Blood+ / First Impressions

Summary:
With the Thorn spreading across Irene’s body, Kai makes a final plea for Saya’s help. Moses also asks her to do this, but Saya is still reluctant because of what happened to her father. With Irene’s condition deteriorating, Karman wants to take Saya’s blood by force, but Moses holds him back. Saya finally decides to go ahead and give her blood. Irene asks Kai if they can walk together in Paris once she heals, and he of course agrees. Using her sword, Saya cuts her hand and gives Irene the blood. The Thorn on Irene’s face starts to recede, but then starts spreading faster than ever. Irene’s entire body quickly crystallizes, and her head breaks off, falling into Saya’s lap; it cries a tear.
Karman’s anger gets the best of him, but Hagi stops his attack. Fighting once again breaks out between the Shifu and the Red Shield group, but Moses puts a stop to it by keeping Karman from attacking Saya. When the Shifu had escaped Khirbet, one of the doctors had explained that they were just weapons that didn’t need maintenance and were allowed to just die. That doctor was the one who told them about Saya’s special blood, but Moses knows now that it’s Diva’s. The Shifu finish picking up the pieces of Irene and start to leave, but Kai stops them by proposing that they fight Diva together. Moses turns down the offer, but says thank you. Saya watches the Shifu leave, and then stares at the crystallized chunk of blood she has in her hand.
On the Red Shield ship, Julia has become more doubtful about the research she’s doing, but Collins says that their research should continue until it ends. He then receives a phone call from Van Argeno. After hanging up, Van reports to Amshel that Collins is eager to meet him. Amshel wonders why Van has betrayed Solomon by coming to him, but Van doesn’t consider it a betrayal. He’s just interested in the D-base information from Collins along with the Khirbet research that Amshel did. Meanwhile, Kai is in his hotel room’s shower angsting about Irene’s death. There’s a knocking on the bathroom door, and Kai eventually answers it in his usual rude manner. Saya is there, wanting to tell him that food is ready.
By the time Kai gets dressed, Saya’s already leaving to go the library. However, she finds Riku and Hagi waiting for her downstairs. Riku grabs her arm and suggests that they go out and play. Saya initially resists, but agrees after Riku says “please.” Hagi starts leading them to his favorite place in Paris. Along the way, the three happen to pass by a trio of girls and Saya notices that one of them resembles Irene. Riku asks Saya not to hate Kai, and then asks her not to hate herself either. Saya is unable to control her tears any longer and starts trying to run away. Hagi stops her and embraces her, allowing her to cry to him.
Back in the hotel room, Mao confronts David with the pictures and wants him to explain everything. Kai tries to get her to go home, but she tells him that she wants to be his strength. Okamura tries to convince David that they’ll be useful in three ways. First, the enemy doesn’t know about them. Second, they have special connections. Third, they can decide when the right time to make a public announcement is. And finally, they can act separately from David’s group. Okamura realizes that he actually stated four reasons, but he got his point across. Mao follows Kai downstairs and throws her shoe at him to stop him from running away. She thinks he blames himself for what happened to Irene, and once again says that she wants to be his strength. Kai hands back her shoe and then runs off.
Saya is feeling better after having cried to Hagi. She blows her nose on a handkerchief that Riku offers her, which causes Hagi to smile. He leads the two down an alleyway and reveals that he often goes on walks when Saya is sleeping. Hagi liked the city at night, walking alone and not resting. Even though he couldn’t see or hear Saya, he could mysteriously feel her there. As the three turn a corner and enter an alley with a direct view of the Eiffel Tower, Hagi says that he obtained an answer. He realized that Saya needs something, but it’s something that only she can find. However, he asks her not to forget that her Chevaliers will always be by her side. Saya remembers that she’s still got Riku’s handkerchief, and says that she’ll return it after she washes it. She reaches to put it in her pocket, but realizes that there’s something already in there. Hagi holds back Riku and allows Saya to go on alone.
Amshel informs James that the Red Shield headquarters ship is currently at Marseille, but doesn’t want to make a move just yet. He instead wants to wait one more month. The news spreads to the other Chevaliers, and Solomon also learns that Van Argeno is being reassigned. Solomon is then attacked by a person he hasn’t seen in a long time: Karl. He’s able to easily avoid all of Karl’s attacks, which were more to show off Karl’s left hand. Solomon realizes that Amshel must have done something. Meanwhile, Kai arrives on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. He thinks he sees Irene standing nearby, but it’s actually Saya. Kai can’t bear to look at her and doesn’t see her take something out of her pocket. He finally turns around when he notices that there’s something floating by in the air in front of him. Saya is letting the wind carry away the powder from Irene’s crystallized blood.

