Blood: The Last Vampire

I rented the newley released dvd of "Blood: The Last Vampire"  this weekend and gave it a spin, this is what I thought:


As you can see, the movie is based on an anime which was popular enough in Japan to spawn multiple manga books a video game and an animated series called Blood+.  I honestly don't have any familiarity with the source material so I can't speak to what they are like however I can say that this is the type of film that while it was enjoyable I will probably never revisit for another viewing, unless its on cable and nothing else is on. 

The only thing that this film did right really was the violence, there were some good fight scenes, decapitations, and Shogun Assasin esqe scenes where the protagonist single handedly takes out dozens of enemy combatants with impunity.  There were a few scenes that captured a few of the signature visuals that make anime so famous, however these are few and far between and fall short in capturing whatever type of stylistic feel the director was after. 


In short, this:

Just does not translate very well into this:

Despite some sweet violence making this movie at least marginally entertaining.  The flaws were many, first off all the CGI was garbage, everytime the enemy vampires/demons were generated by computers they looked like absolute shit. Furthermore all the gore was done in CGI which is a trend in hack and slash movies that I really do not approve of.  This movies' action looked to be influenced by Shogun Assasin/ Lady Snowblood era exploitation samurai films, and half of what gives japanese grindhouse flicks their style is the blood that looks like bright red acryllic paint spraying out everywhere, not some weird chunky burgundy computer vomit like what they used in this film.

Another thing that I really didn't like about this film was all the anime cliches that permeate it, first of all the protaganist is a teenage girl who somehow is the most badass force on the planet.  Ok I am sure the first time that was done in an anime it was a total mindblower, but now it is just played out and not even close to original.



Something that I find confusing about the movie is that it is called "The last vampire" however the word vampire is never used in the entire film, Saya hunts demons, and while on the back of the box it says that the main character Saya is a "half-vampire" the movie refers to her as a half demon, or a demon with a human soul. This leads me to the next huge cliche that kills this movies cred for me:

The Half Vampire. The Half Vampire or Dhampir if you enjoy some folklore, is probably the most overused concept in the entire universe of vampire fiction.  You have D from vampire hunter D, another highly popular gothic style anime, Nahuel from the forth twilight book, Blade from the films and the Marvel comics,  Alucard from Castlevania, Rayne from Bloodrayne, and the list goes on and on.  Ohhh a half-vampire half human what a new idea, oh wait it is a hackneyed piece of trash writing convention that has a deus ex machina effect in explaining how a diminutive Japanese teenager can be the ultimate badass savior of humanity.  Its rubbish. 

Alucard: A totally badass Dhampir from back when it wasn't such a common convention.

There are also alot of other little problems with the film that just detract from the whole thing for example: The film is set during the vietnam war, however you will forget completely about that, I have no real reason why the writers made this choice, possibly because during vietnam there would be alot of english speakers in Japan and the film is mainly shot in English, the choice is still completely arbitrary though because the vietnam era has little to no effect on the story whatsoever, the soundtrack tries to pump out some late sixties classic rock to set the mood but gives up halfway through the movie and the production values for the most part are so dark and modern that you will completely forget the era the film was supposedly shot in.


In all this movie had good action, poor acting, hackneyed and cliche story elements and just never really came together to make a lasting impression.  The anime may be able to bypass the fact that the half vampire is played out, or that the teenage girl protagonist is played out by using cool visual effects and stylization, but the live action film did not make a good faith effort to replicate the stylistic elements that anime and manga are known and made popular by. The final verdict:  wait until this ones on the sci fi channel.