Vampire Hunter D review – head-popping visuals offset very pre-MeToo erotic anime

Regarded as pioneering on its release in 1985, this sleazy tale’s sexual politics are long past-it, but the visual invention remains magneticRegarded as one of the first erotic anime and on rerelease for its 40th anniversary, this 1985 film doesn’t really draw on the gothic carnality of the Bram Stoker tradition. Instead, it goes to town on a sleazy peephole sexuality that now looks either quaint or distinctly stone-age, depending on your tolerance for aesthetic standards in anime’s red-light district. A miniskirted heroine kitted out like a cos playing bierkeller wench, Medusa-like succubi draining a bounty-hunter of his essence, one character fishing out one of the protagonist’s breasts mid-conversation a propos of nothing … #MeToo feels a very long way off.Seriously underdressed to fight mutants in an apocalyptic wasteland, Doris Lang (voiced by Kaneto Shiozawa) is waylaid by Count Magnus Lee (Seizō Katō), who is intent on making her his bride. So she hires roving mercenary D – half-undead, half-human, Blade-style “dhampir” – to dispatch this horror. Not only does he have to hack down a thicket of minions en route, including shock-haired mutant Rei (Kazuyuki Sogabe) and Lee’s snooty daughter L’Armica (Satoko Kitou), he has his own baser nature to deal with. Arguing with a symbiote who inhabits his left palm when the bloodlust kicks in, he is a paid-up member of the self-hating undead brethren. Continue reading...

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