Blood the Last Vampire was pretty much a minor title. A forty five minute stand alone feature that gained a lot of hype for being the first anime completely animated on computers. People wondered if it would cause a revolution. It didn't, but it did have an intriguing visual style, a uniquely realistic and brutal mood for its fight sequences, creative monster design, and a nice sense of mystery. It lacked a compelling plot or interesting characters, but not bad for 45 minutes.
Blood really succeeded because it used its time limitations as a boon instead of a handicap. It didn't try to give us some epic story, instead it came in with the sense that we were just seeing one minor chapter in a story that had gone on and would go on for a long long time.
The film follows a girl hunting vampires in a Japanese/American military base in the sixties. We are introduced to Blood as she cuts a seemingly innocent man to pieces on a subway. Even after he's dead we're still not sure if he's a monster or just some poor schmo who took the late train home to work. Blood's handlers give no awkward exposition filled speeches about how they met and what they do. It's old news to them. The Vampire's nesting habits (hiding everywhere from brothels to schoolhouses) were sketched in broad quick strokes that gave them a feel of realism. We don't even learn anything of Blood herself, who comes on as the anti Buffy; a cold calculating killer who definitely shares ties with the things she's hunting. Now apparently there's a whole slew of anime, manga, and video games that smooth out all these wrinkles (ie interesting things) but Blood on it's own in the US is a cool, lean little number that got a lot of recognition for being the first to do something.
The more things change...
You see, according to The Hollywood Reporter Blood is poised to break another barrier, that of the American movie industry. Cry all you want video game fans, Anime fan's got it worse when it comes to Hollywood. You've never had to watch Chris Penn with Neon Hair being shot at desperate angles to appear buff.
There have been rumors about anime going live action in the past, but they went about it all wrong, either trying to latch on to some crappy fad (DBZ) or trying to take a revered, classic, groundbreaking film and then giving it to the dude who made Catwoman (Akira� no I'm serious they wanted to do that toAkira). And while actual anime on the big screen has gone from never, to once every five years, to "Oh fine if you really want to see this crap then here you go. Take a hundred screens." It is hardly an ideal situation. So it's almost eerie to see someone doing it right.
This version of Blood is to be set in the aftermath of World War II. It's budgeted at 30 million, will the star Korean Actress Jun Ji-hyun (best known for being the Korean Sandra Bullock in the original Lake House), and will be directed by Ronnie Yu.
This is the right way to do it. Take a title that anime fans actually would like to see, one that is respected but not revered. Give it a decent budget, and then give it to a director who is not a complete moron (true Ronny Yu isn't fantastic, but he does solid genre work, trust we got off lucky here this isn't Paul WS Anderson we're talking about.).
I'm actually sort of shocked by how little I have to complain about on this thing. Go for it guys, I for one will be psyched to get a solid adaptation on the big screen.
