Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
2000
D: Yoshiaki Kawajiri
**********
For years I’ve been familiar with the 1985 anime after tuning into the Sci-Fi Channel’s Saturday Anime on my 10th(?) birthday and being exposed to entirely new ideas of just how violent a movie can be. It was only this year when I finally decided to watch the sequel after hearing about it for so long. My curiosity was enhanced by its apparently being more popular than the first entry. Also, this is the 25th Anniversary.
In this story D (Andy Philpot) is commissioned by wealthy human John Elbourne (John DiMaggio) to rescue his daughter Charlotte (Wendy Lee), who has been kidnapped by vampire nobleman Meier Link (John Rafter Lee). Elbourne has also commissioned the Marcus Brothers, consisting of their leader Borgoff (Matt McKenzie), Nolt (DiMaggio), Kyle (Alex Fernandez), and Grove (Jake Fletcher). Accompanying this gang is Leila (Pamella Segall), who has a score to settle with vampires in general. D touches base with them and, after an unsuccessful attempt to catch Meier, finds out that Charlotte has supposedly eloped with him voluntarily.
In the process, Leila breaks off from the group and makes an insane attempt to catch Link herself, resulting in D’s saving her life by dressing her wound. One would wonder why she would do something so stupid just for revenge, but then again, her one positive relationship is her concern for Grove, an invalid whose powers are extreme but can exhaust him to death. Perhaps she wanted the reward for herself in order to help free him from the risk of being exploited by his brothers. I also noted that her voice sounded somewhat familiar. It almost sounded like they had obtained Milla Jovovich, so I checked and it turned out it's Bobby Hill.
D attempts a parlay with the Barbarois, a mutant gang led by a lovably eccentric old man on a unicycle (Dwight Schultz) that has pledged its help to Link, but is unsuccessful. He is hopelessly outnumbered (characters keep getting themselves into these hopeless situations), but is bailed out by Grove’s psychic avatar, who forges a path of implacable destruction in a starry-eyed trance akin to that of a fifth-generation Altima driver.
The chase continues with our heroes’ being pursued by superpowered Barbarois assassins Benge (Schultz), Caroline (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn), and Mashira (DiMaggio). In the process the assassins are killed one by one, taking Nolt and Kyle with them. During a fight with Caroline, D pushes himself to the point of heat exhaustion and is helped by Leila. The two promise each other during the respite to send flowers to each other’s graves depending on who dies first.
Eventually Meier and Charlotte meet Countess Carmilla (Julia Fletcher) in her castle in order to procure a starship to leave Earth with. Unfortunately, Carmilla was only using them in a plan to reincarnate herself and begin a new reign of terror. She uses various disturbing visions to defeat them, and Borgoff is turned in the process. I’ve never liked the strong, seemingly virtuous hero’s being subverted into becoming a dangerous abusive threat, but it may be somewhat earned here. Grove sacrifices himself to save Leila from Borgoff by pushing his powers to the limit. Meier and D destroy Carmilla and, after a tense faceoff, agree to a truce, with D’s taking Charlotte’s ring as a receipt for her family. Meier and Charlotte blast off in their rocket.
In what may seem like a flashback, a young girl resembling Leila (Debi Derryberry) is at a funeral for a loved one when she sees D observing in the distance. She accosts him and it is revealed that she is Leila’s granddaughter and that the funeral is hers. D confirms that he knew Leila and tells the girl that he is glad that she found love.
Despite being a fun movie, my biggest complaint about it is the troubling nature of Meier’s relationship with Charlotte. I’m a bit put off by the suggestion that I am to sympathize with a demonic nobleman’s lopsided tryst with a lower-class hnau with very few prospects for success and a promise of family separation, but then again, the work does look rather pretty. It’s framed as a respectable one since he resists the powerful temptation to turn her into a vampire, but she is still being separated from her family for what I presume to be the rest of her life and even being spirited away to space! It also doesn’t help that Link has apparently done genuinely evil things like turning a whole village of people into zombies to slow down his pursuers. To be fair, though, said demonic noble is willing to put his life on the line for his paramour, so there's that (Kyle, being the type of person who's named "Kyle," makes fun of him for it). While the protagonists are sympathetic enough, they too start rooting for the literal and physical ship to take off in the end. For all the flak it gets for being a cheesy 80’s violent anime I greatly prefer the opposing plot of the 1985 movie, in which the vampire is literally just an evil, dirty old man who needs to be slain. Bloodlust seems too much like a modernist subversion. Both entries are apparently based on the first and third Vampire Hunter D novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi, with a reference to second book in a brief scene in which D is defended by an old man (John Hostetter) who was a child he had rescued from vampires.
