Blood: the Last Vampire – review

Director: Chris Nahon

Release date: 2009

Contains spoilers

Some of you will have read my first thoughts on this and will remember that I wasn’t too impressed with this film. However, I share one trait with our long toothed friends and that is a certain obsessive compulsive need – theirs is to count grain and mine to collect vampire genre stuff.

So I sat with the DVD and hoped my impression of this would improve but, if anything, it sank lower. Continuity errors started appearing and anachronistic things such as… I rather like Deep Purple and so, in a fight scene, I noticed we got the song Space Truckin’ – from the Machine Head album, 1972 – the film is set in 1970. Then there were the plot moments that screamed, “Why!” at me.

The film is based on the short anime Blood: the Last vampire. It follows a modified version of its story until about half way through the running time when the anime’s story is done and the film wends its own merry, half-assed way; utterly ignoring any lore/story from the superior, alternate universe anime series Blood+.

After hearing about a 16th century war and the demon hunter Kiyomasa, who was killed by the big bad Onigen (Koyuki), we find ourselves in 1970 Tokyo. Kiyomasa’s daughter, Saya (Gianna Jun), is on a subway train and there is a man. She recognises him as a demon and kills him. The scene is straight from the anime and is actually rather effective. The train stops and a pair of ‘cleaners’ get on. On the platform is Michael (Liam Cunningham), lead agent in a group of shadowy demon hunters, and his subordinate Luke (JJ Field). Luke sees the man didn’t transform and accuses Saya of killing a human. He claims she is out of control, Michael says they need her.

In her room Saya retrieves a bottle of blood (and drinks it wearing the school uniform Michael hasn’t given her yet). We see memories of her childhood with Kato (Yasuaki Kurata), her father’s retainer. He taught her that to tell if someone is a demon then look into their eyes – they have no souls. Actually the flashback sequences are the best sections of the film. Michael visits and tells her that there have been open feedings on a US airbase – a sign that Onigen is close – Saya will go undercover to the base (in the uniform he gives her, you know, the one she previously wore).

One questions, given the fact that there is no uniform policy at the airbase’s school, why she would be given said uniform. Being oriental, she already stands out in the occidental orientated school. Also at the school is Alice (Allison Miller) – the daughter of base commander General McKee (Larry Lamb). After a lesson, in which the monstrous nature of Frankenstein’s creation is discussed, Alice ends up in aikido. The instructor, Mr Powell (Colin Salmon), makes her stay behind with bad girls Sharon (Masiela Lusha) and Linda (Ailish OConnor).

How bad? Well, they are really demons and they pull real swords to use on the girl. Saya has checked the school records (though what they revealed to her is not revealed to us) and comes to the rescue, throwing Alice from the room and then decapitating the transforming girls (something Alice spots through a grate). The blood is very lumpy cgi blood, but as it is demon blood I could live with it. Alice gets her dad, which brings the military and the Agency (who are posing as CIA) at odds with each other. The bodies are gone and Luke acts like a loose cannon (so why Michael didn’t deal with him then and there is beyond me).

Alice goes to confront Powell, who is also a demon, and finds herself hunted by a horde of the little blighters. The resultant fight scene, to me, underlines one of the main problems with the film. The film relies on fast cuts in the fights, which to me is not good. Often the fast cuts are between slow motion scenes, these serve only to try and fool us into believing that the fast cuts are not the problem they really are. This is not good fight choreography.

After dispatching the horde they face Mr Powell, who transforms into full demon form, grabs Alice and runs over the rooftops – with Saya in hot pursuit. This is our next problem. The cgi. Okay, the blood I could live with but this was awful, the demon form looks crap, unreal and sticks out like a sore thumb. I did appreciate little moments, like slates coming down from the roofs in its wake, but the actual demon design and execution was sub-par.

Eventually Saya gets Alice back and Powell sprouts wings, taking to the skies. They continue the chase, by jeep, onto the airbase and down a runway, until Saya kills him. She tells Alice to forget what she has seen. However Luke has gone rogue, killing off military personnel (namely the General) to cover their tracks, going behind Michael's back and ordering a hit on Saya and there is the question of Onigen... However, for me, Onigen is part of the questions never answered, real plot issues that I will look at now.

