By skyforbes 
This one’s a bit of a (bloody) blast from the past for me. 1985’s horror anime OVA Vampire Hunter D was dubbed and released by Streamline pictures in US movie theatres in 1992, before coming to NTSC VHS the following year. Marketed as “the first animated horror film for adults”, it came to the UK shortly afterwards as one of the first half-dozen or so PAL VHS releases from the infamous “Manga Video”. Vampire Hunter D was such a fixture on video rental shelves, that I imagine almost anyone in the US or UK who was interested in Japanese animation in the early 1990s probably watched it. I know I certainly did, though in the almost thirty years since my first experience with it, I’ve never revisited it — until now.
I can’t remember if I rented it or bought my own copy, and I can’t be bothered rummaging through deeply buried boxes in my attic to find out. While I clearly recall the opening few minutes, most of the rest of the OVA has faded into murky haze. I remember thinking it was “ok”, but I clearly wasn’t ever inspired enough to seek out its more highly regarded sequel, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll, Cyber City Oedo 808).
The main reason I’m re-watching Vampire Hunter D now after all this time, is that I’ll be attending the screening of Bloodlust’s new 4K restoration, fittingly on the night of Halloween, at the Scotland Loves Anime film festival in Glasgow, and thought it would be best to refresh my memory of its predecessor. For some reason, I thought the original Vampire Hunter D was also a Kawajiri effort, but it turns out it was in fact directed by Toyoo Ashida, perhaps best known for his work on Fist of the North Star and Space Battleship Yamato, though he was also animation director for one of my childhood obsessions, French-Japanese TV animation co-production Ulyssess 31.
Based on the 1983 first novel in the long-running (56 volumes and counting!) Vampire Hunter D series, the 1985 OVA was last released domestically in the US by Sentai in 2015, on blu-ray, with a new dub. HIDIVE also started streaming the film in 2025, in the US only. Sadly this disc never came to the UK, and UK HIDIVE is crippled shadow of its US equivalent, so the most recent version available to me is the ancient Manga Entertainment DVD release from 2003, which comes with the Streamline dub only, and no option for Japanese audio or English subtitles. Ah, those were the days. That’s the version I’m reviewing today, functionally identical to the VHS tape I watched as a schoolboy in the 1990s.
It was probably fine for the time, but Streamline’s dub is awful by modern standards, and actively makes watching the already pretty shaky OVA almost excruciating. Even back then, dub directors did their best to get their actors to match stilted dialogue to lip-flaps, often resulting in unnatural, awkward cadence and unintentionally hilarious delivery of some truly hokey lines. Of note, the main female role, Doris Lang, is performed by Barbara Goodson, eternally immortalised for her performance as Rita Repulsa in Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Now in her late 70s, she continues to voice act, most recently in the roles of Turbo Granny in Science Saru’s Dan Da Dan, and Shampoo’s grandmother Cologne in MAPPA’s Ranma 1/2 remake. Let’s say that Doris probably isn’t Ms. Goodson at her best…
Michael McConnohie (Hot Shot / Ironhide in Transformers: Robots in Disguise) does an ok job as the titular D, though to be honest he sounds too nice. I feel D really needs to be more gruff. Main antagonist Count Magnus Lee (who in some shots is clearly meant to resemble former Hammer Horror Count Dracula actor Christopher Lee… except bulkier) is voiced by Jeff Winkless (Captain Nemo, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water), who has a lot of fun affecting a terrible Romanian accent. The rest of the voice actors do what they can, but no-one rises above the level of pantomime absurdity.
Vampire Hunter D, set as it is in the year 12,090 AD, is an unusual entry in the vampire genre in that it mixes both sci-fi and fantasy trappings. Although Doris, the first character we meet, looks like a stereotypical medieval wench, she lives on a farm protected by a high-tech electromagnetic barrier to keep out the mutant monstrosities that roam the night. Doris has the misfortune to trespass upon Count Magnus Lee’s land, and the price for her crime is for him to bite her slender neck. Apparently she tastes so good, he intends to take her as his bride, and presumably turn her into one of the bloodsucking undead at the same time. Desperate to avoid this fate, Doris stakes out the main road near her village in order to scout for a passing vampire hunter to slaughter the Count for her, and free herself from his curse.
D takes the role of sci-fi mercenary, kind of like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, but riding a cyborg horse and using a sword instead of a gun. Vampire Hunter D takes its tone and setting straight from classic western films, which in the case of Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars, was itself based on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, a movie about a wandering ronin (masterless samurai warrior). There’s a poor farmer girl victimised by a powerful landowner, and the local mayor and law enforcement are powerless to help her, so that’s where the mysterious and mostly silent stranger comes in to fix the problem, and leave again at the end of the film. So far, so wild west.
