Vampire Hunter D

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

vampire hunter d 1985. OAV. 80 min. Supernatural horror. org Hideyuki Kikuchi (novel). dir Toyo’o Ashida. des Yoshitaka Amano, Toyo’o Ashida, Noriyasu Yamauchi.

vampire hunter d: bloodlust 2000. Movie. 103 min. dir Yoshiaki Kawajiri. scr Yoshiaki Kawajiri. mus Marco D’Ambrosio. des Yutaka Minowa. -jd

A vampire hunter who is half-vampire himself works as a mercenary to protect others in a far-future world of demons and night creatures, in this unique blend of the science fiction, Western, and horror genres.

In a hellish future world where vampires, werewolves, mutants, and demons roam freely, a young woman named Doris falls prey to the bite of Count Lee, the vampire who rules over the surrounding land. Ostracized by the local villagers and afraid that the count might return, Doris hires a mercenary vampire hunter named D for protection. Tall and mysterious, clad in a black cape and wide-brimmed hat, D is a half-human, half-vampire hybrid. He also has a strange symbiote in the palm of his left hand, an evil-looking face that talks to him like a sort of nagging conscience or sidekick.

Count Lee does indeed dispatch his minions to abduct Doris. Bored by immortality, the count is enchanted by the human girl and intends to make her his bride, but his henchmen have misgivings about his plans. Lee’s haughty daughter Lamika hates the idea of her father marrying a common human, while the mutant Rei Ginsei is eager to improve his position by becoming a vampire himself. In any event, D proves his value as a bodyguard by fending off Lamika and Rei, then fights his way through Lee’s monster-filled fortress to bring Doris home safe and sound. Unfortunately, human treachery results in Doris being delivered once again to Count Lee’s care, and a showdown with the count himself is the only way D can rescue the girl before she becomes the bride of the undead.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust features all new characters except for D himself. A young woman named Charlotte has been kidnapped from her home by the vampire Meier Link, and her family hires D to get the girl back. The Markus Brothers, a rival team of bounty hunters, are uninterested in sharing their bounty with a half-vampire like D, but Leila, one of the hunters working with the Markus gang, strikes a temporary truce with D after he saves her life.

The story quickly turns tragic. It turns out that Charlotte is in love with Meier Link, and refuses to leave his side. Protected by a gang of shape-shifting monsters called the Barbarois, the lovers flee to the grand castle of Carmilla, an ancient and notorious vampire who has promised to help them escape. Instead, Carmilla tricks them with illusions, resulting in tragedy for both the couple and their pursuers. The bounty hunters go home empty-handed (those that survive, anyway), and all that remains, years later, is for D to fulfill a promise he once made.

Seventeen novels featuring D have been written to date, from the first in 1983 to the most recent, as of this writing, published in Japan in 2005. Three of the novels were adapted into a series of five drama CDs, and a PlayStation game based on Bloodlust was released in 2000.

Visually, Vampire Hunter D is a far-future Western, with dusty plains and mesas, the windswept fields of Doris’s farm, and a town like a cowboy trading post. Occasional futuristic additions, such as the force-field generator on Doris’s farm, are the only reminders that this is not a primitive Wild West. D, riding into the story on a cybernetic horse, is the stranger in town—a lone samurai or gunslinger, there to do a job and then ride away again once his task is done.

D’s design is easily the most distinctive element of Vampire Hunter D. With the pale complexion, flowing hair, and ornate black costume of a gothic nightclubber, D stands out from a cast of generic-looking anime characters like a visitor from a completely different video: Doris has the babyish face, willowy limbs, and impractical mini-skirted outfit of a high school girl, and Count Lee is an archetypal Dracula clone in his formal suit and cape. Traditional monster-movie imagery is used for Lee’s looming castle topped by twisting spires, and a fascinating menagerie of monsters slithers through the bowels of his fortress: giants, Japanese yokai, and creatures of Greek myth—the three snake women who attack D in a subterranean cavern first appear to him as beautiful women playing music, like Sirens. The animation is quite limited, with rushing speed lines often added to give motion to action scenes, but color is used imaginatively, especially during one psychedelic sequence near the film’s end, where moons and stars wheel through the sky in a flashing strobe effect.

D’s design was almost the only element to survive intact for the 2000 sequel (although the snake women do make a tiny cameo). Produced fifteen years later, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust boasts a rendition of D even more meticulously faithful to Yoshitaka Amano’s original design illustrations, plus new vampire characters that outgoth even D. Elaborate costumes, especially for Charlotte, Meier Link, and the Countess Carmilla, are gorgeously rendered, with special attention paid to flowing capes and hair. Flickering candles, glossy woods, and silvered mirrors are also used to fabulous effect. Bloodlust is a visual treat for the eyes, and perfectly executed computer graphics create a wonderful sense of depth to the environments.

