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Blood: The Last Vampire

2000, Movie, 48 mins

Blood: The Last Vampire: Review

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE
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Eerily beautiful and as gory as its title implies, this anime vampire story is a tantalizing fragment of a larger story, bits of which have been explored in comic book and video game form. The year is 1966, and an enigmatic Japanese girl named Saya (voice of Youki Kudoh) — whose cynical bitterness belies her youthful appearance — is on a mission. It's her destiny to hunt down and kill, with a single exsanguinating thrust of her ancient samurai sword, "chiropteans" — blood-drinking demons that look rather like FROM DUSK TILL DAWN's leathery vampires and can cloak themselves in the appearance of human beings. She reports to a mysterious man named David (Romersa), and both are part of some covert operation called the Eternal Life Project. Precisely what that project is, and how Saya comes by her extraordinary strength, is left deliberately vague, though David lets it slip that she's one of the "originals," who- or whatever they may be (at the film's conclusion, a teasing clue is dropped in this regard). Saya's new assignment involves an American military installation — Yokota Airforce Base — whose environs have been plagued by a series of mysterious deaths that David recognizes as the work of vampires. David suspects they've disguised themselves as American teenagers, so Saya must pose as a student and infiltrate the base high school. Though Saya is the story's focus, it's told primarily from the point of view of the school's plump, religious staff nurse (Nakamura), whose complacent worldview is shattered by her brush with Saya and the fiends. Blood's background images are hauntingly beautiful, and the character animation is slightly less cartoony than is the anime norm. The film's original story was developed by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade) and is probably most familiar to American audiences in its video game format. But despite its scant 48-minute running time (which many viewers will find frustrating), the film sets up a provocative equation between vampirism and American involvement in Asia — not only is this particular outbreak of demonic bloodletting centered on a U.S. military base, but the story unfolds against the subtly evoked backdrop of American involvement in Vietnam. This film was immediately hailed as a giant step forward in digital animation. (In English and Japanese) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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