Cinnamon Ass - Reborn Like a Zombie

Trinity Blood Episode 3 - The Star of Sorrow 1 - City of Blood

Abel steps off a train into the almost deserted city of Istvan in Hungary, one of the few cities not controlled by the Vampires or the Vatican, on a mission to meet "The Star of Istvan", who is a young nun, Esther Blanche. Abel's pretext is that he is there to take over as the priest of St. Matthias' church, but he is arrested for loitering and taken to the mansion of the local marquis, Jyula Kadar, who is immediately wary of the Vatican - when Esther arrives to pick up Abel, Jyula decides to monitor him using sophisticated equipment so he does not disrupt his plans.

While Abel and Esther get to know each other and she angsts about her childhood, another argument breaks out in the Vatican between Caterina and Francisco over how to deal with the vampire element in Istvan. Abel's nighttime wandering for food leads him to overhear Esther talking with a young man named Dietrich von Lohengrin, who is her accomplice in getting revenge for those who killed her adopted mother (she's already killed one of them, which automatically makes her much, much cooler than Hellsing's Seras (in anime form, anyway)). However, the police have tracked down Esther (probably via Dietrich, who works for Jyula but I assume as a double agent) and they gun down Dietrich before arresting Esther - Abel volunteers to be arrested at the same time, and while the police burn down Esther's church Jyula watches and pines for his lost love...

If anyone wants a synopsis of the relevant novel for this storyline you can read it here. While this obviously contains massive spoilers, the anime adaptation is totally and utterly different from the novel. Cue cries of hysteria from hardcore fans, obviously, but I still really liked this episode, even if it is a little less convoluted than the novel (which isn't exactly rocket-science anyway).

The most important thing about this episode, however, is the introduction of Esther. On the Annoying Female Lead scale, where at the top we have someone like Yuiko from Loveless and at the bottom we have someone like Yoko from Twelve Kingdoms, Esther does not rank too highly at the moment. True, she's vaguely ineffectual, but she doesn't have a teeth-rendingly cute voice and she can obviously kick some ass if she needs to. We'll have to see where the series takes her character, hopefully she'll get some half decent development.