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.

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

This movie feels rushed at the end. On my DVD, I thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe it skipped a few scenes? But nope. The movie finishes on a note, like most anime's do, which leaves you hanging. But this leaves you hanging, really hanging, saying.... OK, so what is the point of this movie??

This movie had some awesome scenes, great animation, and lots of potential. I loved the vampires, I loved the girl main character (although the tough girl thing is overdone in anime). But it lacked a theme, feel, and.... well.... ending. Too bad, could've been spectacular.

"Blood: The Last Vampire" is impressive and not impressive for a number of reasons. The reasons it is impressive is...well, quite obviously the animation is worthy of mention. Taking digital animation much further than in "Ghost in the Shell," this film is probably as state-of-the-art as animation can get these days. They even made alternate takes and angles for use in the trailer, giving it a more live action feel. The visuals are intense, the music is effective, it should be a massive hit, right? Wrong, and for the reasons it's not impressive, which are unfortunately too much to save it. The first problem...it's too short, not even lasting a full hour. Obvious not meant to be a full-on movie, but it should've been. The story is weak, but only because it's not developed beyond a concept, as opposed to a drawn out plot. The concept is Saya is "the only remaining original" vampire, and the government contracts her to hunt down vampiric demons. We have little or no back story, no explanation of how Saya is the only original, no explanation of the people she works for, or why she seems to hunt her own kind...or even if they are her own kind. There's so much missing from the story, that one wonders if the workload was really worth it. Bottom line, the plot could've been simple, but it should've been drawn out. MORE, give us MORE! Now, on the other hand, if this were a pilot episode to a series, it might be more tolerable, but with the expenses and effort put into just this one 50-minute feature, it seems unlikely. "Blood: The Last Vampire" WANTED to be better than it was, and SHOULD'VE been better than it was. Alas, somebody forgot that what makes a good anime is not just the animation but the story as well, the main thing that distinguishes anime from most other forms of animation.

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. >