Vampire Senzo

VAMPIRE WARS (1990) is a short (50-minute) anime thriller that posits a race of vampires living among us who get into a battle with the CIA over the fate of a pop singer named Kiki whose blood turns out to have vampire blood, making her vital to the continued existence of the vampires. It's set largely in Paris, where a French spy agency recruits Kuki Kozaburo, a former terrorist from Japan, to locate and protect Kiki. Little does Kuki know that he's being manipulated in order to get Kiki safely into the hands of a notorious CIA operative known as "Bloody Charlie." When Kuki finally confronts a key opponent and learns the full story behind the conflict, he begins to rethink his loyalties. There are lots of shootouts, fights, and furious chases through the streets, alleyways and hotel corridors of Paris, as well as the occasional vampire bite. The action is often quite bloody, with Kuki dishing out punishment but also taking enough to kill ten men. The plot is rather far-fetched, but things move at such a fast pace, it's not hard to put the questions aside and just enjoy the thrills. As usual with so many OAV (made-for-video) anime thrillers, it ends rather abruptly.

The animation and design are stylish and effective and the frequent action well-staged. The director, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, also worked on "Dragon Ball," "Sailor Moon" and "Magic User's Club."

Vampire Wars is under an hour long but tries to squeeze two hours of plot in to it's run time which means it's completely baffling, a bit confusing and absolutely crazy which also means it's hilarious fun.

This is a mature anime from the early 90's and anyone who's a fan of this era of anime will know exactly what to expect: Violence, gore, naked chicks and a very funny and over the top English dubbing job. The animation is slick and professional although it's clearly on the lower budget side of things and i was laughing so hard at some of the dialogue and the general crazyness of everything.

I won't spoil anything but it's definitely recommend for anime fans of a certain age who enjoy adult oriented anime from this era, it's a laugh riot and i wish it was longer.

SYNOPSIS: A CIA base in America is attacked by "vampires" which triggers a chain of events leading to our main character being mixed up in the battle between French & American agents to gain possession of a girl whose blood contains the answers to questions and solutions to problems. Intervening in the war is a vampire with his own agenda. Fighting off CIA agents, French agents, and a vampire, our hero is out to save the girl and possibly even the world.

I had this sitting in my queue of movies to watch and when it finally popped out at me to try it, I was hopeful of how it could turn out. A few minutes into the movie (I call it a movie but at a little under an hour, its really more like one episode of a TV show), I felt very confused. The story was moving along at seemingly breakneck pace for the first half of the movie and then finally the plot seemed to click into place. By the time it was over, I really wanted to see more of the story and was very disappointed by the quick and predictable ending.

"Vampire Wars" is an intriguing blend of action, horror, sci-fi, and drama that really leaves you wanting something more to come of the story. It really feels like once you become interested in a scene/plot line/character, things jump ahead. At one point in time, they even jump ahead in the story five days without so much as a wipe, text on the screen, or anything besides the character saying "I waited for 5 days when..."

SUMMARY: Interesting blend of several genres that really deserves more time to tell the tale. It'll leave you disappointed there's nothing more because its over before it really gets going.

6/10. Very cool and promising for something more, but too short to really show what it could be.