Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blood of Zeus’ on Netflix, a Violent, Visually Rich Anime About Greek Gods and Heroes
BLOOD OF ZEUS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: THE STARS ABOVE. (As opposed to the stars below, I guess.) The camera pans down from the sky to the woods where two man-demons dash away from their pursuers.
The Gist: The man-shaped demons dash through lightning and fog. Greek soldiers fire arrows and chuck spears at ’em, even though arrows and spears don’t really hurt ’em. Led by a charismatic SHE-WARRIOR, the soldiers attack with swords, and one demon takes a sword away and chops one soldier’s head in half right through the mouth hole to prove he’s not effing around — not a true decapitation, but don’t worry, I get the feeling this series has plenty more full-blown choppa-choppas on its agenda.
They chase the demons to a nearby village, where a lowly mendicant has just returned from mining a sackful of ore from a cave. A raging a-hole merchant throws two coins at the lowly mendicant’s bare feet as payment. The lowly mendicant is an empathetic man — he helps an old-timer who’s fallen down drunk and hurt his leg, then takes him back to his mendicant hovel, where he lives with his mother, who isn’t a lowly mendicant, but rather is a lowly whore. These labels are contextual — it’s how the villagers see them. Notably, the villagers aren’t smart enough to know the word “mendicant,” although they are mean enough to use the word “whore,” many many times.
Anyhow, the lowly mendicant is named Heron (Derek Phillips) and his mother is Electra (Mamie Gummer) and his father is… well, we could probably guess, but we’ll wait until after A) Heron finds a woman with her intestines outside her body floating in a nearby pool and is attacked by the demon and then helps the SHE-WARRIOR capture the demon, and B) the old man tells Heron and Electra an old story about old gods battling old giants and how the gods bested the giants, but men ate the flesh of an evil giant and became evil demons. There was an impaling or two in all this.
Meanwhile, the SHE-WARRIOR, whose name is Alexia (Jessica Henwick), tries the demon in the village square, on charges of being a demon, and lo, its head is not long for being attached to its body. Six guys come to Heron and Electra’s house to attack her because she’s a yucky whore, but Heron holds his own against all of them, fending them off. Alexia stops by to ask him to join their crusade against evil, but he blanches. The old man encourages Heron to reconsider, then sends him off to mine some special ore for a special sword. Then the god Ares shows up to say hi to the old man, who isn’t an old man at all — he’s Zeus his damn self, and I’m pretty sure he once did the horizontal hi-there with Electra, and Heron was the result.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This show is what would happen if the old corny 1981 Clash of the Titans movie and Netflix hit anime Castlevania (which is from the same Powerhouse Animation studio) had a very violent baby.
Our Take: Oh, the strings and choirs and brass do heave on the soundtrack of Blood of Zeus: Heron is clearly no clochard, but a game-changing son-of-a-god who will inevitably dispatch many demons from this plane in a gruesomely violent fashion. If this series doesn’t average 3-5 beheadings and/or disembowelments per episode, I’ll be shocked. I wanna see some spleenectomies-by-sword! Hot steaming lung kabobs! Marrowrific compound fractures! Ripped ‘n’ gripped hearts! Displanted brains! It’ll be just like American football!
So. It’s pretty violent. But the series’ 27-minute opening salvo is also pretty a entertaining uberdrama, poker-faced unto humorousness and spiked with vigorous, skillfully executed action sequences. Conceptually, it’s not wholly original — we’ve seen this man-learns-he’s-a-demigod saga many times before — but it weaves in snatches of horror and is boosted by its crisp, clean animation, quick pace, snappy editing and creative character design. A flashback sequence in which the gods battle the titans is colored with vibrant reds and blues and defined by its harsh, comic-booky angles; the design eschews the overly detailed clutter of some anime series. Whether it’ll truly plant its barbed hooks in our hearts is TBD, but so far, it boasts the type of eye candy that’ll keep us watching.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, but the series is rated TV-MA for violence, nudity and gore, not necessarily in that order.
Parting Shot: A closeup of Zeus eyes: “Do you really think this bastard can lead them?” Aries asks. “I DO,” Zeus booms.
Sleeper Star: The perpetually horseback’d Alexia is a badass.
Most Pilot-y Line: Prior to his execution, the demon threatens us to enjoy Blood of Zeus or else: “YOU WILL CONVERT OR DIE!”
Our Call: STREAM IT. If Blood of Zeus can keep up this bloody pace, these eight episodes will zing by before we know it.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
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