Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust 
バンパイアハンターD 「Banpaia Hanta- D」
Release Date: April 21st, 2001 (Japan)
Duration: 102 mins
Director: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Writer: Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Screenplay/Storyboards), Hideyuki Kikuchi (Original Concept), Yoshitaka Amano (Original Character Design)
Starring: Hideyuki Tanaka (D), Emi Shinohara (Charlotte Elbourne), Koichi Yamadera (Meier Link), Megumi Hayashibara (Leila), Bibari Maeda (Carmilla), Chiharu Suzuka (D’s Mother, Mina), Yusaku Yara (Borgoff),
Animation Production: Madhouse
Website Twitter: @vampirehd_PR ANN MAL
If you grew up with anime in the 90s, you knew the works of director Yoshiaki Kawajiri and writer Hideyuki Kikuchi.
Kawajiri’s works included adaptations like Goku Midnight Eye (1989) and original works like Ninja Scroll (1993), He also adapted a host of Kikuchi’s novels like Demon City Shinjuku (1988) and Wicked City (1987), for the screen. A lot of Kawajiri’s titles were licensed by Manga Entertainment, a key company in popularising anime in the West via VHS and TV broadcasts. Thus, you were prepared later during the internet age of the 2000s for Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.
An adaptation of Kikuchi’s story, “Demon Death Chase,” the film is set in an alternate far future Earth following a nuclear war that left humans living in scattered frontier towns beset by vampires, known here as Nobility, who have harnessed science for experimentation and use humans as cattle. Between the towns are mutants, monsters, and madmen vampires have created and manipulated to act as guardians to what is left of their own crumbling civilisation. Indeed, the Nobles are in decline following a conflict between themselves and for all of their intellect, they are under threat of extinction as a class of people known as Hunters roam the land, ridding the wastes of supernatural beings.
The titular vampire hunter D is a sword-wielding Dhampir born of a union between a human and a vampire. He takes on bounties with the intention of ridding the world of Nobility and his latest sees him hired by the Elbourne family. Their daughter, Charlotte, has been abducted by Meier Link, a vampire lord who has spirited the young woman away in a black carriage one night. D is in a race against time to save her for she might be changed into a vampire at any moment. The Elbourne family have also hired the Marcus Brothers, an infamous group of hunters known showing ruthlessness to both their targets and competition – and that includes D. However, he might have an ally in Leila, one of the Marcus Brothers.
What transpires is a non-stop action chase movie across a melange of settings: a western world with deserts, saloons, cowboys and sheriffs wielding repeating rifles and, after the chase winds its way past oil derricks, shattered highways and derelict sand-covered spacecraft, it gives way to more European gothic locales before the story culminates in a showdown in an ancient castle, kept in order by magic and machines, in a Carpathian mountain location.¹
These sights are many in this quickly-paced film where character fight on their way through but they are so distinctive and the artwork beautiful that the film easily suggests the huge scope that Kikuchi’s massive multiple-novel spanning universe operates with. Backgrounds are dotted with all manner of interesting landmarks like aqueducts, crumbling highways, and manicured gardens gone to seed and then there will be the bits of weirdness like a scene involving humongous desert manta rays leaping through the skies, all of this regarded as normal by the characters, barely commented on, but amazing to behold for the viewer. The discordant nature of the styles is fascinating and gives the film a weird feel that makes it even more fascinating, even awe inspiring, especially because the sense of scale is impressively conveyed by Kawajiri through muscular direction, where he uses long shots showing D riding his cybernetic horse against huge vistas or he deploys bold pans and zooms to show a castle in all of its ghoulish glory. It is really cinematic.
Click to view slideshow.Each location is also emotionally evocative and feeds into a sense of desolation and danger, loneliness, and loss and the richness of these feelings help invest us in the fates of the pursued and the pursuers.
Despite being a fantastical world, there are two plotlines of love, or at least, acceptance, that make this relatable and human.
The driver of the action is Meier Link and Charlotte’s story of a forbidden love that they can only realise by going on the run. Their destination is the romantically named “City of Night” which is found at the end of the stars. Their reason for flight is that it is the only place they can escape human prejudice. The background of conflict between humanity and monsters pushes them on while their very basic desire to be together throws in plot twists for the film as Charlotte and Meier take extraordinary risks to stay together.
Suspense mostly falls on how their journey through these mysterious lands will end as opposed to whether Charlotte will be rescued from being turned. A scintilla of romance is often established in scenes showing both displaying a willingness to sacrifice their own lives, Meier willing to risk exposure to the sun in one sequence while Charlotte erotically extends her neck to him later in the narrative, knowing full well the risk of being drained by his fangs that trace her skin.
D and Leila are more reactive during the chase but have their own narrative of being treated with prejudice themselves for D is half vampire while Leila has a backstory that involves being an outcast due to vampiric taint. Throughout the film, it is teased that they might be a parallel couple but such trite plotting is resisted to ensure that Leila becomes her own individual character who overcomes a particular trauma and whose surprise actions at the end help the chase have a tragic yet romantic denouement for viewers.
Click to view slideshow.On top of the landscapes, the characters are also striking. There are more traditional horror monsters like bats and ghouls. Then there are the demons/mutants. Mashira, a werewolf who can produce a huge mouth in his gut, Benge, a warrior that slips in and out of shadow and control space/dimensions, and Caroline, a dhampir who can transmutate and control objects. They are as freaky as almost anything Kawajiri has had in an animation – save the sexy spider lady in Wicked City – and there are great mano a mano fights for D to face.
The more human characters are just plain beautiful. They are based on designs by Yoshitaka Amano, the man whose dreamy Art Nouvaeu-inspired character illustrations defined the Final Fantasy series. His original designs are close to the glittering romanticism of Klimt’s figures while Kawajiri gives them more muscular and harder defined features that are common in his films so on top of being beautiful they also look like real fighters.
They all fit perfectly into the detailed landscape that is full of mystery and supernatural elements. This may be a chase narrative but enough time is spent furnishing details of towns and communities and the monster ecosystem that it feels like we get a good sense of the world. This occurs especially whenever D encounters old-timers who have knocked around the desert long enough know that beautiful face of the Dhampir and relay a story about his exploits, as well as the beautiful visuals that convey a haunted world full of violence, and this, in turn acts as a great backdrop to a love story and one of overcoming trauma.
As a whole, it is an action-packed sci-fi horror ride that delights due to breath-takingly beautiful art, surprises because it is imaginative and mixes influences and cultures to synthesise a unique vampire tale, and moves because it has an aching romanticism of its character and it is endlessly rewatchable.
¹ In a nice twist/nod to vampire law, this sprawling castle is owned by Carmilla Bathory, a playful mixture between J Sheridan Le Fanu’s Gothic horror luminary and the real-world notorious Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory whose alleged blood-soaked mythology helps inform this character.
The film and media site Filmarks has announced that, for the 25th anniversary of the production of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, there will be a week-long screening of the Japanese-language version, which has never graced cinema screens in Japan before.
The version that has previously been screened theatrically is the international version with Japanese subtitles so this is a special event.
There are 62 theatres planned for screenings and they will begin on February 28th and last for one week. This comes ahead of a Blu-ray release on March 26th which will have a remaster based on the original 35mm negative to make the most of the detailed Cel animation.
To find out more about the Blu-ray, check the Avex site.
To get an idea of the locations and prices, check the Filmarks site