Tonight we have a double dose of dhampir drama starring the greatest vampire hunter to ever walk this cursed earth, D. Based off of the light novel series by writer Hideyuki Kikuchi and illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, these two films are among the most celebrated in all of anime, and they served as a gateway to the subculture for countless western weebs around the late 90’s/early 2000’s (present company included). Both of them are also standalone stories that take place around the same time period so it doesn’t matter which one you watch first. Now, let us mount our cybernetic steeds, and go join the ranks of nobility.
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)
We begin with this beautifully animated work of gothic art from the great Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku, Ninja Scroll), and it takes place over ten thousand years into the future. We finally blew it up in a horrific nuclear holocaust at the end of the 20th Century. This uniquely human folly damned the few unlucky surviving maniacs to a hellish, retrofuturistic nightmare world full of monsters, and perched at the summit of this new-age food chain are the vampires. Dubbing themselves “Nobles,” the elite undead ruled over the mutated lands for several millennia before reaching the height of their own decadence and receding into isolated areas across the bleak frontier. But those are just the bloodsuckers who managed to elude the vampire hunters.
They’re a fierce breed of human who’ve been slowly crawling up the apex ladder over the generations, and the one at the top of the strigoi’s most-feared list simply goes by the name of D. Without spoiling too much of his background for any potential newcomers, he’s a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) who possesses all of the latter’s strengths, but also the thirst for the former’s blood that comes with it. D also has a sentient symbiotic parasite on the palm of his left hand (Ichirō Nagai, Mike McShane) that gives him bad advice, even worse one-liners, and occasionally saves his pale, stoic ass. Is everybody caught up now? Good!
This full-length feature brings our fearless vampire killer (Hideyuki Tanaka, Andy Philpot) to the estate of wealthy landowner John Elbourne (Motomu Kiyokawa, John DiMaggio) after his daughter Charlotte (Emi Shinohara, Wendee Lee) is abducted by the Baron Meier Link (Kōichi Yamadera, John Rafter Lee), and it’s pretty obvious that someone watched a lot of westerns while growing up. Elbourne hires D for a cool $20 million to bring back his daughter dead or alive, but then her brother Alan (Kōji Tsujitani, John DeMita) secretly hires rival hunters the Marcus Brothers to make sure that she’s more alive than dead. Not only does D have to worry about competition on the road, but the plot thickens even more when he realizes that there’s more to Charlotte’s abduction than he was told.
As stated before, the animation in this film is a triumph, and it perfectly reflects Yoshitaka Amano’s glassy floral style. The ending is a little mawkish, and anyone who has watched the animated Spawn series on HBO might have difficulty with not hearing Jason Wynn whenever Meier Link speaks, but there’s plenty of cool action along the way. Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust can be found streaming here, and the trailer is below:
It’s time for the one that started it all, folks! Brought to you by our old friends at Toho, the classic OVA from director Toyoo Ashida (Fist of the North Star, Ultimate Teacher) is adapted from the 1983 debut novel in which D (Kaneto Shiozawa, John Gremillio) is employed by the beautiful (but barely legal) rancher Doris Lang (Michie Tomizawa, Luci Christian) after she’s attacked by the ancient Count Magnus Lee (Seizō Katō, David Wald), and he brands her as his next intended vampire bride with the signature double-hickey stamp.
D takes the job after some light, borderline BDSM negotiation tactics involving a laser whip, and he’s immediately greeted by terrified townsfolk who’ve already written off Doris as doomed, along with her annoying-ass crybaby of a kid brother named Dan (Keiko Toda, Shannon Emerick). To make his situation even worse, the count’s much older, much hotter daughter Larmika (Satoko Kitō, Brittney Karbowski) is not the least bit thrilled about having some filthy commoner as her stepmom. She decides to terminate this embarrassing union before it even begins, or at least that was her plan before crossing paths with The D and his literal left-hand man (Ichirō Nagai, Andy McAvin).
The animation isn’t at the same level as the previous feature, but it’s pure heaven for anyone who loves that quaint 80’s aesthetic, the synth-driven music behind it, and there’s no forgetting the gore that was completely lacking in the previous feature. The remastered version of Vampire Hunter D from 2015 is available on AMC+, but anyone who’s looking for the 90’s Sci-Fi Channel experience can find that over on YouTube with vintage commercials included, and the trailer is in its usual spot:
