While not a heavy-weight auteur like Mamoru Oshii or Katsuhiro Otomo, his peculiar mix of insane demon designs, moody horror and stone-cold action, packaged as entertaining road trips (think Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku, Ninja Scroll) captured the imagination of a lot of teens.

Kawajiri is one of the pivotal figures of late 80s/early 90s anime. A reboot was definitely in order though, so when the 2000 version was announced, with Yoshiaki Kawajiri's name attached to it no less, I became quite excited. But over time I came to appreciate the atmosphere of that first adaptation, even though it's hardly one of anime's biggest benchmarks. Yoshitaka Amano's original artwork is beyond stunning, the animated derivative is anything but.

The first time I watched it, I was completely turned off by the incredibly cheap animation and the poor translation of the character designs. The original Vampire Hunter D adaptation is a true 80s relic. I figured it was time to give this one another run and see how and if it held up after all this time. Back then I liked Bloodlust a lot (even when I messed up on the dub selection), but that was almost 20 years ago. A clear sign that anime was leaving its Japanese heimat for good, that it wasn't just some niche hype that would fizzle out once people found something new and exotic to get excited about. It's one of the first anime features that was deliberately developed with a Western audience in mind. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is a landmark film.

Vampire hunter d 1985 subtitles