Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond

Episode 4

Since pretty much the beginning of the show, Chain is the character most people have been clamoring to see more of. Maybe this is just the circles I travel in, but in my anecdotal experience at least, folks have a weakness for Chain's specific brand of badass suit-clad sky-hopping. I certainly do. If I could be any anime character (without fundamentally changing my personality), it'd probably be Chain, with her cool look, chill attitude, and ability to soar through the NYC skyline. No more subway rides for me, thanks. Plus, you get to help save the world every once in a while.

While we got some hints as to Chain's true self in last week's more Stephen-centric episode, this is the first time she's gotten her own dedicated adventure. Appropriately, it opens with us learning exactly what her special unit—the Invisible Werewolves—actually are. Neither shape shifting canines nor “merely” invisible, they seem to be an all-lady squad of super spies with the ability to phase in and out of existence. This makes them specially suited to serving as scouts, infiltrators, and saboteurs, as they can bypass walls to enter any facility with ease. Libra also seems to be a side gig for Chain, with her coworkers dispersing to their own disparate hobbies or other gigs at the end of the day. However, their job also has its unique dangers. Werewolves can go too far with their existence dispersal, diluting themselves to the point where they're erased from reality completely and can't come back. To offset this, they all choose a “token”: some sort of emotionally significant thing that can drag them back into reality when activated. For one werewolf, this is the joy of getting drunk. For another, it's her child. But this raises the question: what could a person as surly and standoffish as Chain value enough to use as her anchor to existence?

Well, it turns out that Chain has a crush. She keeps this close to her chest most of the time, but we see her blush after Stephen's phone call in this episode. We still don't know how he could serve as her token, but it's a major hint nonetheless. Otherwise, Chain shows her kind side again by helping Nejj (aka mushroom kid hamburger guy) with his memory issues. While it's nice to see the little guy again, this incident foreshadows an important aspect of our upcoming Chain adventure: forgetting.

This leads us into the episode's action plot. So a military facility somewhere is trying to shoot missiles that will turn people into Blood Breed super soldiers or something. It's not really important. The Werewolves are sent to deal with them, but this all turns out to have been a revenge plot by one of their former members, a woman named Velved Rheinkeimer. While she was part of the agency, Velved hatched some sort of scheme to get them all rich, but the other ladies refused to cooperate and she was forced to go on the lam after a battle that blunted most of her powers. Now she's made a deal with one of the Thirteen Kings: Zeodra the King of Hypersensitivity. The “hypersensitive” part of his name is literal—apparently he can sense everything that happens in Hellsalem's Lot at once, which drives him insane fairly often. I'd like to see more of this villain, who Klaus characterizes as an especially difficult King to deal with. (The name may be a reference to one of the several Saint Theodoras, in accordance with this show's tendency to borrow from Christian iconography.) The deal gave Velved more powerful super-senses than before, so she can interact with the Werewolves even at advanced levels of existence-dilution. When she starts wrecking all of them, it's up to Chain—the only one to escape her initial lunge—to save the day. Eventually, Chain manages to bypass Velved's awareness and land the killing blow, but she had to dilute herself down to such an extent that she can't come back on her own. So it's up to Chain's boss to activate her token in a last-ditch attempt to drag her back to reality.

And that token turns out to be the mortifying possibility of Stephen showing up unexpectedly at her horrendously messy apartment. I knew she was my favorite character for a reason. So yeah, this whole thing amounted to a shaggy dog story about how embarrassing it would be for your crush to see your messy room. It's very #relatable in that sense. Why hello Stephen, I am an adult woman who definitely does not live in piles of literal garbage. How are you? This contrasts well with the previous episode, where we got a glimpse of Stephen's Swanky Adult Pad for Adults. It's no wonder our girl is so intimidated. At least she's still better off than Zapp, who appears to crash with one of some half-dozen sex workers he rents every night. Get your own home, Zapp! Then you might not have to pay for your sex. At least Chain seems to be working on that side of her love life in her own way. You can do it, Chain! I believe you can get your man! (He might secretly be a remorseless mobster though, just FYI.) But seriously, just take out the trash first.

So this was a fun and cute episode. The main issue is that Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond seems to have hit its fourth episode slump. If you don't know what that is, there's a pattern where some anime series' production quality will suddenly drop around episode four. This is attributable to the fact that anime producers are aware of the three-episode rule (wherein many otaku will give a show three episodes before deciding to drop it or not), so they put more focus into the pacing and animation of that first hour of content, (along with whatever big moments they're planning later in the cour). This tends to spread resources in two directions away from the show's fourth episode or so. As far as fourth episode slumps go, this production was smart about dealing with its limitations. The action relied on stills more than I'd prefer, but the whole thing was storyboarded in such a way that it remained thrilling. I also have to give special props to the music this season, which has been doing a lot to compensate for the original director's absence in terms of setting the atmosphere. That sexy jazz goes a long way in establishing the show's necessary tone of chill badassery, especially in that climactic action scene. A lot of the songs remind me of background tunes from the Persona series (Persona 4 especially), which is nothing but a compliment in my book.

Overall, while I have to knock it a little for the limited animation, this was another solid episode of Blood Blockade & Beyond. We're still not quite at the first season's heights, but I've acclimated to slightly lower expectations, and this is far from the intolerable downgrade that some anime sequels with major staff changes can be. As far as I'm concerned, this continuation has surpassed most of the potential hurdles to being a worthwhile successor to that standout first series. It's even developed elements of its own style, like that flower montage used to symbolize Chain's disappearance, which was not in the original manga. So far, Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond is already one of the best shows of the year just on the strength of Nightow's material. Hellsalem's Lot is a place I want to linger around, so I hope this franchise runs for a good long while. Or at least until we get Klaus's backstory. Seriously, I want to know what his deal is.

Grade: A-

Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.