12/5/2023 0 Comments Vampire hunter d 1985 subtitleOn April 16, 2015, Sentai Filmworks announced their license to the film in North America for digital and home video release. In 2000, Urban Vision Entertainment, the US production partner and distributor of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, re-released the OVA on a ‘Special Edition’ bilingual DVD on October 17 containing the original Japanese audio and a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix of the Streamline dub, as well as releasing dubbed and subtitled versions of the film on VHS. Vampire Hunter D is considered a flagship title for Streamline, and was marketed in the US as ‘the first animated horror film for adults.’ The film was also shown several times on American television during the 1990s, including on TBS, Cartoon Network and the Sci-Fi Channel. D gets slightly more dialogue than in the original but is still kept appropriately monosyllabic and mysterious.The film was originally released in English by Streamline Pictures, and was shown on the fine-arts theatrical circuit in the US in August 1992 and later released on VHS on March 26, 1993. The characterisations are slim and … well comic-bookish. Indeed, with its sharply drawn contrasts of light, shadow and emphasised muscular shadings, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust could almost be the work of comic-book artist Jim Steranko brought to life. The backgrounds are beautifully stylised Gothic renderings – Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is one of the few animes to adopt the essence of the modern graphic novel. The introduction of D comes in the midst of a full-scale battle between the Marcus Brothers and zombies with D catching a silver arrow fired at him in his hand and his cape resplendently opening like bat wings silhouetted against a full moon. The action here is frequently enthralling – battles with the likes of a tree woman and flying coffins, a character with a wolf’s head emerging from its stomach, the various hunters engaged in sword battles with vampires and zombies, horse and cycle flights through a minefield of laser beams and the like. Yoshiaki Kawajiri leaps into the intensively driven action, mass destruction and changes between small and epic scale that makes anime such cult material. The difference between the two might be the same as that between the simplistic two-dimensional animation of Hanna-Barbera’s tv shows and the high-art animation of modern Disney. It is immediately apparent from the opening shot in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust – a 3D pullback through a forest of crucifixes that then moves about the town as the vampire’s shadow passes through the streets, causing flowers and crosses to wilt and animals to cower – that this is a new generation Vampire Hunter D. The original Vampire Hunter D was simplistically animated and stylistically crude. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is made by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who also made Lensman (1984), the amazingly perverse Wicked City (1987), Demon City Shinjuku (1988), Ninja Scroll (1993), Highlander: The Search for Vengeance (2007) and one of the episodes of The Animatrix (2003). The English language print has been subtitled Bloodlust (which is kept in this review to avoid confusion between the two), although this subtitle does not appear on the print of the film itself and it otherwise has exactly the same title as the original, Vampire Hunter D, which lends some weight to the idea that it might be a remake. It is not entirely clear if Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is intended as a remake or a sequel – the story follows similar, although not identical, paths to the original – it could be the first film’s plot reworked with more depth and substance. The original Vampire Hunter D (1985), even though only released on video in the USA, became a cult item among anime fans with its surreal visuals and Gothic anti-hero.
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