tek's rating:

Blood: The Last Vampire (unrated)
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Meh. To me the movie seems fairly typical of 1980s anime, which makes it a bit disappointing when you consider it was made in 2000. Of course, it's set in 1966, so the internet tells me. Watching it, I would have guessed the 1940s or something. I dunno. In any event, there's a girl named Saya who works with some secret government group that is dedicated to the elimination of creatures called Chiropterans. I'm afraid there's not much else I can say about the basic premise, because the movie didn't make anything terribly clear. These creatures prey on humans like vampires, I guess, though we never really see any of that, all we really see is Saya killing them. They disguise themselves as humans, but she knows what they are. They're sort of... bat-like creatures, I guess. I mean like Man-bat, sort of.

The movie starts with Saya killing one on a subway or whatever, and later she's assigned to pose as a schoolgirl in... I guess an American school on or near an American military base in Japan. Man, I wouldn't be able to say much about what exactly was going on without reading about it online. All I know is that some of the dialog is in English and some in Japanese. And it was near Halloween. And there was a school nurse or something who got involved in this. And there were a couple of students who were actually Chiropterans. Plus I gather there was a third Chiropteran but I have no idea of its identity.

As for Saya, I read that she may be a vampire (in the film, she's referred to as "the last remaining original," whatever that means). She certainly has superhuman abilities, though she doesn't seem like a typical European vampire archetype. Still, it sort of seems to make a bit more sense to think of her as the vampire of the title rather than the Chiropterans. And um, I don't really know what else to say. I was surprised when the movie ended, it seemed rather short, abrupt, and anticlimactic. Honestly, I was left with very little idea of what was going on, no concept of the backstory or anything. It was all so disconnected and unexplained... which is rather what I meant when I said it seemed like 1980s anime, I guess.

It's not a bad movie, or anything. It was... eh, adjectives like "okay" or "interesting" spring to mind, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am trying to apply anything like that to this movie... though I'm not saying they'd be inaccurate, either. Anyway, I gather the movie is very popular, as is sometimes the case with certain animes that I just don't quite "get." But I'd like to watch it again sometime, myself, and see if I can think of anything else to say. There's also a spin-off TV series called Blood+, which I thought was much better than the movie. And now that I've seen that and learned the backstory, I especially want to rewatch the movie and see if it makes more sense to me... but I'm not sure when I might get around to that. And even if it improves my appreciation of the movie somewhat, I still probably won't like it as much as some fans do....

There's also a 2009 live-action movie remake, Blood: The Last Vampire.


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