Reviews for Trinity Blood, Rage Against the Moons, Volume 1, From the Empire

The average rating for Trinity Blood, Rage Against the Moons, Volume 1, From the Empire based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-04 00:00:00 Mariaelena Mendoza First off, the anime is based on the novel, not the other way round. Secondly, I would have given the Chinese version 4 stars. 2 stars for the English, so I gave it an average of 3. Trinity Blood contains quite a lot of politics. A lot may criticise that there's a lot of reference to religion but nobody seems particularly pious. Thank you. In my opinion, that's a +1 for the book. You see, TB isn't about priests religiously catching vampires or the likes. It's about people using the political power of the church to subdue the general public. Much like the dark ages. Then of course, you get religious fanatics in the novel (ie. Brother Petro) who obey everything the authorities say because they believe that it is the righteous thing to do. Behind all that is a not-too-realistic mumbo jumbo about how the people of earth once found a virus on Mars that somehow gave humans supernatural strength and speed but consumes the host when exposed to sunlight (hence the vampires). I've read the Chinese version, and only glanced through the English. Point is, the novel was originally written in Japanese, which have an altogether different style of writing than English. I don't know Japanese, so I can't say much, but I know for one that there are things that can go forgiven in a Chinese book that will be considered as sloppy work in an English one and vice versa. All I can say about the English version is that they did the translation word-for-word. Japanese-to-Chinese translations usually retains more of the original meaning, and I can see enough emotions being expressed in the Chinese version to know that the Japanese one would have been superb. The author is fantastic, but the method of describing things in an Asian language simply don't work for English, so please don't judge the author harshly. All I can say is: blame the translator. Then again, the translators were only trying to satiate the demands of English fans. Better poor English than nothing, no? In short? Read this only if you watched the anime and liked it. Otherwise you will not fully appreciate the complexity of TB.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-01 00:00:00 Felipe Carvalho Piece of poo. Non-existent characterizations, no atmosphere what-to-speak of, cardboard cut-out Evil Hur-Hur vampires, excessive spouting of Church-related Latin with no sense that anyone is remotely religious, though they may say they are from the Vatican and they say they are priests. I shouldn't be surprised of course, but still. Make me believe! It's hard to even call this a novel. It's more like a collection of short stories/cases that loosely tie together in a vague story arc. Many of the same characters tromp on and off, but we are given so little personality that it doesn't really matter. Quirks and odd mannerisms do not a character make! And no, it doesn't get better when the robot arrives. The world seems potentially interesting, but it is almost entirely ignored, except when a name or random location is thrown out. The people feel stupid. The people ARE stupid, good and bad. The pope is a stupid kid getting jerked around by his siblings. The AX agents are only super b/c they're secret monsters, and not because they're any good at investigations. The only good (or bad, depending on your point of view) thing is that the violent gore scenes are really quite violent and gorey. So the author managed to express something properly, I suppose, if that was his aim. But then again, I was so utterly not caring about the story that I wasn't affected by any of it. Girl gets crotch-grabbed and threatened by perverted vampire? Whatever. Vampire gets head chopped so that it dangles upside-down by the skin? So what. Save yourself the money and just borrow it from the library if you must.