Sarah

Have you ever watched something and it left you wanting more?  Well, Blood: The Last Vampire did that to me in the worst sort of way.  This anime starts off with a pretty decent beginning full of suspense and sword slinging action ending with pools of blood.

Blood: The Last Vampire
2 Stars

Have you ever watched something and it left you wanting more?  Well, Blood: The Last Vampire did that to me in the worst sort of way.  This anime starts off with a pretty decent beginning full of suspense and sword slinging action ending with pools of blood.

With a main character like Saya, not much can happen in the story that she does not already know or will not take care of.  Saya reminds me of another character named Balsa from Guardian of the Sacred Spirit, an anime I reviewed a few months back.  Coincidentally, Blood: The Last Vampire and Guardian of the Sacred Spirit are linked by Kenji Kamiyama, he wrote B: TLV and directed GotSS.  Saya is another one of those girl power characters, but her lack of friendly speech makes her less like the other weaker Japanese school girl personas, who basically only exist for comic relief.  Saya is part of a secretive government branch that tracks and destroys these monsters they refer to as Chiropteras.  For those who haven’t seen Blood+, read Jeff’s review or watched this movie before, Chiropteras are demons that feed off human blood.

 

After you get the gist of what the movie is in the first 5 minutes, it delves into the story and does not stop the action until the end.  Forty minutes of watching Saya track and attack more Chiropteras, the movie is over.  Granted the entire film is only 45 or so minutes, but I didn’t think it would be a wham-bam thank you ma’am sort of thing.  I mean I feel like I just had a good first date with an awesome guy and he decided not to call or text the next day.  Awfully disappointing, even with its beautiful animation.  I clearly could have spent my hour more wisely by heading to the mall and throwing away a few hundred dollars on some much needed shopping, but that wouldn’t have geared me up to watch the series.  Now, Blood+ has already been reviewed, so go check that out here.

My apologies for the extremely short review this time around, but there wasn’t much to rave about, or rant for that matter.

A rogue sorcerer named Orphen, on a mission to save his friend Azalie, becomes a teacher himself when he takes on an apprentice named Majic.

A young and beautiful girl named Cleao Everlasting coems home from boarding school to live with her mother and sister for the summer holidays.

Majutsushi Orphen Mubouhen
4 & 1/2 Stars

A rogue sorcerer named Orphen, on a mission to save his friend Azalie, becomes a teacher himself when he takes on an apprentice named Majic.

A young and beautiful girl named Cleao Everlasting coems home from boarding school to live with her mother and sister for the summer holidays.

Cleao thought she was going to have another quiet summer back at her family’s mansion, but she was dead wrong.  It’s a coincidence that Cleao’s path crosses with Orphen and Majic, but they do have something in common.  Cleao’s father bought her an old sword for her 15th birthday, but what they did not know is that that very sword is magical, the magical sword of Baltanders.

Long ago Orphen was known as Krylancelo Finrandi, and his friend and mentor Azalie was not a dragon.  Azalie became obsessed, even power hungry, with having more power.  She learned of the sword of Baltanders, but even obsessive studies did not give her the knowledge of how to properly use the ancient artifact.  Azalie used the sword which started her path towards The Bloody August, a dragon with immense powers.

Orphen has been chasing The Bloody August for five long years before he met his companions Majic and Cleao.  The three of them go on an epic adventure to save Azalie and encounter stone assassins, old friends, ex-masters and a wolven cub named Leki who Cleao adopts.  The ex-masters of Orphen are working against him, or so he thinks.

The last five or so episodes are such a twist, that I cannot reveal the ending.  I was sold on the first five or so episodes, then the filler for 15 episodes got old, but I understood it was building on the story and allowing other characters to come in the adventure to tie up the ending.  The last five episodes were fantastic.  The ending is what really made the series worth watching.  I watched it dubbed, and got stuck watching one subbed some how, and thoroughly enjoyed the subbed version, so I recommend that.

Character development was decent, you pretty much get a feel for everyone right off the bat, but relationships flower, you start to hope one works, and the other does not.  The anime deals with backstabbing, killing dolls, dragons, sorcery, betrayal, a hidden love and sex changes.  Odd mix of things in this, but it keeps you on your toes.

 

I went on a vampire movie kick this weekend, you know, the good ones, Frank Coppola’s Dracula, Nosferatu [1922] and Interview with the Vampire.  Finally, on Sunday, I spent a great deal of time frantically searching for an anime to watch and I stumbled upon this one.  Here’s to mayhem and sucking blood, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.  I have to say that this put a damper on my stay-in-bed-cause-I’m-sick weekend movie mash, but it nonetheless was a pretty decent flick in its own right.

Banpaia hantâ D
4 & 1/2 Stars

I went on a vampire movie kick this weekend, you know, the good ones, Frank Coppola’s Dracula, Nosferatu [1922] and Interview with the Vampire.  Finally, on Sunday, I spent a great deal of time frantically searching for an anime to watch and I stumbled upon this one.  Here’s to mayhem and sucking blood, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.  I have to say that this put a damper on my stay-in-bed-cause-I’m-sick weekend movie mash, but it nonetheless was a pretty decent flick in its own right.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is set a few thousand years in the future.  Vampires once ruled the night, but that was years before the fearless bounty hunters succeeded in diminishing their numbers.  D is one of those audacious bounty hunters, and his competition is the Markus brothers, a group of rough and tough guys and a girl.