The first question never answered is how the Hell Alice knew what Saya was? Okay, she is in a room when Saya’s bottle of blood is shot but, when they have a moment of safety and she realises Saya has been shot and badly wounded, just how does she know to feed the girl her blood? It made me sit up and notice for all the wrong reasons. Saya has shown no overtly vampiric tendencies to Alice and the girl was under fire when the blood bottle was shot and so is unlikely to have noticed the contents. It was bobbins.

The second was Onigen being Saya’s mother. Okay the Luke/Darth aspect was so clichéd it was untrue but worse it was a case of, well how’d that happen? Why did the great demon hunter sleep with the great demon? Was he raped? It is never said. Why did Onigen wait until after Saya was born to kill him and how did the baby Saya end up back with Kato? There is some rubbish about Onigen waiting for her to grow into her powers, but wouldn’t that have been easier under her mother’s tutelage?

Whilst I am at it, how was Alice, a schoolgirl, able to drive a truck? That aside, why did the driving of the truck lead to a scene virtually cut and paste from Underworld Evolution, only done with less panache? Indeed, when the two girls end up in a kind of dream-world, for the final confrontation (through the looking glass, Alice), why was it Alice – a school girl who, only two days before, had concerns no greater than how to steal daddy’s car to go party – who realised they were not in Kansas anymore, rather than Saya!

Ooo… the more I think about this the worse it gets. This isn’t helped that they made, in respect of the action sequences, a girl, in school uniform, with katana and fighting demons… boring. The acting is low to middling, but the actors had little to work with. The saving graces are the flashback sequences and the fact that if you really do take your brain out you can bypass the worst bits of the script – think and it will really annoy you. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

First Impression – Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)

Based on the anime from 2000 and completely ignoring any of the lore or background the subsequent series Blood + introduced (as the series is deemed alternate universe), this Chris Nahon directed film is the latest vampire offering to hit the big screen and, given the pedigree of coming from the producers behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I was hoping for something a little special.

Unfortunately, what I ended up with was a film desperately looking for an ending, some general storyline clichés, bad cgi and a bit of a problem with the actual action. This does include spoilers but the story was thin enough to mean it doesn’t really matter.

The film, set in 1970, starts of with promise, a scene on a subway train in which Saya (Gianna Jun) despatches a demon (the term chiropteran is lost). The scene was faithful to the anime and gave an opening atmosphere that worked well. She is met by her contact from the mysterious Council, Michael (Liam Cunningham), though subordinate Luke (JJ Fields) believes that Saya has killed a human and is out of control. The undercurrent of distrust is not explored deeply enough in the film and so when said distrust is used as a plot device it feels too plot-lite.

Saya is a halfling – as they term it in this – half demon/half human and like her demonic brethren needs blood to survive. The Council provide bottled blood for her and in return she despatches demons as she searches for the one called Onigen (Koyuki). There have been three murders at a school on a US airbase and Saya (despite being older than all the Council operatives put together) is sent undercover. At the school we meet Alice (Allison Miller), daughter of base commandant General McKee (Larry Lamb).

There is a lesson where Frankenstein is discussed and Alice’s insights into the nature of the monster is obviously to make her open, as a character, to interacting with Saya later. Saya quickly gets a sense that two of the students are not all they seem. Alice is left to 'spar' with said students by aikido instructor Powell (Colin Salmon, who was in the Tales of the Crypt episode Cold War), clearly they aim to kill Alice. Saya has checked their records – for what purpose, given the records will be forged, isn’t actually revealed – and comes to the rescue, locking Alice out of the room and killing the demon girls.

The blood is very cgi but I could live with that for the point is made that demon and human blood are different. The fact that it looked almost lumpy worked – it just didn’t work later, when we saw human blood and it looked the same! Alice has spied the events and gets her father but the Council operatives (posing as CIA) are already on the scene, cleaning up. Alice follows Powell who very quickly reveals he is a demon – as is everyone in the bar he is in.

Saya to the rescue once more and a rather large action scene that was marred a little by fast cuts and some camera shakes, though it also went into slow-mo at times. All told it wasn’t that bad, compared to some, and some of the film techniques were clearly used to disguise the fact that Gianna Jun is not a martial artist. However, I just expected more from a film from these producers. After Saya has despatched a lot (and I mean a lot) of demons, Powell changes into his true form and nicks off with Alice. This leads to a roof top chase that was spoiled by the fact that the cgi was so bad. The true demon form was badly created and the actual interaction with the set looked too cartoony. Following this he tries to fly off and we get a runway chase, which takes us to where the original anime ended (of course there were elements not in the original during this first section, as described).

