Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond

Episodes 11-12

It's finally time for Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond's final storyline, the long-awaited Leo-centric Spectral Eyes, Phantom Vision. I had to take last week off for personal reasons, so both episodes of this two-parter will be covered in this writeup. Without further ado, let's get to the action of this second season's conclusion, in which the show finally turns its gaze towards its protagonist, Leo.

So Leo's relationship with his sister Michella has been looming over this entire series since the beginning. While it's central to his backstory, that part of the show wasn't explored much in the first season, where sibling dynamics took center stage via the Macbeth family's much more immediate troubles. Appropriately enough, this episode opens with a return to those siblings as Leo catches up with Black over Skype. They reminisce about White for a while, and Black insists that he's doing well. Following this happy cameo, Leo receives a surprising piece of news from his sister: she's getting married. The rest of the family has already met the lucky guy, so she's headed over to introduce him to Leo before proceeding with nuptials. Leo is understandingly stunned and expresses concern over whether this is the right decision for his little sis. Michella reassures him, and the three make plans to meet.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Leo's initial instincts were correct – Michella's beau has been hijacked by a villainous Beyondian in a ploy to get at Leo's God Eyes by using his sister as leverage. As it happens, this Doctor Gamimozu is a little more informed about the eyes' history than the average organ hunter. In fact, he's a specialized hunter who's kind enough to reveal their history and purpose to our hapless hero. (Gamimozu's still threatening Leo's sister so that he'll pony up the peepers, but at least you can't accuse the guy of keeping our boy out of the loop.)

So the God Eyes are implements that one “Ophthalmologist of the Gods” Riga El implants in appropriate mortal vessels during crucial moments in human history. Their purpose is to record events for posterity, and since the Cataclysm is by far the most transformative event to happen to humanity ever, Leo appears to have gotten an especially advanced model of the Eyes. Of course, Dr. Gammy, wants them for himself – but he's willing to leave them in Leo's head for a while in order to scope out their abilities. As Gammy possesses a God Eye of his own, Leo is the only one who can see him, so he's forced to deal with this situation without the help of his Libra friends. This leaves our boy caught in a mirror match against an opponent who possesses the distinct advantage of a hostage and advanced planning. Can he get out of this? It doesn't help that dick suck Zapp prods at his emotional issues over not working as an active combatant in Libra.

After their terse negotiation, Gammy lets Leo out into the city with one of his observation drones. As the situation grows more dire, Leo comes to an important realization – the drone doesn't possess God Eye powers and can thus be manipulated. So he uses his wits to manufacture a chaotic situation, following an emergency text message he snuck to Klaus during a scuffle with a Blood Breed. Still, it'll take a while for Libra to get there, so Leo's will have to try and fight off the doctor by himself in the meantime. Miraculously, our hero succeeds in holding him off, using a combination of his wits, that Morningstar he keeps in his pocket, and Michella ramming into the fiend with her wheelchair. Leo's just about to get trephinated when Libra finally arrives on the scene. Klaus murders the shit out of the organ thief, and the Watch family is saved.

The issue with this story is that it didn't really address Leo's previously established character flaw. Earlier in the show, he'd been framed as having unnecessarily self-sacrificial tendencies and needing to trust in his little sister more, but this problem seems to have disappeared – the siblings are shown relying one each other just fine, and Leo handles the situation mostly on its own. Rather than telling a story in which Leo grows in some way, this concluding storyline is mostly just a demonstration of his established strengths. That's fine, but it does feels like we'd been set up for a little more. Otherwise, I continue to appreciate Blood Blockade Battlefront's characterization of strength as emotional tenacity rather than physical prowess. This profoundly humanist stance is in line with everything else I've seen out of Nightow, and it's especially nice to see these qualities celebrated in male figures, who tend to suffer disproportionately from the conception that strength must be physical and aggressive.

Otherwise, Leo and Michella have a great relationship. We hadn't gotten much sense of Michella's personality prior to this two-parter, and it turns out that she's super charming. She's assertive, funny, and clearly capable of handling herself on her own without Leo. She also knew that something was up with her boyfriend ahead of time, and her visit to Leo was a cry for help smartly masked under a naturalistic exaggeration of her own personality. What I'm saying is that Michella is a smart cookie. I'm also glad to see that her fiancé truly loves her, beyond the whole “he was being taking advantage of by a demonic surgeon to get at her brother's omniscient peepers” thing.

In a nice tribute to the first season, these episodes also reintroduce Black and White, with Black appearing in the flesh and White in the form of some luminescent butterflies. They're mostly a cameo, but it's nice to know that Rie Matsumoto's anime-original creations haven't been forgotten by this new production. Black seems to have emotionally recovered from his tenure as a vessel for Satan, while White continues to watch over her beloved boys from her new existence as the boundary between worlds. D'awwwww.

In the end, Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond stands as a suitable successor to the show's stellar first season. Going in, I was worried that Yasuhiro Nightow's frenetic material might not work without prodigious director Rie Matsumoto's guiding hand. However, the first season's remaining staff turned out to be more than competent enough on their own, recreating the look and feel of the original show while adapting many of the manga's best remaining chapters. Out of the two seasons, I can honestly say that which one you'll like best will come down to a slim matter of preference – something that I did not expect to be able to say going into the show. While I personally still give the edge to the first season for its sheer ambition, I know that its breathless pace exhausted some viewers. Those folks may have a better time with this season, which operates at a more normal (if still quite brisk) pace.

This second season included, Blood Blockade Battlefront remains one of the best shows of the past few years, and perhaps the most consistently fun. Nightow's vision of an interdimensional NYC is a constant blast to visit, and I hope that more will be adapted someday. For now, however, I guess I'll just have to content myself with the manga, which Dark Horse has just recently started putting out again. Life's always a party in the city that never sleeps (even in death), and I wish that this celebration would never end.

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.