As a huge fan of the D series this opinion may seem a little biased, but sod it. I loved this movie from start to finish, being a bit dissappointed with the lack of Vampire Hunter D anime I was ecstatic when I found out they were doing another movie, I couldn't wait to see it, but I had to.
Anyway the plot of this D movie was based a little more around the original manga and so precedes the 1980's D movie. I won't give away the plot as I know how much this can annoy people, but suffice to say it is fairly straightforward with few twists, but the ones there are, are very good. Obviously the animation is a great leap up from the first film, being nearly 15 years later. The characters are drawn very well and the shading and detail on the architecture is superb. The fight scenes are wonderfully realised and far more exciting than recent efforts.
The soundtrack is, as you would expect, some wonderful gothic orchestral pieces that tie in wonderfully with the movie. The English voice actors actually did a really good job of portraying the characters and their emotions (or lack of). The only odd piece of casting was Mike Mcshane as the Hand, it worked well, but just seemed a strange choice.
The Marcus bothers made a brilliant supporting cast, if a little bit underused, but nothing to damage the flow of events. In general the monsters were creative and varied, lending a bit of depth and colour to the proceedings.
Iwould have perhaps liked it to be a little longer, as some of the characters could have used a bt more background to them, but it was still outstanding as it is. |
