Strike the Blood - 09

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A new story arc in the latest episode of Strike the Blood introduces the concept of angels while taking a bit of a break from action in favor of the slice-of-life aspects of the series.

I was beginning to wonder whether or not we’d see any angels in this series, as I think the angel/demon dichotomy in anime is incredibly interesting.  While we don’t get a whole lot of specific information on the angel that has shown up, it’s clear that this will be a running theme throughout this story arc, at least.

Not every growing trend in Strike the Blood is a good one, though.  This may just be my personal opinion, but the harem aspect of this series is unnecessary.  It actually seems as though it’s shoehorned in.  I could see perhaps a love triangle, with Kojou as the focus of both Yukina and Asagi’s affections, and that would be fine and actually make sense to some extent.  However, Sayaka’s infatuation with him seems really out of place.  Yukina keeps pointing out that Sayaka has always hated guys, always hated phones, things like that.  But after only spending an hour or two with Kojou, she’s suddenly in love with him and wanting to call him all the time?  That doesn’t seem natural.  It seems like an attempt to simply create a harem out of one that just isn’t there.

The reason this is a problem is that it seems like so many anime these days force harems into the series in an attempt to attract more viewers.  And some of the series that do this don’t really need to, because they have plots that are just fine on their own.  Strike the Blood has a perfectly fine plot, mixing slice-of-life, the supernatural, and politics; this whole harem aspect doesn’t add anything substantive.

It’s nice to see Kojou acting like a typical big brother when he thinks a boy is confessing to Nagisa.  The over-protective-big-brother trope is a good one to include in slice-of-life anime, especially those that also have supernatural aspects to said brother.  It helps to cement Kojou, in this case, as a realistic character, despite the fact that he also happens to be the world’s strongest vampire.

It looks like Motoki and Natsuki both work for the same organization, which is interesting.  This makes it more likely that Motoki is a protagonist rather than an antagonist, though.  Natsuki is clearly looking out for Kojou, so the fact that she and Motoki are part of the same organization makes it that much more likely he’s got Kojou’s best interests at heart, too.

Strike the Blood Episode 10 Preview

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