I'm sorry to say this but, for me, Trinity Blood was a disappointment. It could've been so much better.
* The art is quite good (really good sometimes). I wish they had gone for a darker style, though, there were too many huge-eyed girls and sunny scenarios (with birds singing and all) for my liking. On the bright side, you have to love the main Crusnik's design, and Gunslinger and the Sword Dancer look really good too.
* The characters... Well, this is one of the downsides of the series. Abel, the main character, was really annoying most of the time. The heroine was the stereotypical big-eyed, cute and good-hearted, not-particularly-interesting-or-intelligent anime heroine. The pope invariably made me want to get into the TV and slap the "whiny-ness" out of him. Ion was the typical character who acts without thinking all the time and, although they try to present it as "noble", I just found it stupid. There were some potentially interesting characters, though, but, of course, they weren't developed further than the first short introduction. *sigh*.
* The direction was poor, at least in my opinion: they alternated fast (and quite well directed, yes, I have to give them that) action scenes with slow-paced, serene scenes --without any kind of transition, sometimes--, which kept me wondering about the director's sense of rhythm instead of letting me enjoy the series. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against slow-paced scenes. But you have to know how to use them, and how to fit them into the episode.
* The story was promising (not particularly original, but it had potential). But in my opinion 24 episodes are too few for the complexity they seemed to be aiming for, and in the end you're left wondering why did they include this and that character or storyline if they didn't plan to develop them at all. The ending made me feel frustrated. In case you don't know, the original writer died before he could finish the story, and it shows. The series keeps building up to something and when it ends... well, it doesn't live up to what you expected.
And just another point: I've heard people describe this series as "dark", and I keep wondering why. If you're looking for a dark series, I wouldn't recommend this one at all. You've been warned.
OK, after re-reading this it makes me wonder why I even gave it a 5 out of 10. OK... the series isn't *awful*. I guess you can enjoy it on some level. But it certainly didn't work for me. I kept watching it expecting it would get better, but it actually ended up worse.
Hope it helped.
