BLOOD LAD, SEASON ONE (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

The BLOOD LAD manga ran from 2009 to 2016, but despite its popularity it only generated one season of ten TV episodes and a couple of OVAs. 

The story: we see a world dominated by demon humanoids-- though in the short series we mainly see a werewolf, a Frank-monster in a lab coat (so that calling him "Franken Stein" is accurate), and the star, a twenty-something vampire, Staz Blood. Staz is the boss of his area of Demon World, and he's extremely tough and clever.  However, unlike his fellow demons, Staz has a fetish for the entertainment-media of the human world, particularly Japanese anime and manga. But there are problems crossing over to the human world, so Staz has to get his jollies from a distance.

Then a denizen of the human world, a young girl named Fuyumi, shows up in Staz's territory. Staz soon figures out that she's in his world because she's the ghost-body of her dead self, but Fuyumi doesn't know what happened to her. Staz becomes her protector partly because he's intrigued with human culture, though this may be a standard "tough guy" defense for helping an innocent victim.

Staz takes Fuyumi back to Japan and tries to find some way to restore her to life, so that she can go back to her regular existence. However, even the action of visiting the mortal sphere draws Staz and Fuyumi into a web of intrigue organized by other demons, one of whom is Staz's estranged brother. There's also a winsome young woman, Hydra, who attaches herself to Staz and shows her affection for him by shooting him in the head (nonfatally, of course).

The series is a good setup to the manga series, naturally ending before it can resolve even one plotline. I read about fifty-sixty episodes of the manga, and it seemed to me that, like a lot of shonen manga, it got badly overburdened by too many characters. But if one's looking for a good basic shonen with strong action, silly comedy, and even a little theorizing about how demon existence works, BLOOD LAD is worth a try.