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  Richard
  
Attwood
Blood: The Last Vampire
Japan, 2000
[Hiroyuki Kitakubo]
Youki Kudoh, Joe Romersa, Saemi Nakamura (voices)
Action / Horror / Anime
  
The opening scene of this anime is stunning. Combining 3D CGI to give the camera a beautiful fluidity of movement around brilliantly drawn main characters and a beginning sequence of a killing on a subway train it achieves maximum impact and really does get the expectations soaring. It�s a shame that the rest of the movie doesn�t do it justice.

The animation is superb throughout; seamlessly integrating the two styles of drawing, CG and cell, and with thoughtful use of moody lighting creates a really dirty, hard-bitten atmosphere. The story concerns a young lady who is employed by shadowy government figures to kill strange shape-shifting creatures with a samurai sword. Seems she is some special breed, the last of her kind. And that�s about all the plot you get, before she proceeds to infiltrate an American airbase in Japan to uncover some more ghoulies. So we never find out if she herself is the Last Vampire (although the indications are damn strong), why she works for these people, or what the creatures are trying to achieve. It�s pretty much non-stop action and horror for it�s criminally brief 50 minutes.

It leaves you ruing what is undoubtedly a missed opportunity to create a truly landmark anime. A longer feature with more plot and character development could have been awesome and you can only hope that they are planning to start a long running series of episodes to flesh this promising concept out. In the meantime, enjoy it while it lasts and try to decide exactly what the point is of the ending placed in a fictional historic context. It stumped me.
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