Blood: The Last Vampire
Type: Movie
Genre: Action/Horror
Version: Region 1 DVD
Reviewed: 01/11/04
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You can say Saya has a short fuse, you can say she’s unbalanced, but this girl and her two comrades of a secret organization are the only ones who can stop the Teropterids from feeding off the human race’s blood. What’s a Teropterids? These lovely creatures are what you’d call demons that can shape shift and assume human form.
Ah, but every anime movie has a catch, for you see Saya is no ordinary human herself. She is a vampire, and the last of her race that has the power to stop these beasts. In order to locate and eliminate the threat, Saya pretends to be a student at a school on an army base, because that is where they can detect the Teropterids.
But don’t let this trick you into thinking it’s a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer wannabe because trust me it is far from it. In terms of action sequences everything’s executed in great manga style, you know, the trademark blood splattering, and ripping off of limbs…yeah, I know what your thinking, disgusting. But you gotta like the style to appreciate it.
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| This girl has enough attitude for two. |
The way Blood: The Last Vampire plays through is quite smooth. In fact, it plays through too smoothly, you won’t even realize the movie is about to end until it’s over. Not because you’re lost in the great story, but because it is less then an hour long. From the way the movie ends you’d think there was another scene about to start, but no, that’s it. This leaves you disappointed. I don’t believe any further adventures of Saya are being planned but it would definitely help this movie’s very bitter tasting finish. It does have the potential to bloom into an interesting series if more plot was added, which based on this film would not be hard to accomplish.
A lot of anime is famous for not explaining things and leaving it up to the viewer to decide what is really going on. This movie take it to a whole other level, as it leaves so many details out that it leaves you seriously pissed off.
I guess the only positive things that bring up this movie’s enjoyment are the great action sequences and animation. The attention to detail in the environments stand out and emphasize realistic qualities. This movie was considered and still is considered a breakthrough in digital animation because everything was done on computer. Even the characters that where hand-drawn ended up being colored digitally. Production IG and Manja did a great job visually.
This movie perhaps deserves a rental to look at the quality digital animation, but only if you can ignore the awful story.
-Q Jets