Blood: The Last Vampire (2009) Live Action

Directed by Chris Nahon
Based on the story by Hiroyuki Kitakubo
Featuring Gianna, Allison Miller, Liam Cunningham, JJ Field, Yasuaki Kurata, and Koyuki

Something based on an anime movie about a female vampire hunter dressed up in a sailor girl’s suit just has to be awesome, doesn’t it? The answer is a very adamant, and disappointed, “no”. The live action version of the animated short, Blood: The Last Vampire (which I am sure sounds very poetic and makes sense in the Japanese language, just not in English) is a disjointed and weird movie about Saya (Gianna) and her weird adventures in 1970 Tokyo hunting the demoness Onegin (Koyuki)...

Along for the ride is an annoying white chick (Allison Miller) who reminds me way too much of my college roommate Jennifer, and some awful CIA and army white-dude stereotypes that remind me that all Japanese people think Caucasians all look the same. They do! So anyway, here’s the storyline.

Saya is forced to go back to high school. She is right to hate those blond people.

Saya is a several-hundred-year-old chick who wields a powerful kitana blade against vampires (also referred to as ‘demons’ throughout the film). She was raised by the wonderful Kato, who told her of her destiny to find and destroy all vampires and their leader, Onegin. Onegin also happed to slay Saya’s father, a vampire hunter as well. Saya’s terse and tense manner is due to probably how old she is (I mean, she’s old) but luckily she’s trapped in the body of a 16 year old girl! (Like me! Oh wait; I have the MIND of a 16 year old girl). Set in 1970 on an army base outside of Tokyo, Saya is sent to investigate some vampire-ish killings on the base that may lead her to Onegin. Then again, they may lead her to 30 minutes of bullshit including lame students being catty, stupid music montages reminding us of good ol’ 1970, father/daughter tensions between Alice and her big bad army general daddy, and all that other ‘American’ crap that got thrown into this picture.

Saya fighting one of the two awesome fights in this film

When Saya discovers that Alice is about to be killed by teenage vampires (who don’t like her face, or her shoes, or something; not sure why they want to kill her) she dispatches the demons and saves Alice’s life. But then Alice becomes the target of the CIA, who sent Saya there in the first place. Alice runs. Saya saves her. Saya runs, Alice follows. This happens several times. Over the course of these pointless minutes we are supposed to believe that Saya and Alice have formed a friendship and are ‘sharing’ stuff about feelings and words and things. Yawn. When Saya urges Alice to save herself (it is dangerous to follow Saya), Alice won’t budge. Alice wants to help. So Alice goes on the journey to find Onegin with Saya.

Uncle Kato doesn't survive the second awesome fight involving Ninjas in the woods.

Yeah, the plot is that thin. “Gianna” is really named Jeon Ji-hyun and is a Korean actress. Allison Miller is very high-pitched and irritating. And frankly, her character is pointless. The story really starts to become laughable when the computer graphics kick in. In a desperate, and not well thought-out, attempt to emulate the look of the vampires in the original animated film, computer animation is used instead of makeup and costume to create flying vampire creatures. They look reallllllly bad. Another moment of ‘UGH’ is when Gianna stops doing her own stunts and an animated Saya finishes them. Animated Saya looks a bit like that awful Catwoman movie where they were trying to force us to believe that Halle Berry was climbing up walls and we laughed and left the theater. So, the vampires aren’t really scary, Alice irritates, and half the time I wonder if Gianna learned her lines phonetically because she doesn’t seem to speak with any emotion. BUT, I do love the character of Onegin, played by model Koyuki (again, you can see how cool she is because she only has one name). Onegin is the oldest and most powerful demon on earth, and Saya must overpower and destroy her both to save humans and to avenge the death of her father. Onegin is regal, dark, and gorgeous, and definitely the highlight of the film for me. The fact that her epic fight with Saya didn’t last very long and wasn’t very epic at all was definitely a letdown.

One-named Japanese model Koyuki is 'Onegin', female demon

Oh, don’t forget, there’s got to be some kind of shocking and predictable twist because you need that whenever you have a movie about a half-vampire, half-human who hunts vampires. Like Blade, or Vampire Hunter D.

twist

For fans of the original animated film; it’s better than this. It makes more sense and Saya has more personality. There are two awesome fighting scenes; one in the streets of Tokyo between Saya and modern vampires, and one set in the 16th century with Kato, Saya’s caretaker, and a group of deadly black-garbed ninja vampires that pretty much rock. Aside from this, most of the action involves computer people and things or just looks way fake. Sigh.

the end