The Vatican falls victim to political unrest between humans and vampires in the city of Albion, and the Order of Rosen Kreuz seeks to fan the flames to encompass the world. Allies and enemies alike seek salvation. The meek must stand forth, and not even the dead are to be allowed their final rest. This is the beginning of a new age for the whole world...
Episodes Comprise
21 – The Throne of Roses II: The Refuge
22 – The Throne of Roses III: Load of Abyss
23 – The Crown of Thorns I: City in the Mist
24 – The Crown of Thorns II: Load of Oath
Oh dear. After doing so well up until now, Trinity Blood goes all to pieces at the last hurdle and produces a mess of story that really doesn't tie up anything…
Audio:
Audio for this release comes in Japanese stereo and English 5.1 surround mixes. I listened to the Japanese track for this review. Trinity Blood is quite dialogue-heavy, with occasional forays into action scenes where Abel is allowed to show off his abilities. The soundtrack handles both types of scene with no problems – the available channels are used to place dialogue and effects on the soundstage, while music comes across very well. The opening and closing themes are both very good tunes and sound particularly good.
Video:
Video is presented in the show’s original 1.78:1 widescreen format, enhanced for anamorphic playback. For the most part it’s a good-looking transfer, especially given the heavy use of darker scenes, but there were occasions when backgrounds, particularly colour gradients, exhibited some blocking. It’s quite noticeable and distracting when it happens, but fortunately it’s not too widespread.
Packaging:
No packaging was provided with our review copy.
Menu:
The menu is a rather ominous, gothic-looking piece with fits in well with the show’s setting and is backed up by a piece of suitably dramatic background music taken from the series. Direct access is provided to each episode, along with a Play All option and submenus for Extras and Setup. It’s all quick and easy to use – no problems here.
Extras:
Along with the usual creditless opening & closing sequences, there's a slideshow of colour character are included this time around.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review will contain spoilers)
Albion's Methuselah community has declared their independence - as far as you can be independent, when you live in an underground ghetto - and made their demands of the government. There's a temptation to use force to put down the rebellion, but also a realisation that time are changing, and so negotiations continue. Abel's attempt to infiltrate the ghetto to rescue the Pope soon draws attention, though, and isn't well received by the ghetto's residents. The Pope, meanwhile, has managed to escape his captors and is wandering aimlessly around the underground labyrinth, and what he finds is too much for his poor head to cope with. Meanwhile, Esther is captured by the rebels.
Later, Pope finally seems to have grown some backbone - what he's seen while in Albion has persuaded him that it's time for peace, but he may not get a chance to do anything about that, as Londonium is attacked by a ship carrying weapons of unheard-of power. In response, the Vatican's warships arrive above Londinium - not that they do much good, as even their most powerful cannons can't break the defences of Cain's ship. Its technology is so far beyond what's available to everyone else that there seems little chance that any tactic will be able to defeat it. But the forces of good still have one weapon on their side - Abel Nightroad, who had been thought dead…
Oh dear. Really. The first question to be asked of this volume is, "How could it all go so wrong?" - Trinity Blood has spent the last five volumes painstakingly building up a complex world with a rich cast of characters (the Pope aside) who between them have been thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Until now. These episodes take on too much, and while there are plenty of characters used to try and resolve it, they're the "wrong" ones – powerful & well-known characters such as Asta and Caterina are on the sidelines with only a few lines throughout the whole disc, while the main action is left to other fringe characters such as Brother Petros and Tres, along with new fringe characters from Albion. Abel does very little until the final episode other than run aimlessly down corridors, while newly-introduced villain Cain, head of the Rozen Kreuz Orden, appears with barely an introduction or explanation of his motives (there have been pointers to his existence for a while now, but he only comes into the open here).
The best you get is a flashback sequence that explains the origins of Cain and Abel, but that still leaves a lot unanswered. The two have an old score to settle – Abel ominously refers to Cain as "The Enemy of the World", and he certainly has the power to do a lot of damage, but from the way it was explained in the episode you could get the feeling that what we're dealing with is an unresolved 'childhood' spat. Great issue to risk the fate of the world over, there.
The final episode is an action spectacular as Cain and Abel face off once more, but when it's done & dusted, so much else is left unresolved that you can't help but wonder what the point was. Esther gets a decent ending, thanks to an unexpected revelation about her past, but for the rest of the cast there's very little: Seth, Caterina and Asta get only token appearances, and the issue of peace between Vatican and Empire that dominated so much of the series isn't touched on again; Ion appears only in the epilogue, joining forces with Abel on his never-ending quest; the Pope grows a backbone, finally, but not early enough to make him anything like an interesting character; and I ejected the disc feeling that there was enough material that hadn't been dealt with to easily fill another volume, all more important and potentially more interesting than what we got served with here.
In summary:
It's not often that one volume manages to let a series down quite so completely, but somehow Trinity Blood manages it – there's too much happening, there are too many people involved, and there's too much left open for future stories that we're not going to see. Put that all together and disappointment is the order of the day – a real shame when a little more time (say, the usual 26 episodes instead of the 24 used) would have given the time to tie up the story better and give more of the show's characters – it's strong point, after all – a proper send-off. Could have been so much better.
Toshiba 37X3030DB 37" widescreen HDTV; Sony PS3 Blu-ray player (via HDMI, upscaled to 1080p); Acoustic Solutions DS-222 5.1 speaker system.
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