This series was, in its prime, considered so bloody that it was mistaken by seinen. (And then came the "eternal hiatus"). It wasn't without reason:
- The concept of the Shinken Holder , holy crap. Think of it: not only you carry a magical BFS within you but there is NO way to pull it out without bloodily, painfully and HORRIBLY killing you. And we get to see this happen several times.
- Let's not forget how a kekkai works. One of the Dragons of Heaven deploys it and, as long as he or she can keep fighting within and ultimately survives, things will be okay. The moment their kekkai is broken, almost surely via the death of said Dragon of Heaven? Everything that once was safe and normal collapses and is destroyed all of a sudden, effects akin to a devastating earthquake. And if all the kekkai are destroyed? It's The End of the World as We Know It.
- All the deaths count as this, and the worst are:
- Kotori, in every continuity. In the film, Fuuma kills her via forcibly pulling the Shinken outta her stomach, and right when she was about to reach for safety with Kamui and the Dragons of the Heaven. In the manga she's first held in a Crucified Hero Shot, then stabbed through the chest, and then her lifeless body is very graphically dismembered, with her head and her remains spraying everything with blood. The second one was so bad that the TV series had to remove the last part, "reducing" her demise to "merely" being crucified and then stabbed to death.
- Yuuto in the film. First, he's stabbed by Fuuma. Then, he has an arm blown off. Then, he's thrown and impaled against the Beast, which gets him electrocuted to death. (And the last one also kills Satsuki.). OUCH.
- As said above, every single death of a Shinken holder. Because save for Film!Kotori, every single one basically explodes when the Shinken is out of them, often only the head remaining. Though the "exception" didn't have it much easier, as she had her Shinken forcibly pulled out of her by Fuuma. Bare handed.
