English Dub Review: Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond “Spectral Eyes, Phantom Vision, Part 1”

Can you use the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods, when you yourself are being watched?

Overview (Spoilers)

During a call to Black (you know, the guy possessed by the villain from the last season), Leo is given a guilt trip. Even though he’s been writing to Michaela all the time, he’s never actually called her. Time to fix that. Turns out he called just in time. She’s on a train to New Salem’s Lot, along with her fiance! Wait, she’s getting married? Leo freaks out, and his eyes short-circuit the vision of everyone in the building. She wants to meet him in three days at a ritzy hotel for lunch. When he tells Klaus and Steven, they assign a security detail to her in an instant. Since her blind eyes are tied to his All Seeing Eyes, it is likely that anything that happens to her would result in problems for their ace in the hole against the Blood Breed. While they assigned Zapp for the duty, literally everyone shows up to watch the reunion.

So, her fiance seems nice enough. He admits he’s a little jealous of all the affection she has for Leo. However, there is something hiding behind him. Something only Leo can see. He excuses himself for a “bathroom break” and the creature follows him. The creature introduces itself as Dr. Gamimozou, a collector of all the prosthetics with the descriptor of “of the Gods”. He hasn’t killed Michaela’s fiance and hasn’t touched her either. His interest is in Leo and his eyes. You see, those eyes (or at least, prior versions) have been given out to witness important events throughout history. They’re the world’s most successful hidden camera. Just then, Zapp happens by with some terrible excuses to ditch. Watching Gamimozou threaten to secretly slice Zapp’s throat, Leo lets him go and rejoins Michaela. One thing he notices, though. Michaela has been acting awfully assertive and tense. Could she be aware of the bad guy? He squeezes her hand to reassure her but gets called away by Libra. A rampaging blood breed is smashing through downtown. Gamimozou sends a drone to watch what Leo does in the battle, and the kid tries to hold off as long as he can so as not to show off his importance to Libra, but eventually has to text Klaus the name of the vampire. Seeing the true value of Leo, Gamimozou decides that he is the one that the monster is going to possess.

Our Take

I appreciated all the tension in this episode. They managed to keep it going throughout, and without resorting to anything horribly melodramatic. You could see how it transformed from one form to another. First, the tension of calling her, then of her getting married, waiting to see her, ending in the tension of a more dire variety. All the while, we are given just enough humor to keep this from reaching a boiling point, mostly from Zapp and KK. But, as soon as Zapp leaves, that is also the signal for things to get real. He was Leo’s last hope, and our last opportunity to laugh. I find Dr. Gamimozou a rather effective villain. He seems genuinely terrifying, despite the fact that the only people he truly threatened were those of Libra. He has not shown any desire to hurt Michaela. We have been left with a bit of a mystery as to his intentions, and precious little is revealed. This, too, is a tension.

The art on this show is always amazing. This episode is no exception. The hotel is gorgeous, yet still realistic. It looks like a ritzy hotel from New York. Since I think it is a wink and a nod at the Waldorf Astoria, that’s probably what it was based on. When we get to the battle portions, the animation is superb. The enemy is rather amorphic and turns into a ton of forms. keeping that blob looking like a coherent mass can be difficult, but the animators took care of it.

Hello again, Sarah Weidenheft! Nice to see you again. I liked her work here as Michaela, who did portray the silent tension that Leo pointed out. Even when she was laughing, there was something off, but the laugh was still convincing. That can be hard to pull off. Many voice actors would overplay how fake the laughter is, and make it overly obvious. By trying to make it sound genuine, it keeps the secret from the audience a bit longer. Aaron Dismuke was also good as Leo, who showed a wild range of emotions in this episode. Stephanie Young is getting a bit more confident with the more humorous, homebody side of K.K. It was fun watching (and hearing) her freak out about the reunion.