Blood - The Last Vampire

10 reviews - 32.0 total score (Explanation of the rating system)
avg. score: (3.2)

10. Kohlingen

Blood the Last Vampire definitely has some visually stunning animation; the production crew outdid it self with a "deft" use of CGI graphics and shading to complement Katsuya Terada's realistic characters. The atmosphere is appropriately dark throughout this short film. The main drawback, however, is the length and thus stunted development of the film. However, it is interesting to look at these fallbacks as reflections on the historical setting of the anime.

Blood 's is set in an American military base in Japan right before the Vietnam War. The reasons for going to war, atrocities that occurred during the war, and even who was winning were all kept under a smoke screen by the American government. The obscuring of facts is a big part of the theme in the anime. Records of what happened with the vampires inside the compound are destroyed, and life goes on as usual. The American government was certainly good at covering up things overseas during the period; the meeting between the only witness to the bloodshed (the school nurse) and undercover American officials is a perfect metaphor for this. The ghostlike operation of the special government unit (including heroine Saya) from the scene also resembles the speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973 from Vietnam . Both left after a great deal of struggle, and left with an assumption that everything would work itself out. Unfortunately, whether you agree with this viewpoint or not (a little strained I admit but I was searching for some way to interpret), Blood will leave anyone looking for deeper meaning seriously wanting. Saya's past is hinted at by photographs and being described as the "original", but it's little more than a tease to the viewer who doesn't want to have purchase the manga to supplement the movie. Still, I would say it's definitely more than just a demo, and I recommend watching it at least once for the animation.

In a sentence: Awesome, dark animation, not much of a story to work with.and it's far too short.

9. Q

Blood:The Last Vampire is a 45 minute single episode anime...that has virtually no plot... and absolutely no character background or development. But what it does have is some very, very impressive cg assisted animation, ( the airplanes are some of the best that I've ever seen...anywhere); better than average music; and a very intense, katana wielding, female vampire/assassin...named Saya. She is a very cool character, on the surface.( Too bad that's all there is here... surface.)

And it has...no wait...it doesn't. But then there's the part when...oh yeah...there isn't. Well you can't forget about the...Nevermind...

This anime is too short for anyone's taste. I can't believe that someone would spend the money to produce an anime with such beautiful animation...just to do it. What happened here? Did they blow the whole budget on the first episode?

I have no freakin' idea.

Animation - 5 stars...superb
Storyline - 0 stars...THERE IS VIRTUALLY NO STORY! AND LITERALLY NO HISTORY!
Overall - Blood:The Last Vampire, gets 2 stars for its animation...and one star for everything else it contains...Oh yeah...it doesn't contain anything else.

8. Leliel

Eye-candy, pure and simple -- but what sweet, sweet candy it is. Many people don't like the look of anime that has been CG-assisted to this extent, but I find Blood downright glorious to behold. The story takes place one night on an American army base in Tokyo in 1966 and does an excellent job of mixing Japanese and English language. There is one mixup, a Caucasian nurse speaks perfect Japanese and fluent if heavily accented English! Sadly, the overall impact suffers from a terminally short length -- this feels like a fourth episode of Memories that took five extra years to render before they were finally able to release it. I would love to rate it higher, but they have to produce more first.

7. The Boss

It's Japan in the year 1966. Saya who is a part of a top secret team who's job is to destroy vampires goes undercover as a student at the American air base in Yokota. Its not long before Saya realizes that two of her fellow students are vampires in disguise. Saya quickly sets of to do her job in the middle of Halloween. Blood The Last Vampire is well knows for its awesome CG effects but sadly the story, which is confusing at times falls too long behind for the CG effects to save it.

6. Polaris

Before I had watched Blood I heard a lot of good things about it and decided to see what all the hype was about. I must say I was very disappointed after watching it. While the animation was very nice and accompanied by great music, the characters had little depth. Not only were the characters lacking, the plot failed to interest me in the least. While it is a similar plot to most action anime I felt it was poorly executed and the conclusion didn't help at all. Even though there is almost no story, Blood's nice animation and music does leave a reason to watch it.

5. Alastor

I was very disappointed by Blood. For me, a good plot is the most important thing in an anime, and unless it has some spectacular fight scenes (i.e. Kite) I will be very disappointed. With a 45 minute run time, there was not much time for plot, nor character development. There were a couple action scenes that were fairly entertaining, but most action was just blood and gore. As for the plot, right from the start you are confused. While there is a taste of mystery to it, it never really follows up on anything, thus leaving you hanging. The animation is superb, and the music is done nicely as well. But besides those two things, this has nothing going for it.

4. Dreamer

Blood shines above all in having a really, really stunning visuals. I guess, this is the pinnacle of digital animation. But again, it loses much to its credit when everything is finally wrapped up. I can see the flaws they fell in. Too short was the major one, a little over 45 minutes doesn't satisfy me. I had this feeling upon watching the first major fighting scene; that it would be the last, and it was! I can understand that they have a budget limit. Other things, however, cannot be passed as easily. Bilingual (hate it!) and the lack of good character background couldn't be forgiven as easily. So to me, this should be watched for its visuals and good effects and not as much for its actual content, story-wise specially.

3. Tempy

Blood - The Last Vampire has a very interesting setup: you can't go wrong with a katana wielding girl chopping up vampiric creatures. Unfortunately at a mere 40 minutes, it's not much more than an appetizer, though a very juicy and bloody one. The art and animation is splendid. Being a completely digitally processed anime the various CG effects blends well with the 2D art and 3D environment, though there are a couple of scenes with less than stellar CG. The English voice acting is actually quite decent, although there were a few moments where the dubbing did not seem natural. I have a suspicion that the dubbing was done after the animation, which made a few lines feel forced. All in all I had a good time during the whole show, from the quiet, ominous scenes, with suitable creepy music, to the good action scenes complete with adrenaline pumping music. It's too bad it's so short. The story does continue with some videogames and novels though, and there are already plans for more animation.

2. weasl

While originally released theatrically in Japan, Blood the Last Vampire still feels more like an OVA episode. With a running time of a little over 40 minutes it's hard to add a full fledged story, and Blood doesn't even try. Simply put Blood is a very pretty action piece. The story is simple. A mysterious katana wielding school girl named Saya is sent to an American military base to hunt down 3 grotesque vampire like creatures. Blood the Last Vampire was part of an interesting media blitz in Japan, with the different parts of the story contained in different mediums (two Playstation 2 games that it is doubtful will be brought over). While Blood the Last Vampire may not score high on the story chart, it is funny to watch with it's stunning visuals, and well done action sequences. Fans of action anime will want to take a look, but anyone expecting anything more then 40 minutes of action sequences is going to be disappointed.

1. bremmi

Blood gets a huge number of points for being eye-candy, and it also has quite a good sound track to go with it. It has some excellent action/blood/gore scenes in it, which are only made scarier by how well they are animated. The story seems to be that Saya, the last vampire, hunts down and kills oni (demons) that are terrorizing a US military base in Japan. Because of where it takes place, there is really a lot of English spoken, in fact more English than Japanese.. However, my biggest complaint about the movie is that you really don't know much more about the storyline than what I just said. You just jump right into it, the rest is all action and mood. But the fact that it still gets 4 stars shows just how cool the action and mood are!