Akira and Ghost In The Shell can keep cyberpunk. Those more interested in the Gothic, gory romance of Bram Stoker have their own definitive anime classic: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s impossibly picturesque upgrade of Toyoo Ashida’s more classically cartoony 1985 take on the material first screened in American theaters in 2001, where it played for a few weeks in a handful of movie houses in the direct aftermath of 9/11. It was dubbed in English and underseen; its DVD eventually went out of print, the film mostly luring in new thralls through pirated uploads. Now, the subtitled Japanese-language version of the film, given a gorgeous new mastering and a fairer shake at reaching its audience by GKIDS, is coming to the U.S. for the first time, which should only expand its cult of moody fans.
Catching the film at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival was pure adrenaline. If D, the Blade-like half-vampire “Dunpeal” who tracks down bloodsuckers, could sense the pounding pulses of the audience, the temptation to bite a few necks may have proven too great. But his purgatorial, in-between existence—both an undead-loathing and forever-thirsting hybrid—is just one of the swoony elements elevating this bloody fantasy. Where the original (and admittedly iconic) Vampire Hunter D movie looks a little like Fist Of The North Star crashed a Bauhaus music video, Bloodlust is like a series of paintings admired by Robert Eggers. Full of dying roses, whooshing capes, cascading blood, buxom maidens, and doomed heroes, it’s both deliciously pulpy and unabashedly beautiful.
Fittingly, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is itself divided along genre lines. Despite having more candles and curtains than Meatloaf, its Bram Stoker’s Dracula lushness actually takes place in the year 12,090 A.D. Its steeds are cybernetic, its castles contain spaceship launchpads. D wields a thin saber the length of two men, but his bounty hunter colleagues have futuristic guns and motorcycles that are more familiar to the crossover anime hits of the era. Even in the middle of a verdant forest or the hallucinatory halls of a vampire’s ancestral keep, laser defense systems may pop up—that’s just a hazard of the time in which Hideyuki Kikuchi’s novels were written. To add one more flavor into the mix, because that’s what a future-flung vampire fantasy needs, the surviving humans of this world live in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic Western. It’s the perfect setting to further ostracize D: When he rides up, his pale Tim Burton frame towering over the townsfolk, his all-black leather outfit and massive hat make him look like a Babadook at an adult Halloween party.
Because of this, it’s unsurprising when D ends up empathizing with the vampire he’s tasked with hunting. Attempting to rescue the wealthy young Charlotte from the seductive and urbane Baron Meier Link, D discovers—after a few of his peers have been brutally dispatched by the vampire’s supernatural underlings—that his quarry and his charge are actually in love. It’s a simple story (“timeless,” if you’re generous), between pursuer and pursued, with endlessly enjoyable facets and details. Can a vampire be sympathetic? Can a union that birthed a tortured figure such as D be sanctioned? Is it more human to hope than to despair? Does a werewolf have to have his mouth come out of his head, or will his torso do? Can your vampire horror movie be toogross?
Figuring out if this forbidden romance is just that, or if there’s something more sinister keeping this pair together, leads D on quite a chase, with a climactic confrontation in a Castlevania-like keep escalating the ambitious animation to dazzling heights. So ornate is the blend of traditional and digital, so invigorating the rush of motion, that the surreal nightmares and desperate conflicts D finds himself in are just as engrossing as the more expected artistry found in the detailed fantasy backgrounds. It’s all the easier to take in without dubbed English voice work to contend with, the Japanese performers fitting snugly into the overall aesthetic.
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust‘s bloodline would grow on and on over the following decades, among goths and animators alike. Kawajiri would go on to helm a segment of The Animatrix and write two others. Now 75, he’s still storyboarding anime, like One Punch Man and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, produced by the animation studio he co-founded, Madhouse. But Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust remains his crown jewel, a violent and violently lovely monster mash of genres, finally getting its due 25 years after it first made its way to American theaters.
