Aidonian's blog

 so i watched the netflix anime (my first anime that i watched btw) Blood of Zeus. any show thta features mythology, especially Greek mythology will get my attention. 

The show is about a Greek teenager called Hero, finding out he is the son of Zeus and is called into action when a war with demons come to his town/polis. 

That\”ss the story. Next to Heron, you also have Alexia, his mother Electra, Elias (who later turns out to be Zeus himself in disguise), Seraphim, the leader of the demons, who is also the half brother to Heron. 

To be honest, i didn’t have the impression that these characters were really fleshed out next to Heron en Seraphim and even those were not that good done either. Than again, each episode is around 30 minutes and with only 8 episodes, not alot goes on concerning character developement. 

This anime show is a character driven show. Its a plot driven show. And that is its greatest strength. Each episode was tense and exciting to watch. You look over the faults and enjoy the ride. Is a show where you don’t have to think to much about it. The music is nicely done and enhances each scene. 

Now comes my pet peeve. Here the Gods are shown to be the light, the Titans represents the darkness, from which the Giants were born. Here lies the first fault. The Giants were born of Gaia, one of the Protogenoi, not a Titan. The Giants were born from Gaia, not from the blood in the sea, but rather from the blood from Ouranos that fell on Gaia (which made her pregnant with these beings). From the blood of Ouranos who was castrated by his son Kronos, also came forth the Erinyes, Goddesses of vengeance and according to some also Aphrodite (while other credit Zeus as the father of the Goddess) In her birth, it was so that when blood of Ouranos fell on the sea, Aphrodite was born from the foam. 

One nice touch here is the owl that i think is a nod to the 80’s film Clash of the Titans. If you seen that film, you will know what I’m talking about here. 

Demons. The ancient world had its demons, but not like they are represented here. Consuming the flesh of a Giant creates demons is a nice touch, I admit that. Ancient Greeks saw demons are spirts and there were according some philosophers good (Agathos) en bad (Kako) demons. 

The show uses a myth where Hera did indeed staged a rebellion against Zeus and almost won. As punishment Zeus hanged her in the sky for couple of days, sent Apollon and Poseidon to Priamos\” father as punishment to help him. They were the ones who build the walls of Troy. When the Gigantomachy broke out, after the rebellion, Herakles was there to help them out. 

Here the events of the rebellion take place during the second war of the Gigantomachy. While Hera in mythology is represented as a scorn and jealous Goddess who goes after the bastard children of Zeus, she wouldn’t do anything as stupid as done here, to release the Giants to overthrow Zeus. 

By the end of the season both Zeus and Hera seem to be dead. Its unknow if there is going to be a second season. I would be hard to overdo themselves with a second season. The stakes were high in this season and antother season of high stakes would be thrilling to watch of course, but one has to wonder how far they can go with this. 

If you are a fan of Greek mythology, you might enjoy this show. It plays lose with the stories and concepts of Greek mythology, but other than that, it was fun to watch this show.