Blood:
The Last Vampire
Manga
45 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
08/21/2001
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Blood:
Manga
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| Jerry : He looks like he's made out of
chocolate. Blood is basically the best example I could ever give of how lazy college has made me over the past year. I watched Blood in, oh, I don't know... September 2001. I even took notes as I knew it'd save me from having to watch it again. It is now April of 2002, a scant week away from May of 2002 and I'm just now sitting down to write a review. It took me seven months to write a six or seven kilobyte review where I already did all the work. I just had to sit down and start typing. A monkey could've done my job. Hell, my fucking ROOMMATE could've done my job and he spends all his time smoking pot and talking on the phone with his girlfriend about her past history of blood in her bowel movements.** First things first. I'm sorry, but screw you Manga Entertainment. I know I don't get screeners from anyone but I can't even think of asking for the "privilege" of it. Your crappy DVDs with their Macrovision. I'm one of the most anti-piracy people you'll ever meet, but Macrovision fucks up the screen captures I take. I guess it makes sense, they're trying to protect against people ripping the DVD. But what about trumping up the runtimes on your DVDs? Blood is 45 minutes long at best but Manga wants you to believe it's this hour and a half long epic. Screw them. Extras are called extras for a reason. |
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So anyway, we're brought back to the time just before the Vietnam war. Set in the Yokota base, the majority of Blood's dialogue is in English with just a few spatters of Japanese along the way. Still, Japanese culture is evident. Its mostly seen in the swords and the fact that the school girls all wear really short skirts. One of these short skirted school girls is named Saya. She's sixteen, she's short, and she's angsty as all get out. If you see her strangely unnatural face smiling then you're probably watching the wrong anime. Saya's a weird looking one, it's hard to place but she just doesn't look like a real person. That's not the end of the crazy character designs though! The principal of her school is none other than the illustrious Don King. Also, Saya is backed by a group of special agents, one of whom looks like Linc Hayes from the 'Mod Squad' aged twenty years. The white guy, I don't know, he's an old white guy. They all look exactly the same. |
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So the world's populated by vampires. Or is it? According to this 'movie' there's about three left and Saya kills one in the first few minutes of it during a fairly gruesome scene on a subway car. Not only is Saya a school girl with an incredibly odd face, but she has a nice little samurai sword as well. Of course, for purposes of practicality, while Saya's in public it's concealed in what looks like a tube for blueprints that she carries around on her shoulder. Guess she's supposed to be an art student or something. Saya kills some vampires, gets put in a school where she's told to keep a look out for vampires, and finally gets around to killing the other vampires. Only the vampires look much more like crazy pregnant pterodactyls than anything else. But what do I know about vampires anyway? I'm certainly no Anne Rice.*** |
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That's about all that happens. Dead vampires,
pretend plot, maiming of fat black army guards, more dead vampires. Surprised?
It's forty five minutes long, what are you expecting? Blood does
what it's trying to do okay. The action isn't that bad and that's what it
mostly is. If I could stop hating Saya's character for being so plain stupid
(and mongoloid) for a few moments I might actually come to like it. The
thing is I really just can't. Maybe it was all the CG, maybe it was all
the school girls. Hell, maybe I just plain hate Manga.
All I know is I was plenty excited when I heard about this particular feature
and it was a pretty damn big let down. Too its credit Blood does
have plenty of "cool" action spots, but I've seen them in so many
movies now I just can't be bothered to care. Apparently this whole "Blood" thing has been in a bunch of videogames and books and such that us dirty Americans Stateside have never heard of. That's all well and good but it's not a story I particularly care to know more about anyway. Blood's a bit cheaper than the average Anime DVD so it's not a horrible rip off for the price, however, I wish they'd put a bit of work in making it good instead of giving it this machine like precision. Sure, you can tell a fairly coherent story in 45 minutes, but where's the heart? Oh yeah, and stop with CG that's so damn overt. Does anyone actually like that? |
**True story. I am not fucking kidding. Everyone knows if you're on the phone with a girl you leave the room, especially if you talk about shit like that. I now know she masturbates when she studies too. Fun facts like that.