Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust [2000]
This was a pretty cool movie. It stars the vampire hunter, D, in one of his jobs to rescue a woman who has been taken by a Noble (vampire).
The woman comes from a wealthy family, so D isn't alone in this hunt. D is a half human, half vampire, and as such he is both feared and disliked by pretty much everyone.
Visually this is a feast for the eyes. The art and backgrounds is incredibly nice. If you think this only would take place in a dark and bleak setting you're mistaken. It varies from lush green forests, sunny deserts, snowy mountains to dark caves and majestic constructions to accompany most of it. It's very detailed.
The world setting is quite interesting. It's set in a distant future, yet in blends in some futuristic technology and a sort of apocalyptic wasteland with a classic Transylvania Victorian setting. Now the futuristic stuff isn't that heavy, it's more or less a few gears that the Hunters use.
Animation in general is good, I didn't experience any fault. However most of the action will consist of attack swipes followed by reactions and/or body count increasing. Don't expect much choreography.
This brings me to my first complaint. Powerful characters goes down pretty unsatisfying. You're left thinking "That's it? Surely there's more". Nope. Still, the action manages to not feel boring thanks to the direction.
My final complaint would be the depth of some of the characters, or rather, the lack of it. Not much is explored and in turn it left me question the authenticity of some of the characters reasonings and motivations.
Some characters serves as a way to simply fill out the slots. We know pretty much nothing about them in the end. And in turn I didn't really have any emotional investment at play.
The movie does its job in that it is entertaining throughout with a good pacing, and has some cool memorable moments. By the end of the movie, I had a whopping 224 screencaps, I think that's a record for me.
I had to restrain myself to spam more images here, so check out the image dumps (May contain spoilers)
Part 1 &
Part 2 if you're interested in more!