| Plot |
| Blood the Last Vampire brings a moody atmospheric quality all of its own to the Japanese animated film tradition. In a few short enigmatic scenes, we learn of the young girl Saya who is working for nameless government agencies and is sent, after one of her killings, to pose as a new pupil at an American school on an air force base. The Vietnam War is underway, but this does not concern her--she is involved with a far older war. All we ever find out is that she is not quite human, and that two of her schoolmates (and a whore in the mean streets adjacent to the base) are something yet again. Much of what ensues--gore and metamorphosis and nightmare chases--is all the more confusing for being seen through the eyes of a schoolteacher who never learns very much. This is a dreamlike film which does not have to make entirely literal sense, far more so than the creator's more famous Ghost in the Shell. It is also a memorable stage in the development of digitised animation. --Roz Kaveny |
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