When Charlotte, the daughter of a rich family, is taken from her home by the vampire Meier Link, her father contacts both D and the Markus brothers to retrieve her.  The two battle it out and race to save her before Meier Link turns her into a vampire, even if that isn’t Meier Link’s intentions.  As the heroes follow along their journey, fighting Meier’s hired guards and getting passed Carmilla, they finally begin to suspect that Charlotte may have gone willingly.

D, even though he is out numbered, still has a huge advantage over the Markus brothers.  D is a dhampir, the product of a vampire and a human, his father is Count Dracula.  Being Dracula’s son has its rewards for instance, D has super human abilities and he doesn’t age.  Nevertheless, with benefits, there is always a downside, dhampires cannot handle too much sunlight, and a lot of people shun him for being related to a vampire.

Carmilla ends up being the true villain in the film, only using Meier Link and Charlotte as pawns for her master plan.  Many years ago D’s father imprisoned Carmilla’s spirit to the Castle of Chaythe after her bloodlust got the best of her.  She intends to steal Charlotte’s body once the couple reaches the castle in search of a still-functional ship that will take them away from the castle.  You will have to watch this flick to get the rest of its juicy details.

 

It took me the entire time I wrote this review to come up with an excuse of why I didn’t like the movie as much as other vampire movies, I was disappointed, but that’s probably because I watched so many vampire movies before this one.  The only disappointing part about the entire film is that there is no blood sucking involved, so that’s why it gets a 4.5 out of 5.  Blood sucking is such a huge part to vampirism, and I didn’t notice it was lacking it until I got to thinking.  I knew I was disappointed once the credits rolled, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  Talking about it, and almost doing it do not count as blood sucking, so don’t even try that.

Other than that, the film is good, well written, well drawn and the dubbed version is not bad.  It is worth watching for anime and or vampire fans, either way it is appealing.

 

In a new-type technology world, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her partner Bateau are part of a covert division of the Japanese police.  It is their job to investigate the cyber crime and crimes committed by runaway robots.

In their world, it is almost impossible to find a person who hasn’t been tampered with by electronics.  But, as Major Motoko states, “if we all reacted the same we’d be predictable and there’s always more than one way to view a situation what’s true for the group is also true for the individual.  It’s simple, over specialize and you breed weakness, it’s slow death.”  That is why it is important for Togusa, the second most prominent male in the story, to be a part of their team.  As an almost human being, except a slight brain augmentation, he adds a different view on the situation for the team.

Ghost in the Shell
3 Stars

In a new-type technology world, Major Motoko Kusanagi and her partner Bateau are part of a covert division of the Japanese police.  It is their job to investigate the cyber crime and crimes committed by runaway robots.

In their world, it is almost impossible to find a person who hasn’t been tampered with by electronics.  But, as Major Motoko states, “if we all reacted the same we’d be predictable and there’s always more than one way to view a situation what’s true for the group is also true for the individual.  It’s simple, over specialize and you breed weakness, it’s slow death.”  That is why it is important for Togusa, the second most prominent male in the story, to be a part of their team.  As an almost human being, except a slight brain augmentation, he adds a different view on the situation for the team.

The team encounters what first appears to be a hacker they call the Puppet Master.  This so-called Puppet Master specializes in implanting false memories in unsuspecting people, just so they will do his dirty work.  The first case starts with a poor and unsuspecting garbage man, a pawn of the Puppet Master’s, who is tricked into believing he has a neglectful wife who wants a divorce, and a daughter who blames him for the divorce.  The Puppet Master gets him to use a public phone, so he doesn’t get caught, to try to hack into his wife’s ghost to better understand the reason for the divorce.  When Major Motoko and her highly skilled team of cyber crime fighters realize what is going on they must catch up with the oblivious garbage man, who ends up leading the team straight to the person who “helped” him.

The team races around the film to only discover that the Puppet Master is an artificial intelligence that has no shell.  The Puppet Master leeches onto anyone he can and controls everything the pawn of choice does.

Major Motoko, once a beautiful shell of a woman, is reduced to a child after tearing apart her last body to get at the Puppet Master.  The thing I like the most about the shifting of her ghost from one shell to the other was when she began talking she had the personality and voice of the child, but soon personalized to her normal self and voice.

The anime is artistically beautiful; however, they did a horrible job at explaining what is going on before they dove into the story.  The voice over at first sounds pretty poor, but after a while you get used to it and it stops distracting you from the story.  I hope that by then you have a good grasp on the film, if not you could easily hit stop, because you really aren’t missing much.

I have had a couple people recommend this to me on some forums I am part of, and I have to say, this is the first time I have thought their recommendation sucked.  Forgive me, I know…  With so many agreeing, why didn’t I like it?  Honestly, I haven’t the slightest clue, this is the typical story for typical me, technology, gadgets, telepathy, guns and action.  On top of all those mouth-watering genres, there is absolutely no love story, none at all.  However, for some strange reason, it just sucked.  Best of luck with this one, many people enjoy it however I did not.