Japan 1966, and Saya is a young girl who works together with the police to find and kill vampires. There've been some massacres at a high-school and since they think that vampires are behind it, Saya is sent there undercover to find out what's going on and to slay any possible vampires.
First off let me tell you, this movie is truly visually stunning to watch. If you would watch it and end up not liking it, you would still think it looked amazing and that alone would be worth the time spent.
One really negative thing here though is that it only runs for 48 minutes and towards the end it felt kinda rushed. They manage to get the story through and everything, but it would've been better if it would've been a full-length feature instead as it feel like too much is set to happen during a too short period of time. With a longer running time the characters could've been better developed and I guess the story telling could've been better too.
We don't get "the old stick through the heart" here, but instead Saya uses a samurai sword to split the vampires in half which looks very cool indeed, not to mention more brutal in a way.
There's a lot of great action scenes in Blood and the story is quite simple and easy to follow. We get a lot of fighting sequences and of course a lot of blood splatter and such. And even if it's not a "raw" movie per say, it's definitely aimed for an adult audience.
Blood was actually the first fully digitalized anime film and there's visually a huge difference. Look at some older anime flicks and then watch Blood, and you'll notice an helluva difference for sure, in fact, it's quite amazing.
This movie has so much potential and a longer version could've made it close to being fantastic. It feels a little bit when watching it the first time that it's somewhat over before you know it. It has great animation and as said above, great action scenes combined with a really nice atmosphere, it's just too short and that's too bad. But at least you get 48 minutes of great action and great animation and that's of course never a bad thing.
If you're even just a tiny little bit into anime, you should watch Blood. Another highly recommended anime movie when it comes to vampires is Vampire Hunter D and its follow-up, Bloodlust. But do check out Blood, I'm sure you won't regret it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2000
DIRECTOR: Hiroyuki Kitakubo
WRITING CREDITS: Kenji Kamiyama
GENRE: Anime, Horror, Action
CAST: Youki Kudoh, Saemi Nakamura, Akira Koteyama
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 48 min
RATING: 7/10
Blood: The Last Vampire Website/IMDB Click here
Blood: The Last Vampire Trailer Click here
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