And here we fell over. It became a film looking for a plot, a purpose and an ending. Some of the flashback scenes to Saya’s youth worked – especially a ninja demon battle involving her companion/trainer Kato (Yasuaki Kurata). There was a Luke and Darth moment with Saya and Onigen that was just so obvious as to be clichéd and thus not a spoiler – after all her half demon side had to come from somewhere. There is a set piece with a truck that seem lifted from Underworld Evolution, which then morphs into the train piece from Wanted – though was more satisfying and less film damaging than the Wanted scene.

The ending just kind of petered out. The film wanted to do clever things – the human character is called Alice and there are references made to Through the Looking Glass but the script failed to capitalise on this. There was a moment when, despite having seen her fight and heard her called halfling, Alice feeds an injured Saya her blood and we wonder why she would do that, where did this knowledge that Saya would need this come from? The acting wasn’t brilliant, though that might have been as much to do with script and direction as it was to do with the actors' skills. Gianna Jun seemed dour, perhaps even stoic, and distant but that works for the character.

It sounds like I am down on the film but it certainly isn’t the worst film I’ve seen at the cinema this year – Lesbian Vampire Killers will take some beating where that dubious honour is concerned – but it failed to be what it might have been. The imdb page is here.

Blood+ - 01 – First Kiss – review

Author: Ryo Ikehata

Translation: John Thomas

Illustrations: Chizu Hashii

First Published: 2006 (Japan) 2008 (USA)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Suffering from extreme amnesia, high school student Saya Otonashi can’t remember anything from her life beyond the last year. Living with a foster family outside a military base in Okinawa, Japan, Saya’s attempts to live a normal life are shattered when a Chiropteran, a horrific vampire-like monster, attacks her. Saved at the last minute by a mysterious man named Hagi, Saya is presented with a sword that awakens in her a warrior’s skills and bloodlust, and sets her on a course that will lead her to the answers of her missing memories, and into battle against a race of creatures intent on destroying the world.

The epic adventure that began in the groundbreaking Blood – the Last Vampire and has continued through the worldwide phenomenon TV series Blood+ is brought to life in this all-new series of novels adapting the hit show. Saya’s journey of horror, magic, romance, and mystery will stretch across time and around the world, expanding on the television series with new characters, new adventures, and breathtaking action.

Featuring nineteen pages of illustrations by series character designer Chizu Hashii.

The review: I was rather excited when I found this, the first of four volumes, in my local bookstore. After all this was Blood+, not in manga form but novelised. The claim in the blurb, “expanding on the television series with new characters, new adventures, and breathtaking action,” added to this feeling.

If the series does expand upon the TV series, however, it does not do so in this volume. It is a straight lift from the TV series, almost blow by blow. Indeed it doesn’t really expand upon the characters’ thoughts and feelings that much more than portrayed in the anime – which was disappointing. There were little bits, for instance we discover that one of the brothers who are chevalier to Diva – Saya’s evil counterpart – was Nazi war criminal Martin Bormann , but nothing of any great substance.

That lack of expansion was annoying but, beyond this, was the fact that I felt the language used to be clumsy and perfunctory. Perhaps it wasn’t Ikehata’s fault; perhaps the blame lay in the translation and the nuances between Japanese and English. However, as an example this was from close to the start of the novel, when Saya is first attacked by a chiropteran and has cut a gash in her leg through glass smashed by the chiropteran’s howl.

“With this, she would surely be out of tomorrow’s track meet.

“Those kinds of thoughts ran through Saya’s head.

“But only for a moment.

“There wasn’t time to be thinking of the meet or for getting first aid for her cut.”

Okay, it describes what is happening but it seems so cold, clinical, with little regards for either the inner anguish of the character, the rhythm of the action sequence occurring or the flow of language. Or perhaps I am too picky. However it seems to me that if it is down to the differences in grammatical structure and metre between Japanese and English then it shows why either the manga form or anime form is superior – because the descriptive narrative is carried by an artist in pictorial form, rather than in language.

