Introduction
Production I.G announces the BLOOD-C project, a new chapter of the world-famous Blood: The Last Vampire saga started in 2000 and now one of the studio's flagship titles.

BLOOD-C is a creative collaboration between Production I.G and popular all-female artist group CLAMP, supervised by Junichi Fujisaku, one of the key members of the team that developed the original concept for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and who later directed the TV series Blood+ (2005).

Like the former chapters of the saga, BLOOD-C is featuring a heroine called Saya, her full name being Saya Kisaragi.

The BLOOD-C project is structured as a TV series, aired in Japan on MBS/TBS between July and September 2011, and a theatrical feature film, entitled Blood-C: The Last Dark, directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani and slated in Japan on June 2, 2012. The TV series is directed by Tsutomu Mizushima, helmer of the Annecy-nominated feature film, xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer Night's Dream, based on CLAMP's million-selling comic and produced by Production I.G.

Story (TV Series)
A peaceful countryside village on a lake shore. Klutzy but good-hearted Saya has been living there as far as she can remember, and has never seen the outside world. This doesn't really seem to bother her, as she stays with her caring and beloved father, and all her classmates and the teacher at school are so nice and friendly. But Saya's eventless daylight life abruptly shifts into pure mayhem at night as she skillfully wields her sword to confront the Elder Bairns, creatures featuring the most diverse shapes, but with one thing in common -they feed on humans. After each victorious battle she returns back home drenched in blood, yet the following morning everything starts again as nothing had happened -a nice cup of coffee and some delicious guimauves at the local café, her cheerful classmates at school... Then, small cracks start appearing on the surface of this abnormal normality, as an Elder Bairn speaks to her puzzling words she can't make sense of. As Saya is apparently unable to connect the events occurring around her, she can't possibly imagine that the real horror has yet to be unveiled...

TV Series Main Staff
Original Concept: Production I.G / CLAMP
Original Character Designs: CLAMP
Original Concept Supervisor: Junichi Fujisaku (Blood+, Appleseed XIII)
Series Composition: Nanase Ohkawa (CLAMP)
Screenplay: Nanase Ohkawa, Junichi Fujisaku
Director: Tsutomu Mizushima (xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer Night's Dream)
Animation Character Designer: Kazuchika Kise (Blood: The Last Vampire)
Key Animation Supervisor: Takayuki Goto (Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C.)
Background Art: Hiromasa Ogura (Jin-Roh)
Music: Naoki Saito (Sword of the Stranger, Always)
Animation: Production I.G (Blood: The Last Vampire, Ghost in the Shell)

About Blood
Theatrically released in 2000, Blood: The Last Vampire was Japan's first fully digital animated film, and also Production I.G's first and highly successful attempt to create a project based on a fully in-house developed original concept. A dream team including Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Junichi Fujisaku (Blood+) and Kenji Kamiyama (Eden of the East) assembled for this purpose. The movie featured Saya, a teenage girl in school uniform slashing metamorphic monsters with a Japanese sword -a unique concept contributed by Junichi Fujisaku. Combining this powerful heroine with stunningly cutting-edge animation, Blood: The Last Vampire has been mesmerizing moviegoers and renowned creators alike all over the world, starting from James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino. The character of Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was reportedly inspired by Saya. In 2005, I.G expanded the movie's concept with Blood+ -a 50-episode TV series directed by Junichi Fujisaku, which reached out to a wider market. The Blood franchise includes comic adaptations, novels, and videogames. In 2009, a live-action remake directed by Chris Nahon, starring Gianna Jun (Jun Ji-hyun) and produced by Pathé was released worldwide.

About CLAMP
Debuting in 1987 with RG Veda, CLAMP is an all-female Japanese comic artist group consisting of Nanase Okawa, who provides the storyline and screenplay, and three artists whose roles shift for each series: Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi. As of today, over 100 million CLAMP comic volumes have been sold worldwide. Their works include, X (1992), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993), Cardcaptor Sakura (1996), xxxHOLiC (2002-2011, over 11 million copies sold in Japan alone, #6 best-selling manga in USA according to New York Times in 2009), Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (2003~2009, over 20 million copies in Japan alone, #5 best-selling book on Waldenbooks' list in 2004). CLAMP comics and their animated adaptations are released in many countries and have gained the artists a huge fan base on global scale.

About Tsutomu Mizushima
Born on December 6, 1965 in Nagano Prefecture, Tsutomu Mizushima joined animation studio Shin'ei Doga as a production manager in 1986. He served as episodic director for the TV series Crayon Shin-chan since 2001, and later directed two feature films based on the same character, Crayon Shin-chan: Storming Glorious Grilled Beef Road (2003) and Crayon Shin-chan: Storming Sunset Kasukabe Boys (2004). His feature film, xxxHOLiC - A Midsummer Night's Dream (2005), based on CLAMP's million-selling comic and produced by Production I.G, was selected for the feature film competition of Annecy in 2006. Mizushima further directed two TV series and four straight-to-video episodes based on the xxxHOLiC comic series.

Air date in Japan: July 7 ~ September 29, 2011
Format: 12 x 30'

official website (Japanese only):
http://www.blood-c.jp

© 2011 Production I.G, CLAMP•ST/Project BLOOD-C TV/MBS