Talking To The Screen

Blood:The Last Vampire :2000

After watching 'X', I was left with fairly high hopes for the genre of Japanese 
animation as a whole.  While there are some gems, like any other form, some 
examples are good, some...well...not so good.

'Blood: The Last Vampire' tells the story of a vampire hunter sent to cleanse a 
US military base just before the Vietnam War breaks.  It's only 48 minutes long, 
revealing any more of the plot could give away too much.

Visually, 'Blood' is stunning.  There are times when the blend of drawn 
animation with computer generated effects reach the point of photo-realism.  
Truly virtuosic work from the people at Manga.  However, the plot is slow moving 
and uninteresting...and it's less than an hour long!  Due to its lackadaisical 
pace, 'Blood' seems to have only told half its story within its fifty minutes.  
For all the work that obviously went into the animation of this cartoon, some 
more time could have been given to the script.  In the last five minutes, a plot 
twist is introduced, and there is an obnoxious voice over about man's self 
destructive tendencies.  Firstly, it's difficult to make a closing voiceover 
work...ever.  'The Shawshank Redemption' did it.  'Murder in the First' didn't.  
Secondly, the plot twist that was introduced is potentially interesting.  I 
might have liked the movie had more than a few hundred frames of screen time 
were devoted to it.  Presumably, it is meant to leave the viewer with either an 
epiphany or a question to muse on, it just left me teased and disappointed.  

'Blood: The Last Vampire' is not a good movie.  Don't waste your time.