The Anime Perfect For Fans Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Is Impossible To Watch Today

If the name Blood+ sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the excellent short film Blood: The Last Vampire. That bleak and brutal “prequel” anime feature helped sketch out a world that Blood+ explores through the longer-form lens of a TV series. With that being said, the television show very much does its own thing, so you don’t need to check out the previous movie before biting into the show like a roaming vampire out for a midnight snack.

So, what is Blood+ all about, and why would it hold special appeal to fans of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer? The series focuses on Saya Otonashi, a schoolgirl who just wants to enjoy a normal life. Unfortunately, that’s not in the cards once she discovers that she is the only one capable of effectively fighting bloodsucking monsters known as Chiropteran.

All of these Blood+ details should sound familiar to Buffy fans: just as Buffy Summers was “the chosen one,” a special Slayer best equipped to “stand against the vampires,” Saya Otonoashi is the one person in all the world who can fight the Chiropteran, bat-like creatures that are functionally just ugly vampires. Of course, Buffy’s ability to fight the vampires mostly came from her enhanced speed, strength, agility, and the occasional prophetic dream. 

Saya’s abilities are more straightforward: she has the ability to crystallize the blood in these monsters’ bodies, and with the help of her trusty katana, she is ridding the world of evil one creature at a time.

I don’t want to give you too many spoilers, but Blood+ has some other surface-level details that should feel very familiar to fans of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. For example, Saya eventually begins working with an older man named Haji, who knows plenty about herself, her past, and her fantastic powers. He’s basically the Giles of the group, and her relationship with the rest of the bevy of friends and family she is working with is just as entertaining as Buffy’s time working with fan-favorite characters like the nerdy Willow or the bad boy turned beau, Spike.

When Blood+ first came out, it generally impressed fans, and Anime News Network gave the series a solid “B” rating. Not too long ago, the show was free to stream on Tubi (my favorite home for weird programming), but it’s now almost nowhere to be found. You may have to track down some physical media the same way that Sayo tracks down these freaky bloodsuckers, but trust me: it’s definitely worth it.

The success of Blood+ led to the sequel series Blood-C, but it only lasted 12 episodes. Considering that the long-awaited Buffy reboot seems like it’s even deader than the First Evil, now is the perfect time for Blood+ to get its own reboot. As Giles might put it, “in every generation, there is a chosen anime,” and it’s time for Blood+ to slay a new generation of fans.