The setting is Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868). A brigade of elite warriors has been established to fight demons. They are the Crimson Lotus and they are answerable only to the shogun. They have been trained since childhood. They have all kinds of ninja skills as well as demon-hunting skills. Since this is anime you won’t be surprised to learn that most of the members of the Crimson Lotus are very cute young women. Their leaders are a young man named Rekka and a slightly older woman, Tsukikage. Tsukikage was Rekka’s mentor and he sees her as a kind of big sister.
The other members of the Crimson Lotus are girls, Misako, Akane and Ayano.
I’ve been able to find out very little about the production history of this anime. It seems to be regarded as rather disreputable and is often dismissed as mere hentai. Technically this is hentai. It includes hardcore sex scenes. I think it’s a little unfair to dismiss Blood Shadow as nothing more than hentai. There’s plenty of action and plenty of horror content. I’d call it erotic horror with both the erotic and horror elements being reasonably extreme.
Episode 1, The Demons, introduces us to the hero Rekka and Tsukikage as they are battling a particularly troublesome demon. Tsukikage sacrifices herself to save Rekka.
During another fight with demons Rekka encounters Haruka. She’s a sweet girl but she’s not entirely human. She has some demon blood, and she hates herself for this. She is shocked when Rekka wants to have sex with her - how could a man want to make love with a girl tainted by demon blood? She expects him to be repulsed by her but it turns out that they both enjoy themselves a great deal. Haruko is recruited into the Crimson Lotus.
They also hear a rumour of a mysterious group known as the Black Steel.
In Episode 2, Darkness, their mission is to persuade the legendary demon huntress Kureha to join the Crimson Lotus. At first she’s not interested but eventually she relents. There’s another mission as well - to destroy a powerful demon named Burai who preys on women.
They discover that the Black Steel (or Kagemai) is another demon-hunting group, but they seem more ruthless and perhaps more morally ambiguous than the Crimson Lotus. Rekka has by now made a discovery - not every demon is evil. That’s not just because of Haruko.
Rekka and Kureha also make a discovery - a hard day’s demon-hunting puts them both in the mood for a bit of bedroom fun.
Things get much more crazy in Episode 3, Laughter, as Rekka starts to figure out what is really going on. There’s evil afoot but the evil is much more complicated and twisted than he’d thought. Key characters will find out things about themselves. There have been betrayals by powerful people. Certain forces have been unleashed.
Blood Shadow is a pretty decent horror tale with lots of demonic mayhem and rivers of blood.
The idea of sex-obsessed demons isn’t really all that outlandish. Sex demons (such as succubi and incubi) are an important feature of many folklores and let’s face it every vampire story is to some extent about sex.
Whether you enjoy Blood Shadow or not depends entirely on how you feel about depictions of graphic sex and how you feel about hentai. If you can handle some of Jess Franco’s more extreme blendings of sex and horror (such as Female Vampire and Doriana Gray) you should be able to handle this. While it’s certainly scuzzy I think hardcore scenes are easier to take in anime form than in live-action form. The erotic content is part and parcel of the story here. But if you really don’t care for hardcore scenes you might not enjoy this anime.
I thought Blood Shadow was not outstanding but still pretty good. I recommend it, with the caveats alluded to above.
Blood Shadow has been released on Blu-Ray by Critical Mass. It offers the Japanese language version with English subtitles, and for those masochistic enough to want to watch anime in an English dubbed version that option is offered as well. The transfer is excellent.
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