Blood-Last Vampire (2000)

"Blood" is a nice 45 min ride into the depths of good anime. The cinematography is breathtaking. But like all good anime, you have to provide a good storyline. This is where Blood falls short. Although intriguing, the story lacks character developement. The main character "Saya" is mysterious and enchanting but the viewer never gets to find out about here background leaving one thirsty for more story. If you need a reason to check this movie out, do it for the animation, you won't be dissapointed. I can't help compare "Saya" to a younger version of the deadly and often forgotten mutant from X-men called "Psylocke"
 
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Beautiful animation with some good action scenes. These are the only positives for this movie. There is no plot whatsoever. Nobody knows what the character's purpose is. Just go with Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust, a DVD that is worth your money.
 
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I would have chosen a 0 for the plot but they wouldnt let me. Someone on another review said they "reveal bits and pieces" and that is partially true. Although it isn't enough for it to make any sense in the end. Yes, you do find out something about her, but it doesn't matter. You don't really find out why she is killing all of those thing other than "she has to." Just do yourself a favor and go buy Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust when it comes out and skip this one.
 
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***Customer Note*** First of all, don’t be mistaken in assuming this is an actual feature length movie. It is not. You can consider it being like the pilot episode of a series. Only they have yet to announce anymore episodes. As far as I know, this animation was created as a one-off experiment & an example of what can be achieved with modern animation techniques. Hand drawn characters are composited over fully 3D backgrounds. Now this concept in itself is nothing new, we saw this way back already in Beauty & the Beast. But using CG in movies is nothing new either, but movies like Jurassic park just took it to another level. I feel Blood does the same thing for CG in animation. Let me first clarify that Blood is not a fully computer generated animation like Final Fantasy, Blood is a hybrid & in my opinion the better of the two. While Final Fantasy was a colossal achievement in creating realistic looking computer characters, I feel that it overlooks an essential, core quality of animation. That being the creative freedom that animation allows. Animation allows you to create worlds and characters that are cooler than reality. What’s the point in computer generating what you could just film? And at a higher cost also. Why not use the freedom animation allows to create characters that have a unique look & style, that aren’t bound by reality? That’s what’s special about animation, the unique look of art. Blood combines the best of both worlds, offering the incredible realism in lighting, texture detail, and perspective manipulation that CG allows, while still keeping the artistic flair of hand drawn characters. What makes Blood’s use of CG a step beyond is the integration they’ve achieved with the hand drawn work. There are a few scenes (mainly just the train scene) that look obviously computer generated. Almost all of the rest of the scenes blend right in with the hand drawn, you won’t know where one ends and where one begins. There are shots of an airfield and of jets taking off, and although I knew for a fact it was done in computer, it looked hand drawn & thus kept me immersed in the movie’s illusionary world without feeling like I was seeing one thing pasted over another. ***The Movie*** So keeping in mind this animation wasn’t made to be a full length feature, I was able to overlook the shortcomings that the other reviewer stated. Mainly that there was no plot. Yes, there isn’t any real character or plot development, you’re thrust right into the middle of things & I thought that was cool! At the start, you know nothing about the main character, you don’t know her past & you don’t know quite what’s going on. But as the episode unfolds, they throw in little clues, bits & pieces that you take and try to fill the gaps with. I found all this very intriguing. Things aren’t just thrown right out at you, you have to analyze things, put them together to figure it out, and the things you can’t understand don’t take away from the movie but add to the mystery of the character and make you want to learn more. That’s why I said it’s like a pilot episode to a TV series (this DVD could definitely be an episode from X-files), because it peaks your interest & makes you want to see more. And boy did I want to see more. The action scenes cover a large part of the 40min running time. Plenty of cool action coupled with suspense & scary moments keeps you glued to the screen. The movie takes place on or near an American air force base in Yokota Japan during the Vietnam War period. So there is a mixing of Japanese and English dialogue. The parts that are in English were in English to begin with. Meaning this wasn’t dubbed over from Japanese, when they speak in English they were doing so in the original Japanese version also (then the Japanese had subtitles to read). The parts that were originally in Japanese, are still in Japanese, we get subtitles. The final question is, is a 40min feature worth $16? First of all, be glad you’re buying it from buy.com because most everywhere else sells it for closer to $24. So at $16 yes it’s totally worth it. Why? Because this is an awesome, quick anime feature to show others. It will leave them wanting more, without being overbearing, and without having to take time to develop, it just jumps right into the exciting stuff. So this is a great anime demo DVD to show friends so they can get an idea of why anime is so cool. ***The Video*** Unlike most anime on DVD, this DVD is thankfully in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen ratio. As far as I know the transfer is straight from digital data from a computer, like Toy Story. The picture is perfect, no grain, no compression artifacts, it’s perfect. The majority of this movie is at night, tons of black & moody lighting, so shadow detail was very important, as were black levels. They didn’t miss a beat on either of these elements. No edge enhancement and the picture is very clear and detailed. ***The Audio*** Dolby Digital 5.1, and it rocks. There are a lot of directional effects in this feature, surround channels get a very good workout. In the battle at the end, bullets echo from all around and the burning fire surrounds you. On the train scene your subwoofer will get very active & very loud! So not only is this a good demo of what anime is, it’s also a great home theater demo DVD. ***The Extras*** There aren’t a whole lot of extras, but the behind the scenes extra really delivers. It shows you the step by step process of how they integrate the CG backgrounds with the hand drawn art & all the labor that went into the creation of this feature, truly impressive. Oh and if you like vampire anime, do NOT miss Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust on DVD. buy.com has by far the lowest price on that DVD. http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=40164481&loc=322&queryType=video_dvd
 
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Although the film had great cinematic scenes the plot was non-existant. This one is definitly a "rent first" before you would want to buy it. Hack and slash - yes. Reason for hack and slash - maybe you can find it?
 
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