles at the same time, the anime scatters itself at times and becomes a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Nothing too drastic though, as the comedy still works pretty well. Blood Lad uses its protagonist’s indefectible love for Japanese pop culture to insert jokes and references that viewers will recognize.
The animation is solid and the action scenes are fluid enough to allow us to follow the fights. On that subject, the anime has a really linear progression, like an RPG: Staz has to go from one place to the other, fetching an item that will update the next quest and so on. While it is not bad in itself, it becomes redundant after a certain point: Staz needs something, fights someone, loses, fights again but with a plan this time, wins. And then on to the next. The fanservice is what you would expect from a classical shounen. Big jiggling breasts finding their way on the screen for blurry reasons. A shame as the anime could have turned it into comedy too for the sake of the parody. Unfortunately, it only does so once and succumbs to the genre itself and delivers ecchi for its sake (it is on the light side though).
The character design is a blend of Soul Eater and Danganronpa, which creates a visual and particular aesthetic quite pleasing and new. The characterization is weak, yet that could be due to the season only serving 10 episodes. Most characters come and go, enjoying their 15 minutes of fame and the main cast is something we all have seen somewhere while still being entertaining. The core driving the story does not hold that well though: Staz is willing to help Fuyumi because she is Japanese…and a high school girl to boot. The protagonist’s fantasy motivates their relationship, which the viewer is supposed to see as romantic. Fuyumi is his girlfriend because of a what, not because of a who. He barely knows her and they do not interact on an emotional level. Her whole character is bland, hardly audible and always in the background somewhere. Everything goes so fast in season 1 that it is difficult for the characters to show some growth.
Brain’s Base will start working on To Your Eternity Season 2 (due for October 2022) and the movie Re: Cycle of Penguindrum (2022).
What do we know about Blood Lad Season 2 so far?
Unfortunately, nothing new has been released regarding this. The manga is finished, but Brain’s Base has not expressed wanting to work on a new season.
What are fans saying about Blood Lad Season 2?
It is safe to say that fans gave up on Season 2. For starters, Blood Lad is pretty niche in terms of community. The anime does not even have a dedicated subreddit, but a Discord Server was created. Nonetheless, the hashtag #bloodlad is active on Twitter with newcomers and aficionados recommending it. Most of those are about the manga since it has been licensed in English by YenPress. A petition was created five years ago, but failed to gather the 1000 signatures.
Will there be Blood Lad Season 2?
Blood Lad started as a manga illustrated by Yuuki Kodama and published from September 4, 2009 to September 3, 2016 (17 volumes). By the 13th volume (March 2015), the manga had sold 1.8 million copies. Bloody Brat’s spinofft was released from October 8, 2011 to July 4, 2013 (2 volumes). Blood Lad has also received the light novel treatment with one volume published on July 1, 2013, written by Yasaka Kei and illustrated by Kanata Yoshino.
It has been a while now and Blood Lad is not as popular as before, but it manages to still create some traffic. Google Trends shows that while it’s true that it often reaches the low 0, people still find a way to keep the graph above the flat line. Surely due to new readers and viewers. Viz Media released the combo pack (DVD + Blu-ray) in 2014. A whole bunch of goodies are available online (caps, pens, posters, mugs, etc.) and the official T-shirts are sold directly on the official website of the anime.
When will Blood Lad Season 2 be released?
Nothing has been greenlit so no date is available. It is more likely that the anime served as a promotional tool to boost the manga sales considering its low number of episodes.
What can we expect in Season 2 of Blood Lad?
The chances for it to happen are pretty low, yet if Season 2 were to happen, the studio would have ample material to work with. The manga is now fully finished and the adventures of Staz and his companions could finally make sense considering how the anime ended on a rushed note.
