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| Vampire Hunter D |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 80 M |
| Public Rating: 8.31 (26 votes) |
Director: Toyoo Ashida |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Japanese Anime |
Year: 1985 |
| Writer(s): Yasushi Hirano from Hideyuki Kikuchi 's novel "Kyuuketsuki Hanta |
| Reviewed by: Aaron Graham |
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I ventured into Blockbuster video the other day, and asked the store clerk where the Japanese Anime section was. I thought he'd just point to the direction of the videos but he did one better. He gave me some hints on what the best ones were.
A little backhistory here. I am a MAJOR film geek, fanatic, and whatever you want to call me, but for some reason I had never seen an entire Anime film. I decided to jump on the gun last week to see what I was missing. Needless to say, I left Blockbuster with the 1985 standard Anime classic "VAMPIRE HUNTER D".
The story takes place far into the future, where the world is inhabited by normal humans, vampires, werewolfs, and other such creatures. We have an excellant pre-opening credits sequence where Count Magnus Lee is introduced. He bites our heroine Doris, and so she is slowly turning into a vampire. Enter out hero, known only as 'D the Vampire Hunter'. He's a lot like Clint Eastwood in the Sergio Leone-"Man With No Name" series of spaghetti westerns. He's cool, and most of all, silent.
Doris hires 'D' to kill Magnus so she can turn back to a human and raise her little brother. There's a wide array of characters in the film but they are mostly cliche characters like little brother, the doctor, the Count's daughter (who isn't so bad after all), the Count's henchman, excetera excetera. The characters aren't completely fleshed out, and we never really care for them (it is only an 80 minute movie).
The action sustains us though for the time limit, although the animation isn't the greatest and certainly not up to date to today's anime standards (just look at the backgrounds during the fight scenes).
As you can expect, there are quite a few surprises involving 'D', which I won't spoil here. This animated film ISN'T for children as it has A LOT of gruesome violence and some nudity.
Supposedly, this film had some influence on Coppola's version of "BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA" and the way the Count was presented in that film. I could certainly draw comparisons between both Counts.
This film was just remade in 2000, and updated with top notch animation. I have not seen this version, but it would be interesting to compare the two.
This 1985 version was directed by Toyoo Ashida, with original music by Tesuya Komuro, and characters designed by Yoshitaka Amano.It is availible with some extra features (like a trailer, making-of, and preview for the upcoming video game) on DVD, and on VHS in both dubbed and subtitled versions (I would have opted for the Subtitles version but got stuck with the original Dubbed CBS 1985 VHS release).
Bottom line is that I was pleased with my first Japanese Anime film, and will probably rent a few more but I'm not completely won over by these films yet, I'm sure there are better ones than this, which I will surely watch and review for this site in the future.
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