Still, it made this a complete chore to read and put me off enough to know I probably won’t be buying the other three volumes (unless I found them at a bargain price, in which case it would only be for completist reasons). You are much better off with the anime series. 2 out of 10.

Blood+ - review

Directed by: Junichi Fujisaku

First aired: 2005

Contains spoilers

This is a series adapted from Blood: The Last Vampire and spans a massive 50 episodes. I say adapted because as we shall see, this may have Saya as a main protagonist and she may fight Chiropterans, the core background has changed. We will explore this, as we explore the lore, and it is not clear as the series starts – for all intents and purposes it seems like a modern day follow on – and so massive spoiler warnings must be issued.

Saya is a teenage girl who lives with her adopted father George and two other orphans, Kai and Riku. As the story starts she is an almost ordinary girl who must undergo regular transfusions for anaemia and has amnesia, remembering nothing before a year earlier. Her world is shattered as a chiropteran – the name of the vampires in this – attacks her and she escapes with the aid of a mysterious man named Haji.

She discovers that she was placed with George by an organisation called Red Shield – namely by an operative called David – whose purpose is to fight chiropterans and the reason for her amnesia is that she came out of a hibernation just a year before. George becomes infected and Saya must kill him, using her blood, which crystallises the chiropterans and ends up travelling around the gobe with Red Shield. Of course Kai and Riku are drawn into this world also.

When we look at this we must look at the fact that the tag the Last Vampire has been removed. This seems sensible to me because Saya is anything but the last vampire. There is a hierarchy of vampires. There are two queens – Saya and her twin sister Diva – the knights who have fed directly from a queen – Haji is Saya’s knight – and then the rank and file chiropterans – all of which are derived from one of the queen’s bloodlines. The blood of the queen of one line is poisonous to the other line.

Saya’s amnesia through the beginning of the series and the slow realisation of what she is leads to a very different character than the one we saw in the previous incarnation of the story. As the series starts she is carefree and happy, one can say innocent – rather than the battle weary, stoic warrior from the Last Vampire. That, of course, shifts as the series develops.

The reason for Saya’s amnesia is tied into the fact that she (and Diva) must enter into a thirty-year hibernation after every few years of living amongst humans. During the Vietnam war Red Shield noticed a high concentration of chiropterans at the battlefield and woke Saya early, using Haji’s blood. She awoke enraged and without reason and slaughtered everything in her path, be they human or chiropteran, before falling back into hibernation. This utterly changes the narrative of the previous manifestation of the story.

The main enemy in this is Diva and to understand why I must spoil the story further and look at Saya’s birth in the 19th Century – don’t worry I won’t spoil the main story arc. A man named Joel created ‘the Zoo’ a place filled with examples of unusual species. He discovered a mummified female of an unknown species, humanoid but with bat characteristics, that he called chiropteran. Dissecting the mummy he found two cocoons, the creature had been pregnant. He couldn’t open the cocoons but cut his finger and the blood was absorbed by one of the cocoons, causing life to stir within. Two human looking females were born. One he named Saya and raised as a human, though he noticed her aging halted in her teens and she healed with miraculous rapidity. The other he did not name and kept locked away as an experiment. Saya heard her sister singing and released the girl, whom she named Diva, to disastrous results. She vowed to halt Diva.

In the time of her last hibernation, Diva’s knights have been busy and have taken major holdings in world business. They are creating Chiropterans and creating ways to artificially produce the creatures. One experiment resulted in the Schiff – more like standard vampires as they shun the sun or explode into green flame. The Schiff are dying and believe that either Diva or Saya’s blood is the key to gaining longevity.

This is a twisting, turning series with betrayal and loyalty at its heart. The animation looks good, though it isn’t half as good as its predecessor – however, given the amount of animation necessary to produce the series it is hardly surprising. The music through the episodes is excellent, and creates a major plot theme, and one of the credit pieces was performed by Hyde who was in Moon Child.

As an animation I wouldn’t hesitate to give this a high score, if I was only scoring for when it is at its best. However, the series is slow in places and perhaps the length of it was too long. There are plenty of moments where the series becomes too introspective; concentrating on minutia that might be claimed to be character development but in fact seems overtly filled with melodrama. This is a shame, as this had the potential to be one of the best vampire animes produced, but these moments (Kai and Saya go fishing comes to mind) slowed the whole thing to a snail’s pace in places. Perhaps some of the fault lay in the subtitling of the Asian imported set I bought, which is weak and too literal, and those issues might lessen in the version produced for the US market.

