Anime Review: Blood - The Last Vampire (2001)

This short 48 minute animation starts straightaway into the action. Saya advances towards her target, a vampire, and slices the dude up, no questions asked. Only later that we find out that maybe the guy wasn't really a vampire. But we're provided with no answers on how they identify a vampire.

In the second and final — yes, it's that short — assignment, Saya has to locate vampires who have infiltrated a school. It's Halloween night and the school nurse is, unfortunately and coincidentally, pulled into the mess.

There are plenty of unanswered questions in the animation. Saya is supposedly the last original, but we don't know what that means. There's no character development, we know nothing about Saya or her colleagues. We know that Saya can't kill humans but don't know why. In fact, we're just like the nurse who's running away from the vampires, caught in the mess, not knowing what's happening. It all seems like a daze when everything ends.

So much for the story or lack of.

The good thing here is the animation. There's plenty of action from a sword welding girl dressed in Japanese school uniform killing vampires. The action is sleek and the horror mood is brilliantly created with the colours and art. If you're watched Animatrix, the mood here is similar to the darker stories there.

I'll give it 3 out of 5 stars.

It seems like the live action movie is coming out soon too or is already out, depending on where you are. It's on limited release so if you're a fan, you'll have to find out which cinemas screening it.

Here's the anime trailer:

And the live action trailer:

You can check out more reviews for Blood - The Last Vampire DVDs at the following amazon pages:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de | Amazon.co.jp

It's also available in Blu-ray, only from Amazon.co.jp.