D, the half-vampire of the manga series by Hideyuki Kikuchi, and the original film, returns for this second installment. In this film, D has been hired to find a woman, Charlotte Elbourne, who has (according to her family), been kidnapped by the vampire Meyer Link. Also out for the bounty on Link, and the fee for bringing Charlotte back is a group of 5 human bounty hunters, the Markus Brothers, a group who presents stiff competition for D. But, things aren't as they appear. Charlotte may not have been taken unwillingly...

Such is the plot of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. My first impressions upon sticking the DVD in my DVD player was that there was no language options, no way to activate subtitles or change the spoken language. The reason for this is that Bloodlust has the unique honor of having it's dialogue recorded in English, and then Cantonese, and finally Japanese. This is semi-disappointing, as I would have liked to hear the Japanese voice acting, which include Megumi Hayashibara doing the voice acting for Leila.

Also, the movie's sound effects are loud. I have a very small television set, yet, when it was only turned up to "3" (meaning the which one of the bars on the volume display it was on) it was clearly audible several rooms away in my house. Keep this in mind if you have an impressive sound system. Furthermore, the dialogue is soft. So, if you turn the volume down you may find yourself straining to hear the dialogue. As there was no subtitle track on the DVD, I had to activate closed captioning on my TV. Those of you without closed captioning on your TVs may have to put up with this.

The movie's animation is very impressive, being done by Studio Madhouse (which has also worked on Trigun and seasons 2 and 3 of HBO's animated series Spawn). Likewise, the film's score is very impressive, but unfortuantly has not been released on CD in the States yet.

The DVD comes with, among the special features, trailers from the American, Chinese, and Japanese theatrical releases, and TV spots from all 3 countries. There is also a Behind the Scenes featurette, which I found was poorly done. In scenes with footage of meetings of those working on the movie, the dialogue is inaudable. This is aggrivated by scenes, expecially those focusing on the score, where the sound is very loud. As with the movie, there aren't any subtitles, with the exception of the interview portions with the Animators and the Director, and closed captioning doesn't work with the featurette.

All in all, it was definatly worth the money for the rental. I reccomend at least that for those who enjoy the film. I was able to get a bit of inspiration for a "Cold Hands, Dark Hearts" campaign out of the film, making enjoyable for those who are interested in Anime, action, or just horror.