Vampire Hunter D review

It suddenly occurred to me that prior to today I have never once written about an anime title on this site. Well, where better to start than from the beginning; and Vampire Hunter D was the first anime I ever watched. I’m guessing I was in junior high when I heard about some weird foreign vampire cartoon with a mix of gore and gratuitous nudity. Obviously I was fascinated, as any respectable 12-year-old would be, so I managed to get my hands on a VHS copy. Because I watched this at such an impressionable age it’s nearly impossible for me to step back and develop a new opinion from the perspective of an adult who’s seen a few hundred Japanese movies and animes. So instead of trying, I’m just going stick with my original wide-eyed, non-jaded perspective: this movie is totally badass.

The film is set in the year 12090, approximately 10,000 years after a cataclysmic war rendered most of Earth a mutant-infested wasteland. Ancient, powerful vampires—often referred to as “aristocrats” due to their social standing—have become the dominant species on the planet. One night a sparsely-dressed girl named Doris is out hunting mutants to keep her family’s farm safe when her crucifix is suddenly ripped off by a werewolf and she is subsequently rendered powerless by a powerful 10,000-year-old vampire—Count Magnus Lee.

Later we see a mysterious man riding his cyborg horse through a nearby field when Doris approaches him antagonistically. When he won’t respond to her questions she decides to attack him as a test, and soon discovers he’s an incredibly powerful vampire hunter. She shows him the bite mark on her neck and explains her dire situation, begging him to kill Count Lee before she’s forced to become his new wife. D calmly accepts the job and goes home with her.

You don’t survive 10,000 years by being stupid, so Count Lee doesn’t do any of his own dirty work. Instead, he has hundreds of mutants, demons, and werewolves doing his bidding so a simple wooden stake or crucifix alone is never enough. D knows this, and it soon becomes clear he has plenty of experience dispatching all types of unsavory beasts. When Lee’s daughter Lamika arrives at Doris’s home to kill her and protect her family’s “pure” bloodline, D manages to fend her and her mutant partner off, but in the process his healing powers make it obvious that he’s actually a “dampiel”—half vampire, half human.

In stark contrast to Lamika, D is ashamed of the vampire blood running through his veins and refuses to discuss it with anyone—even the bizarre mouth-creature living in the palm of his hand. Even so, he must ultimately draw on his vampire half to escape a deadly trap and save Doris while somehow repressing it enough not to feed on her himself. This conflict is commonplace in vampire stories nowadays, but in 1985 it was actually pretty unique.

While anime purists might consider this story’s narrative a little too simplistic or trite compared to some of the genre-busting, complex storylines they’re now used to, the ability of “Vampire Hunter D” to pull non-anime fans into the fray can’t be overstated. So many people got into anime (or Japanese movies in general) because of this title that it’s gained sort of an iconic status over the years. Because of the simplistic story, a copious amount of gore, and brief nudity thrown in for no apparent reason this one is probably best suited to be a first step into the world of anime. Think of it as a primer to get you prepared for the real classics like Akira and Ghost in the Shell. Established fans probably won’t see much they haven’t seen a hundred times before, but regardless of your experience level this form of stylistic violence is always good for some mindless entertainment.

Availability: US distributor Urban Vision released "Vampire Hunter D" on region 1 DVD on October 17, 2000. For full specs, see this post.

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