As in the original film, the mixture of old and new technology creates a unique vision of the future. The Markus Brothers’ armored transport and high-tech weapons coexist alongside horse-drawn carriages and Winchester rifles. The bounty hunters use weapons specific to their vocation—a giant hammer sharpened into a stake, a cross-shaped searchlight, a wrist-mounted crossbow, throwing knives for decapitation. The menagerie of the first film is replaced by the Barbarois, monsters for hire who provide D and the other bounty hunters with some truly spectacular fight scenes featuring characters who can change shape, flowing like oil inside shadows or merging effortlessly with the wood of a tree. No opportunity to re-create a classic horror-movie image is missed: bats take flight against the backdrop of a full moon, and the vampire hunters ply their trade in Halloween-worthy nightscapes of bare trees, stark moonlight, and tilting tombstones.

Produced in 1985, the original Vampire Hunter D is a good representation of the state of the anime artform in the early years of the direct-to-video or OAV movement. (The first OAV, Moon Station Dallos, had been produced only two years previous, in 1983.) Animators working on OAVs had the artistic freedom to create practically anything, as long as it would sell, and Vampire Hunter D, with its mish-mash of elements taken from the Western, horror, and sci-fi genres—mutant beasts, high-tech lasers, and vampire lineages going back ten thousand years—was a typical example of the kind of risks producers were willing to take. It’s this quality of genre mix-up that gives Vampire Hunter D its enduring charm even today: the cowboy-movie imagery of Doris alone at night, patrolling the perimeter of her ranch with a high-powered rifle; the neighboring townspeople as brave pioneers instead of the terrified villagers of Dracula films, grimly defending their homes against hosts of hostile horrors. Bloodlust takes the Western metaphor even further by presenting a future where the vampires are in decline, leftovers from a vanishing frontier. The heavily armed Markus Brothers, with their systematic methods of stamping out monsters, are a logical evolution, an organized posse bringing order to a lawless land.

The real appeal of Vampire Hunter D, though, revolves entirely around its enigmatic main character. D is an unusual anime hero: he’s cool without doing much, making an impression by presence alone. It’s hinted that he has a famous ancestry (think “D” for the name of a notable fictional vampire), but D’s true appeal is what we don’t know about him—it’s never explained, for example, why he has a face in his hand (Kikuchi’s novels contain a little more information, but nothing like a full disclosure). He seems to struggle with his vampiric urges—in one sexually charged scene, a lovesick Doris offers her body and blood to D and he pushes her away, fighting to contain his bloodlust at the sight of her bare neck. There’s no scene like it in Bloodlust (featuring D, anyway—there is a similar moment featuring Meier Link), the one disappointment in an otherwise outstanding film. D is almost a minor character in Bloodlust, still a Clint Eastwood-esque hero, but a relic of the past, an outsider because society will no longer accept him. It’s a characterization that fits perfectly within the Western motif, but given that D and the colorful monsters and vampires of his world are far more interesting than plain old humans, a little depressing.

The opening scene of the original Vampire Hunter D is arguably the most atmospheric of the entire production, with Doris moving through fields of waving grain in the moonlight as nightmare beasts stalk her flock of futuristic cyber-sheep. Accompanied only by haunting music, the appearance of Count Lee, silhouetted by flashes of lightning, is an eerie, silent moment. (The English dub track, produced in the 1980s by Streamline Pictures, unfortunately adds dialogue for the count’s appearance.)

Bloodlust’s opening scene is a virtuoso creation in deep-focus 3D, a camera pan across a city landscape dominated by hundreds of crosses that twist and melt at an unseen vampire’s approach. Water freezes and greenery melts as the invisible figure makes its way through the town and into Charlotte’s room. We see a brief shot of her in a mirror, dangling as if held in the arms of a vampire not reflected in the glass, before being spirited away.

Another fabulous moment of CG artistry: a single arrow, fired through a rushing 3D landscape of tombstones and tilting crosses, is caught by D as his cape flares and his horse rears up in silhouette against a full moon.

Sci-fi novelist Hideyuki Kikuchi created the original story, and has written several novels set in the Vampire Hunter D universe. He also created Wicked City, Darkside Blues, and Demon City Shinjuku.

Yoshitaka Amano, celebrated artist and character designer for Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Time Bokan, Angel’s Egg, and the Final Fantasy video game series, created D’s original character design in his painted illustrations for the original Vampire Hunter D novel.

A half-vampire hybrid is known in folklore as “dhampir” or “dhampyr,” but in the current licensed English translation of Vampire Hunter D, D is referred to as a “dampiel,” variously spelled “dunpeal” in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Both videos were animated by studio Madhouse.

Bloodlust was produced with an international audience in mind: the English dub was recorded even before the Japanese track, the music was created by American composer Marco D’Ambrosio, and the audio mix for the movie was recorded at various studios in Northern California. The film’s premiere was held at the historic Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, California.

violence There are severed limbs, decapitations, and savage vampire bites in both productions. Bloodlust’s detailed animation is graphic, but the original Vampire Hunter D tops it for sheer, crude violence, with sprays of cartoon blood geysering from wounds. nudity Partial nudity in both productions, limited to brief, obscured glimpses of female breasts.