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VAMPIRE HUNTER D

Pretty young Doris does what she can to resist, but eventually finds herself in the clutches of the vampire, who is about fifteen feet tall! After being bitten, she hires the only man who might have a chance against Lee: the vampire hunter known only as D. The tall dark stranger on a cyborg horse is no ordinary super-powered vampire hunter. He hides a tall dark secret: he's a half vampire "dampiel" himself, having been sired by the one and only Count Dracula.

When asked to help, at first D is ambiguous, fighting off his emotions. But when Doris is abducted, he changes his mind and storms Lee's fantastic castle full of terrifying creatures alone, in true anti-hero fashion.

VAMPIRE HUNTER D sports more pretentious attitude than its shallow depth can support, but has enough spunk to work on a video game level (and indeed, the DVD sports a preview of the Playstation game). The basic plot is built around European and Hollywood vampire mythology, but a lot of the creatures reflect Japanese legends and folklore. The animation has a lot of rough edges when compared to modern anime, but at the time the film was made (1985) was highly regarded for its imagination. Despite its flaws, the original is an old favorite for many anime fans all over the world. The designs are attractive, especially when it comes to the monsters, but don't compare with the book illustrations they're based on. Another DVD extra is a gallery of art by illustrator Yoshitako Amano, and the film clearly suffers by comparison.

Urban Vision's DVD transfer leaves a bit to be desired, as the image is soft and too dark. I'm tempted to give it a "D," but that might be too cute. The sound fares much better, offering two choices of how to listen to the sometimes cheesy Tetsuya Komuro score. The Japanese 2.0 track actually sounds better on my low-end system plus, the voice acting is a lot better. Like most English dubs of anime, the dialogue is much cruder in English.

The disc includes a 10-minute Making of D featurette with English subtitles which shows a studio full of animators burning their eyes out over light-boxes, then goes to a recording session where we see how different the actors look from their roles. There's also a handful of trailers for other Urban Vision titles, including WICKED CITY, WILD 7, PET SHOP OF HORRORS, and GOKU. But the highlight comes in comparing the trailer for the original D with last year's remake, which looks absolutely breathtaking.