As expected, Irene did not live through Saya’s blood – it just hastened her death. That death really creeped me out though, especially how she cried a tear after her crystallized head broke off and fell in Saya’s lap. I also thought Kai would be a little more emotional than he was, but I guess maybe his relationship with Irene wasn’t quite that deep yet.
Yay for HagixSaya! We really don’t see enough of those scenes. However, I keep getting the feeling that Hagi’s going to die or disappear or something. He’s been getting too much development for them not to do something more to his character than just always have him following Saya.
On the bad guy’s side, Karl’s back! And his left arm appears to be normal again, though it’s unclear what Amshel did to it. In addition, it looks like Collins is being drawn more and more towards the dark side. It seems pretty obvious to me that we’re not meant to like his character, though I have my doubts that he’ll directly betray Red Shield.
Next week, more information, through Joel’s diary, about what happened back during the Vietnam War.

On a side note, I’m really happy that both the OP3 and ED3 music videos are out, along with the soundtrack. I’ve had those on repeat all week.

45 Comments

  3. So Karl’s hand came back to normal, I hope Hagi’s hand will do so, of that happend, then maybe he´ll be able to stay longer with Saya, since it seems that Chevaliers are condemned to slowly turn themselves into mindless Chiroptheran. Maybe that’s what about to tell Rikku last episode.

    I feel pity for Irene, she just stayed too little time in the anime 🙁

    Ransom
    Reply

  4. SayaxHagi! at last!!

    something’s bound to happen to Hagi now. hehe, they don’t pair them off for nothing. i’ll bet it’ll add drama when Hagi has to go off to Diva’s camp

    sailorsim
    Reply

  10. A touching episode. The rift between Saya and Kai seems to be getting wider and I wish Irene was still around. But I loved how Haji and Riku were there for her.
    And Haji still laughs/smiles? Darn camera angles.

    Christy
    Reply

  11. I think Kai and Saya are going to come around. He protected Saya with his body and if you watch the previews, it seems that they finally will have a heart to heart talk. It is the typical guy comes to pick the girl with an unbrella and they make up, but in this case they are siblings.

    golthin
    Reply

  15. Argiano explains to Anshel that the Delta-67 development is about to enter phase 3 (Field Trial). But there is such a high rate of zoantropy complication (turning the subject into mindless monsters instead of chevaliers) that they have to encase the subjects in concrete and dump into the Atlantic. Argiano is hoping to get access to Collins D-nucleotide results and Anshel and Boris’ research data in Khirbet to improve his research. I suspect that they are trying to develop a drug to turn human to chevaliers without the need for Diva/Saya. They might even plan to kidnap Riku soon. It looks like Collins is leaking a lot of information intentionally or unintentionally.

    Hagi & Saya moment reminds me of Robert Doisneau photos.

    Alex
    Reply

  17. If Van Argeno proves himself to Anshel, Anshel might appoint him as Diva’s new chevalier then Van and Solomon might get into a duel later. Van Argeno’s cavity lined teeth probabily look like a dentist’s nightmare.
    I think Karl is a little pissed and angry that Solomon didn’t care to find him back in Vietnam. Karl did lose his leg, poor thing was so alone. Then there’s the rematch Karl wants with Saya.

    What I don’t understand about the Red Shield is why is Riku a test subject and Hagi not??? Couldn’t they have done their research immediately when Hagi linked with Saya. Hagi’s blood was available from the start if Saya just asked him for it. And how come nobody’s allowed to interview Hagi for the information he knows about the Chevaliers? He should be treated like royalty for being a part of the Goldsmith family.

    Why did David have nothing to say to Saya when Saya agreed to the blood donation? Didn’t the Shifu kill a lot of Red Shield guys a few episodes ago.

    ChuChu
    Reply

  18. Riku is the only one to have the D-nucleotide, either because he is unique or it is only found and detectable in newly converted chevaliers as Julia has said in last episode. D-nucleotide will be the key to Argiano’s research project.

    Alex
    Reply

  20. Maybe I’ll sound stupid but I don’t understand how everyone is bent on killing Diva when they don’t know exactly what is her role…She’s just a mysterious figure.

    I fail to see her as an evil antagonist…

    eurys
    Reply

  23. FreakyAlien, No. Saya’s blood is poison to Diva’s Chevaliers and Chiros created by her blood and Diva’s blood is poison to Saya and her Chevaliers.

    Anyway, love the HajiSaya moments. Riku is such a sweetie, trying to cheer Saya up. When Riku said Haji’s smiling, I wanted to see it, too. Darn!

    koyuki-san
    Reply

  25. Yeh well when the said how riku had the speicial D in his blood i think he had it all along, remember a few episodes ahead how he could hear like saya even b4?