I must also say that, despite an excellent overall plot arc, some of the aspects of the lore did not have a sound logic – we do not know why the blood of one queen is poison to the line of the other, and this is passed off simply as ‘we do not know’ by the characters. We do not know why the Schiff are killed by sunlight – I have assumed it is because they are artificially created.

That said, one cannot take away the fact that it has a massive story – unlike its predecessor – that twists and turns and, when it is at its best, is a fine example of anime. 6.5 out of 10, to me balances my concerns regarding the slower aspects with the excellence of the series at its best.

The imdb page is here.

Blood: the Last Vampire – review

Directed by: Kiroyuki Kitakubo

Release Date: 2000

Contains spoilers

Blood the Last Vampire is a bit of an enigma. Potentially one of the most beautiful animes released, it has a well crafted story – that is until it just seems to end. But, let us begin at the beginning.

The animation begins with a train in a station. As it pulls away a carriage contains a girl, Saya (Youki Kudoh) and a man. The lights on the train go out and Saya begins to run, pulling a Katana out as she does so. She chops the guy in half. The light comes back on and the train pulls into another station.

She meets David (Joe Romersa) and another man on the platform. The other man goes to check the body as David tells Saya about their next assignment, though Saya seems more interested in being given a new Katana as the blade of hers is dull. The assignment is at Yokata US air base and they believe it has been infiltrated; Saya is to go undercover at the base’s school. The other man is concerned as he believes that the kill on the train was human and not chiropteran, the vampires of the story. David says that it probably hasn’t transformed into its true form yet but the negative comments cause Saya to loose her cool and she easily lifts the other man from the floor, by the neck. As she walks away David says that she is the last original left.

I said that the chiropterans are the vampires of the piece and this is partially true. These are blood drinking demons which can take the form of humans. They feed by making the kill look like a suicide and, as the story starts, a suicide is found – it is the second near the base in the last month. As they hide from outside view, anyone “marked” by them is, essentially, dead meat. Other interesting things we find out about them are that, in demon form, they can transform further, into a flight form and that they hibernate. They are impervious to things such as bullets as they can only die through massive blood loss from one wound, hence Saya uses a Katana.

Saya is also a vampire, though potentially of a different order – we never find out. We do see, towards the end of the film, a picture of her in 1892. The only other details we find out are that she cannot feed from humans – though we do not know what prevents it - and she reacts angrily to a cross. The way the film protrays Saya is excellent, she appears cold and inhuman at all times, perhaps arrogant as well, yet there is a sadness and lonliness lurking below the surface.

This is the big failing of the film. What exposition we hear is great and very well done but it is ultimately lacking. The entire thing comes in at 48 minutes and was meant to be the middle section of three OVAs but lack of funds prevented the other two segments being made. As such we see Saya infiltrate the school and discover that two of the school girls, Linda and Sharon (Rebecca Forstadt) are chiropterans. There is a third, disguised as a bar worker named Mama (Akira Koteyama), off base. Saya battles them but then the film is over and we are left wanting more.

We get threads of further story appearing as the school’s nurse (Saemi Nakamura) becomes accidentally embroiled in the events but, post the battles, is not believed and everything has been cleaned up. As a character the nurse is your atypical ‘stuck in the middle of the action’ character and, to be honest, is little more than a foil for some exposition and plot – perhaps if the full story had been made she would have had a more pivotal role.

The animation itself is beautiful, using a mix of 3D CGI and 2D drawing to make a beautiful, in an artistic sense, world around us. The use of light is simply stunning and, if nothing else, Blood is a how to animate showpiece. The soundtrack works well with period music, as this is set in 1966.

The story itself, I believe, has been continued in an anime series entitled Blood+ and a live action film is, at the time of review, in at least pre-production with an estimated 2008 release date.

The fact that Blood feels (because it is) only a third of a story is frustrating. The writing, in what we get, is excellent with exposition subtle and yet available but just not rich enough and, as I say, you’d have to go a long way to find more beautiful animation. A flawed classic from the world of anime, the lower score reflects the frustration you are left with after watching it. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.