Her village plagued by an ancient noble vampire called Lee, Doris enlists the help of D, a dhampir (half vampire/half human) who is dedicated to slaying vampires.
Despite my love for weird Japanese cinema, I've never really been a fan of anime. However, being a horror obssessive, Vampire Hunter D intrigued me enough to give it a try. As I expected, the drawings are fairly crude at times, and there's no escaping the Manga trappings -- wide-eyed characters with strange body proportions, action surrounded by hundreds of movements lines, crazy visual viewpoints -- but I still found this mid-'80s 'classic' to be a lot of fun.
The story -- based on the Vampire Hunter D novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi -- is consistently entertaining, director Toyoo Ashida creates an effective other-worldly environment inhabited by an assortment of very weird creatures, and the titular character has a cool 'wandering warrior' vibe not unlike The Man With No Name or Ogami Itto.
Plus there's a lot of enjoyably excessive violence, plenty of bonkers silliness (D has a talking hand!), and a very cute female character in Doris, who is designed to appeal to those who fantasise about buxom young Asian women constantly flashing their knickers (i.e., your average Manga fan). Knowing his audience all too well, Ashida even throws in a gratuitous shower scene featuring nudity from the girl!
7/10. It's not made an anime fan out of me, but I liked it more than I expected to.
Despite my love for weird Japanese cinema, I've never really been a fan of anime. However, being a horror obssessive, Vampire Hunter D intrigued me enough to give it a try. As I expected, the drawings are fairly crude at times, and there's no escaping the Manga trappings -- wide-eyed characters with strange body proportions, action surrounded by hundreds of movements lines, crazy visual viewpoints -- but I still found this mid-'80s 'classic' to be a lot of fun.
The story -- based on the Vampire Hunter D novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi -- is consistently entertaining, director Toyoo Ashida creates an effective other-worldly environment inhabited by an assortment of very weird creatures, and the titular character has a cool 'wandering warrior' vibe not unlike The Man With No Name or Ogami Itto.
Plus there's a lot of enjoyably excessive violence, plenty of bonkers silliness (D has a talking hand!), and a very cute female character in Doris, who is designed to appeal to those who fantasise about buxom young Asian women constantly flashing their knickers (i.e., your average Manga fan). Knowing his audience all too well, Ashida even throws in a gratuitous shower scene featuring nudity from the girl!
7/10. It's not made an anime fan out of me, but I liked it more than I expected to.