Yoshiaki Kawajiri

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) I know just enough about animated Japanese films that I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that a film with terrific art would have not-so-terrific animation and a borderline incomprehensible plot. But Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is not that much of an oddity compared to other animated films of a similar vintage: Take any frame of the film and you’ll be impressed by the visual quality of the result. String them along into a sequence and you’ll recognize the shortcuts taken to keep the production costs down: highly constrained animation, interminable travelling mattes, lengthy segments where nothing moves, and other such common measures with pre-digital animation with a limited budget. Add longer sequences and the plot clearly can’t support the images: We end up with this jumble of plot elements that barely fit together and aren’t structured for any kind of storytelling intensity. It’s also when the demands of a limited animation budget crash into the requirements of a well-paced film: with interminable exposition and people talking over static shots, the film struggles to advance in more than short bursts of action. I still think that the art is often magnificent, and some of the ideas are interesting. The way writer-director Yoshiaki Kawajiri puts everything together, unfortunately, undermines even the best assets of the film. Anyone tempted to bemoan the 3D era of animation may be gently reminded of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and what happens when you don’t have the means to do justice to your creative intentions.