D himself is a cool character, a typical stoic loner hero that men like me have a weakness for. Still, I’m starting to think the grouchy immortal character does not make that much sense. Sure, you’d have to mourn multiple generations of friends, but eventually you’d accept that over constant painful loneliness. D is a dhampir and somewhat of an outcast, but he does reject permanent friendship even when offered. Of course, his powers do give him the sense of obligation to move to the next town that needs help, and he’s had a past. His Left Hand (Mike McShane) is a solid comic relief character without being too intrusive.
The visuals are beautiful, and make the movie worth watching by themselves. The artwork is clean and gorgeous and contains a shot so iconic and popular that it’s a wonder it hasn’t suffered the same fate as the bike slide from Akira. Particularly impressive is the design of Carmilla’s castle, which is a decided creative baroque work; we need to model a church after it. There is some CGI, but it is well integrated and utilized. However, despite being better-looking per se than the first OVA, I believe that latter’s gritty sci-fi aesthetic seems much more appropriate for the post-apocalyptic Dying Earth setting. Violence is much more subdued in the new movie, and only approaches 80’s anime levels when D’s cyborg horse falls from a cliff and hits the ground in a brief explosion of viscera. Mashira’s design seems to have inspired a few OC's with bellymouths.
Bloodlust is a great example of anime when it the style plays to its strengths. For whatever reason, this medium never prioritized fluid animation. I’ve always thought that a good anime is one that accepts and explores artistic opportunities usually in conflict with animation, such as detail, atmosphere, and shot composition. On the other hand, I’ve always hated anime’s stilted, lifeless, unexpressive attempts at cartooniness and neoteny (which Bloodlust thankfully lacks). Best to be the best at what you are than weak version of what you are not. Of course, one has to be prudent when using these limitations. Perhaps this is why the style lends itself to cool stoical loners like D in the same way that western animation uses anthros because they work better in simpler, more-animation friendly art styles.
I suppose I feel this way because I'm a Xennial and my childhood straddled the Disney Renaissance and the Japanese Invasion, so I feel I have a good appreciation for the strengths of both media and never got the idea into my head that expressiveness is ugly.
Arguably more fitting to this aesthetic is the score by Marco D’Ambrosio, but it’s far too generic and doesn’t hold a candle next to Tetsuya Komuro’s ominous synth soundtrack in the 1985 OVA. Perhaps it’s a sign of the time when people were distancing themselves the 80’s, a dark age.
Voice acting is okay with some weak points (Borgoff, for one thing sounds like background chatter from Popeye, but for all I know that could be intentional), although I was surprised that the movie was originally made for an English cast, because the lip-synching could be a bit better. It’s a reflection of anime’s cult following at the time and how it was becoming more popular in the West. The cast also features John DeMita.
While the movie has its big nagging flaw it’s a fun watch and worth a look just for how gorgeous it is.
QUOTES
LEFT HAND: D, Are you awake?
D: I need your help…to swallow up this spell.
LEFT HAND: You’re a slave driver, you know that?
LEFT HAND: I don't know about you, but man I sure miss that horse. What was his name?
LEFT HAND: Oh, oh the silent treatment, huh? Well I got two words for you: Heat Syndrome. Look, look, I know I'm a parasite, but haven't I always been a helpful parasite? Now you may not care if you die from heat, but becoming a piece of beef jerky is not a lifelong ambition of mine!
LEFT HAND: Yeah, well, what’s the sound of one hand yapping?
