Long, long ago, a young, innocent, fresh-faced Spectral found himself very excited for the release of the very first Vampire Hunter D novel. I'd never seen the movie, but I knew what I liked, and what I liked was visions of a Schizo Tech vaguely-western-themed future wasteland where strange mutants clashed with creatures of fantasy. I was left crushingly disappointed. Clumsy prose, lame plotting, weak characterization, halfway decent fight scenes ruined by said clumsy prose; the only part of it I'll recommend without a laundry list of reservations is Amano's gorgeous art.
The movie was marginally better, which is to say it was mid-90's Gorn trash that no one would care about if not for its fortune in landing at the right time to generate nostalgia. And I forced myself through a pirated copy of the novel this movie was based on for you people, if only so I could say definitively that the film was better. And fortunately, you don't need to torture yourself with any of the above to understand and appreciate it, because while bits and pieces are marginally improved by increased depth of understanding, overall it works just fine as a standalone picture!
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is a great little film from one of the forgotten masters of the anime medium. Technically, it's all good news. Its genuinely hand-painted art looks great even today. It humiliatingly does a better job integrating CGI into the imagery to save money than stuff that's come out two decades later. An energetic English dub cast breathes life into the animation while still acting instead of hamming.
Characters have great designs full of personality, and with one exception they're all varying shades of flawed but human, likable, and relatable. They have neat anime weapons and powers that they bring to bear in fun fight scenes, and while there's a bit more gore than you'd see on, say, the average episode of Naruto, it rarely revels in the excess of it all, using violence to impact the characters rather than shock-jock the audience.
The story is relatively simple and straightforward, more of a vehicle for character interactions and fun action than complicated scheming, but there is a bit of depth there, and it does genuinely have things to say about some surprisingly dense themes, like forgiveness, racism, the Sunk Cost Fallacy, even Internalized Categorism.
And it doesn't spare D himself from criticism, something that never would've happened in that first novel around every single male character unable to stop complementing how cool and attractive he was whether they respected him, envied and hated him, while every single female character instantly fell madly in love with him despite his utter lack of personality. While he's still very much a quiet, stoic person, there are little glimpses of humanity in there, sometimes good and sometimes unflattering, that make D halfway relatable.
It's not a perfect movie. There's a closely-adapted scene in the middle of the movie that, while climactic and dramatic, clashes a bit with the altered characterization of the cast members involved. The conclusions to a few fights are a bit undercooked or dependent on coincidence. And while the character of Charlotte is more fleshed-out compared to her literally nameless book counterpart, she's still a bit too thinly-sketched compared to everyone else.
But overall, while both adaptations of Vampire Hunter D are better than the novels they're based on, this is the only one I'd outright call good, and the one I'd say does the best job of realizing the series' potential. If you have ever been curious, just watch it, enjoy a single complete story, and let it go, content in the knowledge you have experienced the only part of the franchise worth experiencing.
Literature Bloodlust: Just Watch This and Nevermind the Rest
Long, long ago, a young, innocent, fresh-faced Spectral found himself very excited for the release of the very first Vampire Hunter D novel. I'd never seen the movie, but I knew what I liked, and what I liked was visions of a Schizo Tech vaguely-western-themed future wasteland where strange mutants clashed with creatures of fantasy. I was left crushingly disappointed. Clumsy prose, lame plotting, weak characterization, halfway decent fight scenes ruined by said clumsy prose; the only part of it I'll recommend without a laundry list of reservations is Amano's gorgeous art.
The movie was marginally better, which is to say it was mid-90's Gorn trash that no one would care about if not for its fortune in landing at the right time to generate nostalgia. And I forced myself through a pirated copy of the novel this movie was based on for you people, if only so I could say definitively that the film was better. And fortunately, you don't need to torture yourself with any of the above to understand and appreciate it, because while bits and pieces are marginally improved by increased depth of understanding, overall it works just fine as a standalone picture!
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is a great little film from one of the forgotten masters of the anime medium. Technically, it's all good news. Its genuinely hand-painted art looks great even today. It humiliatingly does a better job integrating CGI into the imagery to save money than stuff that's come out two decades later. An energetic English dub cast breathes life into the animation while still acting instead of hamming.
Characters have great designs full of personality, and with one exception they're all varying shades of flawed but human, likable, and relatable. They have neat anime weapons and powers that they bring to bear in fun fight scenes, and while there's a bit more gore than you'd see on, say, the average episode of Naruto, it rarely revels in the excess of it all, using violence to impact the characters rather than shock-jock the audience.
The story is relatively simple and straightforward, more of a vehicle for character interactions and fun action than complicated scheming, but there is a bit of depth there, and it does genuinely have things to say about some surprisingly dense themes, like forgiveness, racism, the Sunk Cost Fallacy, even Internalized Categorism.
And it doesn't spare D himself from criticism, something that never would've happened in that first novel around every single male character unable to stop complementing how cool and attractive he was whether they respected him, envied and hated him, while every single female character instantly fell madly in love with him despite his utter lack of personality. While he's still very much a quiet, stoic person, there are little glimpses of humanity in there, sometimes good and sometimes unflattering, that make D halfway relatable.
It's not a perfect movie. There's a closely-adapted scene in the middle of the movie that, while climactic and dramatic, clashes a bit with the altered characterization of the cast members involved. The conclusions to a few fights are a bit undercooked or dependent on coincidence. And while the character of Charlotte is more fleshed-out compared to her literally nameless book counterpart, she's still a bit too thinly-sketched compared to everyone else.
But overall, while both adaptations of Vampire Hunter D are better than the novels they're based on, this is the only one I'd outright call good, and the one I'd say does the best job of realizing the series' potential. If you have ever been curious, just watch it, enjoy a single complete story, and let it go, content in the knowledge you have experienced the only part of the franchise worth experiencing.