Vampire hunter D: bloodlust [DVD]

In this animated horror movie, set in a menacing distant future where the dead haunt the living, a deadly vampire kidnaps a beautiful human woman. Her distraught family offer a huge reward for her rescue - dead or alive. One bounty hunter, Dunpeal, a half-human, half-vampire being, at war with himself, tortured and alone, is hired to retrieve the girl. But a rival group of rescuers, the Marcus siblings, resent Dunpeal’s presence, and plan to use him in order to collect the loot. In his quest, D faces many nasty encounters with murderous semi-human creatures, including a werewolf, a shape-shifter, a phantom queen, and a subculture of human-hating monsters. In Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust”, the sequel to “Vampire hunter D (1985), the future has the aesthetic of a dystopic, medieval nightmare but the animation is far more sophisticated than in the original. Director Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Wicked City, Animatrix) keeps the action exciting, even if the characterisations are simplistic, and the violent gory animatronics are awe-inspiring in scope, embodying all the qualities of gothic, bloody combat, whilst harking to the model of the eternal outsider, moody and disliked, shunned by society and feared by his enemies.