LEILA: Don’t get any ideas! Hey, I’m just trying to stay dry here. If there was any other place to go, believe me, I’d be there. As soon as the rain lets up, I’ll be gone from here and from you.
D: I think I can guess your problem. Your family was the victim of vampires.
LEILA: You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know anything about it.
D: All right. Perhaps I don’t.
LEILA: [removing earpiece] This stupid thing, it bothers me... You really are a weird one, you know that? In spite of being a dunpeal hunter and all that that entails. How did you know about my mother?
D: You called her name, remember?
LEILA: She was kidnapped by vampires. My father went after her and was trying to rescue her, so they killed him. And after a while my mother returned, but she wasn't my mother anymore; she'd been changed. The people in the village stoned her to death while I watched. After that I left home. I met the Marcus brothers and joined with them. I wanted to be a hunter to avenge my parents' deaths. I've seen many terrible things since then: lives destroyed, families devastated, hopes crushed... everytime, it seems a vampire is to blame.
D: I can understand why you’d choose to do it. But the life of a hunter is no kind of life.
LEILA: It's the only life I'm any good for now. And it looks like it's the only life you've ever known. So I suggest we make a pact, since we're both in it for the long haul: whoever dies first, the other one can come and bring flowers to their grave. How's that?... It's the rain, makes me sentimental. I don't know why I should care about that - it's just I love flowers. And I don't think I'll be getting any, I'm all alone after all. We have that much in common, don't we? That we're both hunters and we're both alone. Oh well, I'm being silly, doesn't really matter...
D: I’ll do it. I’ll bring you flowers if I survive this…but I don’t expect to.
LEILA: Stop. I didn’t really mean it when I said that, and anyway, I don’t really understand why you should keep on doing this.
D: Because I’m a dunpeal. I don’t get to have a life. Not like you.
[Meier catches fire while braving the sunlight to get Charlotte back]
KYLE: Over here, hot stuff. Hoo hoo, look at him burn!
[he and Borgoff continue to laugh and make fun of him]
LEFT HAND: Getting close... the Castle of Chaythe. Soon we'll be able to see it: the home of Carmilla, the Bloody Countess. You've heard of her. For five thousand years her rule of terror lasted, and then, that was that! Your father, the Vampire King, grew angry. He was impatient with her vanity; offended by her bloodlust, her gluttony. He grew so tired that he killed her while she slept, impaling her on a sword, and that was it for her. Except she haunts the place now with phantoms and demons... But you don't care about that, do you? But I bet I know what really gets to you, dunpeal. What really gets to you - the thought of those two lovebirds having another dunpeal, huh? That's it. You see, I know you. I know how you think, I know how you feel, I know every move you make. You can't-
[D clenches fist to shut him up]
D: Stop right there, Meier. I’m taking her back. Back to her family who loved her.
MEIER LINK: She knew I loved her best of all. You can’t understand it. You’ve never loved a human.
D: I’ve never killed one, either.
MEIER LINK: She is here by her own choice, dunpeal. So unless you're the kind of man who would take a woman against her will for the money in it - and I am sure it's a lot - I suggest you save your sorry ass now and leave us to travel in peace.
D: I would if I could believe you, Meier. Your credibility, however, is less than impeccable under the circumstances. You kidnapped the girl.
[Japanese dub]
MEIER LINK: You should bear in mind, D, that your struggle to resist our nature can’t last forever. One day, the urge for their blood will be stronger.
D: And when that day comes, another will hunt me. It’s as simple as that.
GIRL: Hey, mister! Wait! Mister, wait! Um, excuse me, sir, but I was wondering if you knew my grandmother Leila... Yes. It's you, isn't it? My grandmother told me about you. So, I'd be honoured if you could come to our house. My father would be so happy...
D: I appreciate the kindness.
GIRL: Oh, come on, we don’t live very far…
D: I just came to keep a promise I made to an old friend. She was afraid no one would mourn her death. I'm glad she was so wrong.
GIRL: Okay, I guess I see…anyway, thank you for coming.
[D leaves]
GIRL: Goodbye, Goodbye!
LEFT HAND: Well, that was nice. You’re not so bad after all…you just dress bad.
