Trinity Blood pg. 2

Mike: Cain is an enigma that remains much throughout the show. So I don't want to disclose much about Cain. There's the obvious… Oh, what's your character's name?

Troy: Abel

Mike: And I'm?

Troy: Cain.

Mike: I wonder how that works out.

Troy: Hmm.

Mike: I won't say, but hmm.

Troy: It's really cool in the writing because there's a lot of Biblical overtones, and obviously with the way the government is set up, it's post-apocalypse and the Vatican is the government now. There are certain names that are used, and the character choices as far as Cain and Abel… it kind of hints at what the character relationship is. There are subtle nuances and idiosyncrasies throughout the show. Even places and names of weapons are really cool

Mike: The names of some of the other counts and vampires are names of European locations. Some of the moves are based on biblical references. A lot of the hierarchy is based on that as well.

Troy: There's so much more to this show than what's on the surface, and that's what I really like about it. You can watch it and appreciate it for the aesthetic quality, because it's drawn very beautifully.

Mike: The character designs are very beautiful.

Troy: Character designs are incredible. They use some CGI, but it's done very tastefully. It's not overtly done just because they can, like somebody else, (cough) George Lucas, but what I really enjoy about it is that if you actually spend time watching the show and pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface, first of all, it reveals a lot more about the characters, a lot more about the show, and there's actually a lot of historical things you can learn. Like, the London is actually now called Albion, which is Londinium, which is the archaic name for London now. Cool things like that.

Do you think the show is trying to portray some kind of social message?

Mike: I don't think it's trying to hit you over the head with one. More or less it's a tale of possibilities of relationships between people who are dealing with guilt, people dealing with the desire for revenge, people dealing with desires for atonement.

Troy: That's what's interesting about this. In most stories, you really have a clear-cut protagonist and antagonist, and what makes the characters in this so incredibly 3D and not flat is you empathize with both sides. At times, you feel that the humans, or even the Vatican or the AX, they may be the bad guys. With the vampires, you'll see in one episode, “the bad guy” is simply driven by revenge for the loss of his wife, and that's what made him. He's inherently a good guy, but he just has true resentment for what happened to him. So, you can empathize with both sides. I don't think it's an overt message politically, but because of the story such that it is, you're going to see some social message and political messages. It's not bashing either side. It's done very tastefully.

Mike: Since we're dealing with people, be they Methuselah or Terran, since we're dealing with people in relationships, we deal with relationship-type issues and things that can happen between any sets of people

Troy: I originally thought there was going to be a lot of negative religious overtones, bashing the church or whatever, and it really doesn't. That's what's so funny. When he first pitched the story to me, he said basically, it's Vatican versus the vampires in the future with spaceships. And that's the way you can capsulize it. But the way the story is written, it's actually very believable that it could happen that the Vatican, because of its resources, its history, its strength, could, in a cataclysmic event, actually rise to the surface as the only viable government.

A lot of shows in the past have tried to take aspects of religion or mythology and use it for that extra layer of pretension. Is the use of symbolism and mythology in Trinity Blood is justified?

Mike: For this particular show, I don't see it as pretension. I see it as possibilities; I see it as possible outcomes. Being that the Catholic church is a powerful entity in itself in this time frame, in this time period that we currently live, who's to say that in a post-apocalyptic world that if nations and governments have fallen apart, that an entity like a powerful religious unit couldn't come in and, not really take over the world, but help out in more than one aspect. Rather than just being a religious leader or community, they could help out with the government or help out with other things.

Troy: And they've done it before. If you look throughout history in medieval culture, the church was the sovereign government. You have to realize that using mythology, or using symbolism, or using things that have a mystique about them, it's been done for thousands of years. And I don't think we'll ever get away from that. I see what you're saying. A lot of people are fascinated with the occult. As soon as you see some element of that, it's either spooky, scary, or intriguing.

Mike: It gives it a more…cerebral quality, rather than just a “Boo!” kind of scary. Like a smart scary.

Troy: The thing is, Trinity Blood isn't scary, it's not gorish. There are bloody scenes, there is violence, but it's not about vampires scaring you in the dark and sucking your blood. It's not a typical vampire story at all and that's what's really surprised me about it. There's an automatic connotation Whenever you say vampire, you automatically think Dracula, dark attacks, and whatever, but it's not like that at all. This is simply another race of people that want their place in society. I think it's a lot more cognitive and heady and highbrow. It's a smart story. It's not relying purely on the mythological, the religious, or the occult to propel its story—it's just simply a conduit that it travels in. God, these are good answers. Wow, we're smart!