    Hagi is a true romantic, but i always have a feeling that his end is near.

    KaixIrene is gone now… only Mao -______- eh!

    I wanna see riku fight.

    ** UM how many episodes are there gonna be? o____o I cant wait.

    adreannae
    Reply

  27. the way i see things going its either going to be that haji dies at the end or that they THINK he dies at the end. so far this type of ending is popular with these type of animes. i hope at the last episode saya will finaly get a normal life (after she goes into her cocoon). i’m a saya development fan.

    o yeah for the person who wanted to know the number of episode it either 50 or 52. can’t wait to see them all

    Lost-Seeker
    Reply

  28. From what I’ve seen so far, Hagi can never die and parts of his clothes are indestructible with the ability to clean and mend themselves moments after battle. Hagi also doesn’t need a single drop of blood to survive and supplies an unlimited supply of blood for Saya. He’s also strong enough to fight most of the Shifu, but didn’t really stop George from trying out Saya’s old sword on a Chiropteran.

    Characters like Joel and Collins who are always in charge of everything but on top of nothing. Joel seemed like the more humanitarian of the two but he’s the one who told David to prioritize digging into the Yanbaru lab for information over rescuing George. Then Joel sends only four extra members of the Red Shield’s forces to capture Diva’s container because any more wouldn’t have made it challenging even though David’s got Saya, their most valuable member.
    As for Collins, he’s so lazy that he has Julia do 85% of the work in the lab and only cares about the glory of his research rather than what he can find to use against Diva. He takes all the credit for Julia’s hard work. And Collins leaked the information of where the Red Shield headquarter is.
    Then there’s the security on the ship. Joel and Collins are having tea and biscuits that the Shifu and kill like half their crew and they wouldn’t even open their wallets to beef up the security.
    Poor David probabily had to use bubble gum to stick the jewel on Saya’s new sword, he can’t even afford a gun that actually makes a difference.
    I hope Joel and Collins are goners in the next few episodes.

    ChuChu
    Reply

  29. Damn. I wish there were links to the episodes here. ^^; I have to wait two weeks for each episode to come out on direct download. I’m only up to 25. -sweatdrop-

    Ah, anyway, this seemed like a very important episode.

    It’s a shame, Irene seemed nice. Poor Kai.

    Then again, Kai’s been kinda a bastard to Saya for the past few episodes. She needs support and he’s just not giving it.

    Either way, number 30 IS about Vietnam, [as the one sentence summary on wikipedia told me] so, get ready for some blood, gore and…wait…. BLOOD!

    xD

    Silence
    Reply

  34. to Hui Chan

    no there is no link here for the blood episodes. but it is very easy to get some for christ sake go look it up on google.com for it, i know there some for download there cause i looked but diddn’t get it since i can’t understand japanese. go look… NOW!! oh yeah and to Eldarween i like Hagi better than solomon. solomon is borring.

    Lost-Soul
    Reply

  36. Lost-soul-its not, i mean there is soo many diffs. saya was more of a loner with no emotions in the movie

    eld- I agree but i think hagi’s better. solomon is like a mutated pretty boy, it scares me o___o

    adreannae
    Reply

  39. I felt so sorry for Mao! I think she saw the whole thing happen. And the whole thing with Moses saying he was really happy to be able to use the phrase “thank you” was oddly touching. Still, so sad that they can’t team up!

    nimichan
    Reply

  45. Well after watching Irene die 5 times i still cant believe it i rewatched blood plus alot the sad thing is she was actually kinda cute and nice also heres another sad part Show Spoiler ▼

    first mao then irene and the tear falling from her crystel face makes it hard it be even harder if we knew her last thought, Show Spoiler ▼

    I dont mind diva shes actually just wants a family and shes Show Spoiler ▼

    HAJI DOES NOT DIE BUT Show Spoiler ▼

    WARNING ANY SPOILERS IN THIS COMMENT IS HIGHLY ADVISED NOT TO BE OPENED UNLESS YOU TRULY WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO MOST CHARACTERS IN THE SHOW I TAKE NOT RESPONSIBILITY FOR SPOILING UR SHOW CUZ YOU PEEKED AT A SPOILER THATS SAD AND STOPPED WATCHING ALSO SAYA DOESNT DIE I DO NOT POST ANY MAJER SPOILERS WITHOUT THE SPOILER WARNING HTML CODE,there we go just a simple warning. Show Spoiler ▼

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Show Spoiler ▼

    …..

    Fate
    Reply

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