The original Vampire Hunter D, produced during the early 1980s anime boom, is a marvelously self-contained and highly original film. Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi and featuring bizarre character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, Vampire Hunter D is the type of anime film that brought new fans into the anime genre. Unlike other groundbreakers like Project A-Ko and Macross, Vampire Hunter D’s reputation was unsullied by inferior, unnecessary sequels.
Until now.
I usually don’t post negative reviews, but the raves some mainstream American critics have given to Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust require me to share my strongly opposing opinion. Few mainstream critics are familiar enough with the conventions of anime film making to form an intelligent opinion – but they have heard that anime is supposed to be hip. So, like a middle-aged swinger trying to fake his way through hip hop, they over-praise virtually every anime feature lucky enough to get a limited theatrical release in the United States. I can’t imagine how many people saw this film after reading the reviews and mistakenly thought this was among the best product Japan currently creates.
Written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Bloodlust is a mess. Once more, the focus is on the enigmatic, Clint Eastwood-like bounty hunter D, who roams a futuristic wasteland in search of vampires to slay. This time, however, D finds himself in a rivalry with a team of other bounty hunters. What should provide tension instead provides tedium, as absolutely none of D’s rivals are even remotely interesting challenges to D’s skills. There’s also a confusing and maudlin subplot tossed in about the romance between a vampire and the woman he’s kidnapped; as we haven’t been given even a shred of development for either cardboard character we have no reason to care. There are multiple poorly staged fight sequences, but virtually no suspense because they all end quickly. Vampires in this world seem to do little else than stumble around, kidnap people, ride around in old carriages, and bore the audience to death. Mucking things up further, workman-like computer graphics occasionally intrude on the more mundane (and flat) cel animation of the lead characters. And, although Kawajiri can’t be blamed for this, the dubbing in the American theatrical version is among the worst I’ve ever experienced.
I’ve seen other examples of Kawajiri’s work, from an interesting samurai simulation in Animatrix, to Ninja Scroll, to X. Given the solid journeyman quality of his work, it doesn’t seem fair to pin Bloodlust’s failures on him. Rather, this is a film that simply shouldn’t have been made. Bloodlust was clearly designed for an international audience in mind, banking on the fact that many have heard of the original Vampire Hunter D film (but not necessarily seen it) and would be drawn to the marquee value of the name. How much better it would have been for Kawajiri to have been given a project of his own to create rather than to try and animate the ghost of an older anime classic.
Author's note: You may read my review of the original Vampire Hunter D here
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Other Anime Reviews Metropolis Review* Macross II Review Serial Experiments Lain Review * Cowboy Bebop Review Animatrix Review* |
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