Blood: The Last Vampire

When you sit down to view Blood: the Last Vampire, the style and setting of this gothic noir anime grabs you instantly. Using a mixture of animation cells and computer-generated backgrounds, this is an effortlessly stylized visual breakthrough that hopefully will launch future endeavors in the style.

The problem with this particular film, though, is that it is far, far too short. At just over forty minutes filmed length, the story of a strange girl called Saya that seems to be some sort of vampire slayer barely gets the ball rolling on the enigmas behind this girl, the organization she works for, and the beasts she vows to slay before fading into the end credits. This makes you sit back, blinking at all the dazzling visual beauty that went into this well-crafted film, and wonder, 'what next?' Hopefully, there will be further adventures of Saya and the dingy, grimy world she lives in, each as well-designed as this one was, though with much more payoff.

All in all, worth looking at if only to see what the future of animation might look like.

AARRRGGHH!!! CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE TURN THIS INTO A FULLY FLEDGED SERIES OR MOVIE!!!!!!!

I love a story to be fleshed out. I like to know about origins, motivations and characters. And Blood offers just enough to be thoroughly intriguing yet little enough to frustrate the absolute crap out of me. The 'pure' vampire thing is a pretty good angle. I want to know more!

That just about sums up Blood for me. Everything it does it does well. Great concept, animation (especially CG) and voice work. There just isnt enough of any of it. At about 48 mins it just barely scratches the surface. You expect another chapter in Saya's mission to directly follow. But you get the credits instead.

If this ever fulfilled its potential I think the producers could have an anime milestone on their hands. As it stands Blood is great and frustrating in totally equal parts. >

In Japan, the vampire-hunter Saya, who is a powerful original, is sent by her liaison with the government, David, posed as a teenage student to the Yokota High School on the eve of Halloween to hunt down vampires. Saya asks David to give a new katana to her. Soon she saves the school nurse Makiho Amano from two vampires disguised of classmates and Makiho witnesses her fight against the powerful demons.

"Blood: The Last Vampire" is an animation of 48 minutes running time with the tormented and skilled samurai Saya. The story is too short and has a poor development of Saya, especially for those that do not know the character. I saw the movie "Blood: The Last Vampire" (2009) a couple of years ago and the character Saya is better developed. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

When I picked up the DVD, it said on the back 80 minutes, so that's what I expected. Instead, I ended up with a 45 minute film. The other 35 minutes has been reserved for the "Making Of" and the trailer (Actually, the "Making Of" was only 20 minutes. Where did the other 10+ minutes go?). That said, "Blood: The Last Vampire" is very much like a roller coaster: Very fast, a lot of fun, but over before you know it.

The first three minutes drew me into the whole story very quickly. It has an impressive beginning, a moderately slow-paced lead up, but once the action starts, it becomes very, very cool. I guess that's why after the last battle, I was expecting more, and when it started rolling credits a few minutes after "officially" revealing Saya's history, I was expecting this new (but obvious) information to start adding into the story and her character. In the age of 2-3 hour epics, the abruptness caught me off guard.

But enough harping about the short film aspect. This is an enjoyable film to watch for its pacing, visuals and sound. The music was very dark and atmospheric, and I thought the voice acting for Saya was good. The CG in the film leads to some very cool effects, but as strange as this sounds, some of its realism (especially with the plane scenes) offsets the animated look. It was an unusual combination of "CG realism" and animation.

All in all, "Blood: The Last Vampire" is worth a watch. It has a lot of really good things going for it, and I'll definitely show it off to friends. Recommended

This movie is wonderful. Even though it is short, it didn't really need anything else. Mamarou Oshii and his team did a wonderful job at simplifying a potentially aspiring story into great characters and great animation. At first i wondered why the film was so short but the more i thought about it the more it made sense. The film didn't really need any extra story to it. It fits nicely into the package it comes in. They paced it so well that it didn't seem like it needed anything more. The animation was very good as well, Oshii really knows how to use his animation to relate to people. His characters look like normal people, they (for the most part) act like normal people and they have a great deal of time and emotion put into them. His characters were also developed well. Some argue that there was not enough background story in the film but there really didn't need to be. It seems that, Oshii likes to put mystery around his characters. He doesn't give you every little bit of information on them he lets you wonder and examine them so that you can draw your own conclusions about who they are. I highly recommend this movie.