Vampire Hunter D (1985)

LET ME! HEAR! YOU SAY!

According to Reddit comments and Google AI summaries, an anime triad exists called The Big Three: One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach. I do not wish to throw shade at anybody who swears by this, but whoever established that list has to be younger than me. When I was growing up, The Big Three were Akira, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D. My friends namedropped those titles the most, and they were also responsible for sucking me down into anime.

Regardless of its place in The Real Three, I didn’t get around to watching Vampire Hunter D until the late ‘90s. By then I’d picked up on a common anime niche in the form of stoic protagonists. These were heroes who spoke little, showed no emotion, and let nothing faze them. Anime was full of stoic heroes, and as someone with ADD and rampant unchecked anxiety, I considered it an enviable trait. When not even a giant fireball raised your brow, you had something important figured out.

Few protagonists exhibit stoicism like the titular ‘D’ in Vampire Hunter D. He’s so stoic, there are scenes where he isn’t animated at all. If you took Geralt of Rivia and traded his cynicism for a big hat and black cloak, you might have someone resembling D.

As Vampire Hunter D opens, a single text blurb introduces us to its world: “This story takes place in the distant future. When mutants and demons slither through a world of darkness.” That sentence fragment isn’t my doing, by the way; that’s how it appears on the screen. But since nobody involved with this production hired my infant self to proofread, it will remain that way forever.

In this post-apocalyptic setting, a calamity has pulled civilization backwards into the past. The towns are Victorian era villages. Beyond their borders, high tech ruins scatter the landscape, nature reclaiming them as slimy wet things crawl all over. It’s also a world of laser blasters and cyborg horses, as the film’s heroine, Doris Lang, demonstrates while defending her farm from monsters in the middle of the night.

The monster attacks get deadlier. Suddenly Doris’s horse is dead, and she faces a threat in the form of a powerful vampire named Count Magnus Lee. He bites Doris, condemning her to become not only a vampire herself, but the Count’s bride. Now the local village wants nothing to do with her, considering her an outcast because of her curse.

Doris, her little brother Dan, and their ranch are doomed to suffer. But at the eleventh hour, a horseman comes riding up the highway. He’s a vampire hunter who calls himself D. In desperation, Doris offers him food, shelter, and sex, if he will kill Lee for her.

D, of course, isn’t interested in that last part. He wants to know where the monsters are. He’s all business. Compared to Vampire Hunter D: Bloodust, which gives D’s personality more breathing room, this version of D has less life in it, seemingly on purpose. His motivation is to take out the vampire Doris hired him to slay, and then move on. Anything else, including personal attachments, violates his code of conduct.

D is so tall that his presence takes up most of the frame. His hat is also quite large, casting a shadow over his eyes that always looks like he’s wearing a domino mask. With the exception of fight scenes, he remains so motionless that he could pose for a Gothic horror cover at any moment.

Meanwhile, Count Magus Lee occupies a gigantic labyrinthine castle, full of aberrations that escaped from Urotsukidōji’s intestinal tract. He spends most of the movie slumped on his throne, head propped on his elbow. After 10,000 years of immortal existence, his motivation for his planned rapey kidnapping is, no joke, boredom. Should I blame him? 10,000 years would be enough time to read every book and finish every video game, including the most ridiculous Achievements. I could even unlock the Calendar Man cheevo from Batman: Arkham City. What would be left to accomplish after that!?

Immoral woes aside, though, Lee’s cure for chronic boredom includes disposing of his vampire brides after he tires of them. He sits and complains about how there’s nothing to do while his lackeys carry out his dirty work. His daughter Lamika wants to kill Doris over the threat of her polluting the nobility/peasant hierarchical structure. The mutant henchman Rei Ginsei hopes that by getting rid of D, he’ll climb higher in the caste system.

And so it goes. Lamika talks about nobility at the same frequency Vegeta mentions pride. She finds D a bothersome nuisance, but his mysterious origins, and her discovery that he’s a Dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) raises too many questions for her. Rei busts his ass for a morose douchebag and gets nothing in return.

D’s Dhampirism gives him super strength, high agility, and rapid healing. The downsides are a set of retractable fangs and an occasional thirst for blood. As if he didn’t have enough problems, the symbiote living in his Left Hand gives him constant shit. Left Hand is never happy, no matter what choices D makes. He loves nagging D about leaning too far toward the human or vampire sides of himself. “Why are you acting with too much humanity right now, crushing on this girl?” “Ha ha, see, you are a monster!” This thing would be the worst roommate.

Meanwhile, Doris and Dan crack D’s ever-stoic front. He struggles with the possibility he’s falling in love with Doris, while Dan sees him as a father figure/big brother. There’s an infamous moment where D gives Dan a parental pep-talk, which had our stupid teenage selves howling with laughter. Imagine a seven-foot-tall mass of a gloomy color palette saying, “She needs your smile, not your tears,” and you get the idea.

As far as dubs go, the classic Streamline Pictures recording isn’t terrible, as I’ve heard much worse. At this point, hearing anyone else except Michael McConnihee voicing D, or Wendee Lee as Doris, would be plain bizarre. However, it does tend to be Speedracery in the line delivery. It also gives the Count and his daughter Romanian accents. Because of course it does. They’re vampires.

Although Count Lee spends most of the movie sitting in a chair, he’s still a formidable foe, and an asshole. He reminds me Nekron from Fire & Ice. When he gets off his throne in the last act, shit gets real.

I’m not too sure what to say about Doris, though. She is defiant in the face of danger, standing up for herself and not taking any bullshit. So on the one hand, she’s not a doormat. But when up against the monstrous legions, especially the aforementioned Count Lee, Doris is less capable. Her prime function during the movie is to get kidnapped whenever D isn’t around to defend her. I also invented a fun drinking game, where you take a shot every time you see her panties.

Overall though, the biggest problem with Vampire Hunter D is that it was never that pretty to look at, hindered by a lot of stiff or limited animation. The 2000 VHS and DVD releases, both of which I’ve held onto for many years, further exacerbate the problem, muddying up the visuals. It makes me curious about how hopefully much better the Blu-ray release treated the movie.

Oh, and I almost forgot about that hilarious, out of place, jaunty pop song that plays over the Japanese credits. The tonal shifting is crazy. Vampire Hunter D has the Last House on the Left of anime end credit sequences.

Final Rating: ***