Mayonaka no tantei Nightwalker

I just checked the DVD of "Midnight Detective" not knowing what to expect. I've never seen the series or heard the Anime, but I was completely surprised and impressed by this Anime.

In fact, I can't believe none of the so called "experts" of Anime have commented on this series.

The series combines "Interview With The Vampire", "Blade" and "Vampire Hunter" all in one.

The series is about a detective named Shido who is part vampire and part human. He solves cases involving what's none as the "Night Breed". The Night breed are vampires with major exceptions. The Night Breed can occupy the bodies of their victims and use and abuse them till they die. When their victims die, the Night Breed, inhibit another unsuspecting victim, by eating biting them or sucking their blood like a vampire.

The series is filled with fantastic visuals, action, violence and nudity.

In the first episode, we meet Shido, his young beautiful assisant Riho and Shido's girlfried Yayoi Matsunaga.

Yayoi is part of the Nos, which is the Japanese equivalent of the FBI.

Shido and Yayoi work together to try to stop the breed but meet tough foes like Cain.

Cain is the head vampire, who like Lestat in Interview With The Vampire is the one that gives Shido , "Eternal Life" by being a vampire.

Cain wants Shido back to do his bidding, but Shido must fight the temptations of the darkside and stop Cain and the Night Breed.

The DVD is spectacular and it's great. It comes with 6 episodes, special trailers of other Manga movies, a special meeting of the characters and much more.

The visuals are impressive in fact, since this is an anime, the creators are able to pull off feats that couldn't be done in "Interview With Vampire". For example , Shido is like Spiderman, and walk up buildings, fly, and kill his enemies at the same time.

Shido like Goku in Dragonballz, has a magic staff which he uses to take care of his enemies. Also like "Vampire Hunter" comes with a vampire demon, who watches over his shoulder, and becomes Shido's part conscious.

If you're looking for great Anime , "Midnight Vampire" is it. Another great anime in the same breath as "Macross", "Escaflowne", "Dragnballz" and many others.

Nightwalker originally started as a 3 episode OVA (original video animation) or basically a direct to video film. However it started such a following they decided to expand the originally 3 episodes into a normal 12 episode ova. I'm glad they did.

The story is about a vampire under the name Shido Tatsuhiko who runs a detective agency for the strange and paranormal. This serves more as a guise because Shido spends most of his time hunting and destroying demonic creatures known as Nightbreeds. Shido has three assistants which cover most Japanese stereotypes. Yayoi, the tough and more action driven lady of the group. The ditsy love interest Riho, and the loudmouth imp Guni.

The animation itself is wonderful, created back in the time where everything was still handrawn and backgrounds were beautifully made by watercolours. It has a mid 90's feel to it that I can never get enough of, for comparing you could say it looks like the artwork of sailor moon; except, much, much more violent.

The stories are well done and as weak as the US Manga corps group is, they really hit it with the voice acting. Vincent Hatcher is on the scene as Shido (he has done many works, most notably Himura Kenshin in the famed series Ruruoni Kenshin) The one place were the ball is dropped is marketing. I had never heard of the series before. It was buy chance that I saw the dvds in a store. At first I thought they were some form of hentai and was quite weary. However for only 14 dollars a DVD and 3 hours on each DVD. I couldn't resist. I fell fully in love with the series and I still consider it my favorite.

The dvds themselves are nice 6 episodes on each disk, and two disks. They have always been 14 dollars a DVD (thats half price normally, and at least 2 episodes more than an average DVD too) Just for value alone your getting a good anime deal.

Considering this is my favorite anime, I have to give this the best marking I can. 9.8/10 its truly a gold find.

Maybe I am a bit to critical! But for an anime from the year 2000 I expected better animation! I must admit that I enjoyed some of the episodes with the last episode "eternal darkness" being best! Overall this anime lacks an original and exciting story! The action was great and entertaining! But I did have problems with "Shido"'s inconsistency using his powers! One episode he is able to run up a building! And another episode he can't even get out of a dried up well! I did like his ability to use his own blood as a weapon! I can't recall this ever being done in a series about vampires! (Maybe now people will jump up and mention "Blood+". In "blood+" blood was used to finish off demons but not made into a sword or flying projectiles like in "Nightwalker") It is too bad you don't get to know "Shido" well! He is a Vampire with a past and a life before he became a Vampire! But for some reason he can't remember his past! This anime could have been much better if they deepened his character by telling some of his past adventures! Comparing this to other anime and about vampires this a nice and decent addition!

Nightwalker is a wonderful anime series with lots of action and fun music. I recommend it.

8/10 stars.

Very good. Some of it was a bit cliché, but really very original for the subject of vampires. Someone else who commented on here said the first few episodes were out of print, but I haven't found this to be the case. If you go to centralparkmedia.com, you can supposedly buy it there. I also found them on Amazon. Where did I find my episodes? Ironically, in a Save-A-Lot grocery store's dollar bin (they were VHS). Yes, my episodes were only a dollar. The only problem is that I couldn't get 5-8 and will have to buy them later. Hard to believe there's only 12 episodes. I hope that more are made because I would actually buy this series. The soundtrack is actually beautiful, in my opinion. Cain's theme is awesome, as is the opening theme. All of the music is lovely though.

A must-see series for lovers of anime and vampires!