This is a post-apocalyptic world where, ten thousand years previously, humanity almost destroyed itself in a nuclear holocaust. While the few survivors spent years huddling in underground bunkers, the technologically-advanced vampire race conquered the planet, naming themselves the “Nobles”, who ruled over the humans once they eventually returned. They genetically engineered all manner of mutant monstrosities with which to keep the human populace under control, which at least partly explains the extensive menagerie of weird monsters D faces up against throughout the OVA’s relatively brisk 80 minute runtime. D himself isn’t a normal human — he’s a “dhampir”, a real concept from slavic mythology, meaning “half vampire”. This explains his superhuman reflexes, plus his battles with his darker nature and occasional thirst for blood.
Far from the most charismatic of lead characters, D is at least mysterious and cool-looking. At least part of his aesthetic is down to the character designs from the original novel ilustrations by famed illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, best known for his work on the Final Fantasy JRPG game franchise. D’s silhouette is iconic, all pointy wide-brimmed hat and thin, angular collars. His eyes are thin, often barely glimpsed beneath the shadows cast by his hat. Throughout the OVA, D runs a gauntlet of encounters against various antagonists, including vampires, werewolves, gas monsters, giant ogres, a three-headed lamia, and other fleshy blobs that exist only to be eviscerated by his trusty blade. Accompanying him at all times, and offering commentary and plot exposition, is the demonic entity that resides within the palm of his left hand. It’s never explained what this thing is, and it looks super-goofy, though without its magical powers D wouldn’t survive some of the battles he faces.
There’s an interesting selection of supporting characters, from the absurdly-named Greco Roman, slimy son of the village mayor, to plucky little brother Dan who’s handy with a laser rifle, to Rei Ginsei, a cool silver-haired fighter who reminds me a lot of Fate/Stay Night’s Lancer, and perhaps most interesting of all, Countess Lamika Lee. Lamika has one of the biggest foreheads in the history of anime, and watery blue eyes. She’s also a spoilt little bitch, though she becomes more and more sympathetic as the story progresses. She objects to her father’s obsession with Doris and wishes to prevent her from “poisoning the Noble Lee bloodline”, though mainly I think she just doesn’t want a lowly commoner for a stepmother. There’s probably something fairly interesting to be said about class divides here, underneath all the fantasy trappings.
Aesthetically, Vampire Hunter D certainly has its moments, especially in the oddly extended ending sequence that stretches on for several minutes after the plot has already concluded. It features some very cool cloud movement animation and strange time lapse-esque techniques. In his DVD commentary, Jonathan Clements muses whether this incongruous sequence was added late in production to bump the film up to theatrical movie length, just in case it was upgraded from OVA to movie release (which never happened, not in Japan at least). Some of the action scenes are beautifully, and grotesquely, realised, with some extremely gnarly gore. It’s a very darkly lit OVA, so is best watched in a dark room, otherwise it’s often hard to pick out details. As a video production, it’s presented in 4:3, which means on a modern TV there is significant pillarboxing, but there’s nothing that can be done about that.
In terms of story… it’s a bit of a mess. It takes the bare bones of the novel it’s based on (which is now available in English from Dark Horse as part of a 3-in-1 omnibus edition for $25), juggling around events a little, consolidating and even missing out some characters. Mostly characters tend to run from one place to the next, fight each other, achieve little, and then run along somewhere else. There’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing that seems messy and unnecessary. The pacing is all to pot too, with some sections that are too slow, and then other scene changes are so abrupt it seems like several minutes of connective material were left on the cutting room floor. It’s incredibly uneven. Musically, it’s quite dire too. The entirely synthesised score varies from unintrusively dull to frankly distracting and ill-suited. I’d rather have no sountrack than the featureless elevator music offered here.
Overall, it’s a decent enough way to spend eighty minutes, but time has not been kind to Vampire Hunter D. Back in the mid 1980s, this was probably seen as groundbreaking due to its mix of sci-fi and fantasy, not to mention its occasionally spectacular violence. However the terrible dub, ghastly music, choppy editing and dreadful pacing all combine to suck much of the joy of watching it away. It’s easier to appreciate as a kitschy, occasionally bloodily gross curio than any kind of classic of the animated horror genre. I hear its sequel Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is far superior in every way, so I’ll be looking forward to that on All Hallow’s Eve. Expect a review in due course!
Vampire Hunter D
Director: Toyoo Ashida
Screenplay: Yasushi Hirano
Based on: Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi
Music: Tetsuya Komuro
Character Design: Yoshitaka Amano
Animation Production: Ashi Productions, Studio Live
JP distributor: TOHO
JP home video release: 21st December 1985
UK distributor: Manga Entertainment Ltd.
UK PAL VHS release: 4th May, 1993
UK DVD release: 2nd June 2003
Runtime: 80 minutes
Language: English audio
BBFC rating: 15
Vampire Hunter D Omnibus 1
Author: Hideyuki Kikuchi
Illustrator: Yoshitaka Amano
English language translation: Kevin Leahy
US publisher: Dark Horse Books
Page count: 640 pages
Publication date: 26th October 2021
ISBN-10: 1506725309
ISBN-13: 978–1506725307
RRP: $24.99 (physical), $5.99 (digital)
Learn more about Vampire Hunter D (1985)— Random Anime Review