Strike the Blood

ストライク・ザ・ブラッド

7.0(1)

Otaku Den

7.0(325,236)

MAL Score

Ranked #4938

Popularity #367

Action
Ecchi
Fantasy
Harem
School
Urban Fantasy
Vampire

Episodes: 24
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Oct 4, 2013 to Mar 28, 2014
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Kojou Akatsuki leads a typical high school life in Itogami Island’s Demon District—until a single encounter transforms him, awakening the powers of a vampire and abruptly pulling him out of the ordinary.

Rumors quickly harden into a frightening truth: Kojou is identified as the Fourth Primogenitor, a legendary vampire whose strength is said to be unparalleled. Concerned about what he could become, the Lion King Organization assigns Yukina Himeragi, an apprentice sword-shaman, to keep him under watch—and to eliminate him if he turns into a danger. Bound by necessity, Kojou and Yukina navigate an uneasy partnership as he struggles to control his new nature and both work to shield the city from a growing wave of supernatural unrest.

Otaku Consensus

Hideyo Yamamoto’s direction gives Strike the Blood a dependable flow of multi-episode incidents and regularly energetic, well-animated confrontations, while Hiroyuki Yoshino’s straightforward series composition makes its dense occult vocabulary easy to consume. The adaptation’s accessible escapism is also its limitation: critics repeatedly cite repetitive resolutions, forced harem beats, underdeveloped supporting characters, and fantasy plots that feel increasingly jumbled across 24 episodes. It succeeds as polished supernatural comfort viewing rather than as tightly constructed vampire drama.

Why You Should Watch

Strike the Blood is built for viewers who want A Certain Magical Index’s occult bureaucracy crossed with High School DxD’s shameless harem energy, but with vampire iconography and spear-led combat. Its compact multi-episode cases deliver conspiracies, magical systems, and explosive confrontations without requiring the patience of a slow-burn epic. Yukina’s surveillance role gives the central pairing a useful push-pull rhythm: disciplined sword-shaman procedure keeps colliding with Kojou’s improvised power and deadpan normalcy. The show’s real comfort-food appeal is repetition polished into ritual—the recurring “my fight/our fight” exchange, power escalation, and a fresh cluster of supernatural complications every few episodes. Choose it when you want frequent action, flirtation, and lore delivered in clean two-cour TV pacing, not intricate character psychology or a tightly unified mystery.

Key Characters

K
Kojou Akatsuki(VA: Yoshimasa Hosoya)
Kojou’s appeal lies in Yoshimasa Hosoya’s restrained delivery, which keeps an absurdly powerful harem lead sounding more weary and reactive than triumphantly self-important.
Y
Yukina Himeragi(VA: Risa Taneda)
Yukina became the series’ defining presence through her combination of formal sword-shaman discipline, spear-based action, and the endlessly repeated partnership declaration that fans treat as the show’s unofficial catchphrase.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Connect and SILVER LINK. share studio credit, giving the television series a clean 2010s light-novel aesthetic while reserving much of its visual emphasis for magical effects and short, forceful action bursts.
2
The 24 episodes are organized around relatively self-contained, multi-episode story arcs rather than one uninterrupted seasonal conflict, a structure that makes the series easy to watch episodically but also drives complaints about formulaic repetition.
3
Yukina’s spearplay is prominent enough to carry a 79% AniList tag, distinguishing the combat vocabulary from the sword-heavy choreography common to school-based urban fantasy.
4
The setting mixes vampire lore and magic with less expected technological material: AniList separately tags software development and artificial intelligence at 60%, alongside alchemy, witches, and angels.
5
The repeated exchange commonly paraphrased as “This is my fight” and “No, this is our fight” functions as a ritualized signal for the central duo’s joint confrontations; reviewers cite its near-constant reuse as both memorable branding and evidence of the formula.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Strike the Blood adapts the work of original creator Gakuto Mikumo, while the source character concepts are credited to illustrator Manyako; Keiichi Sano translated those designs into the anime’s character-design system.
Fun fact 2: The production split its top directional responsibilities between chief director Takao Sano and director Hideyo Yamamoto, with Hiroyuki Yoshino overseeing series composition.
Fun fact 3: Its visual pipeline credits Michie Watanabe for art direction, Gaku Hirooka for photography, Chiaki Kumakura for CG direction, and Kentarou Tsubone for editing.
Fun fact 4: The original TV run aired from October 4, 2013 through March 28, 2014 for 24 episodes, making it a full two-cour adaptation at a time when several reviewers felt its formula would have been tighter at 12 episodes.
Fun fact 5: Its audience footprint exceeds its aggregate critical enthusiasm: MyAnimeList records a 7/10 score from 325,125 votes and popularity rank #367, while AniList lists a 66/100 score and 1,295 favourites.