Blood: The Last Vampire [Paperback]

Mamoru Oshii (Author), Camellia Nieh (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 6, 2005

At Yokota Base in Japan, American soldiers stand guard at the brink of the Vietnam War. Although they fear the enemy outside their base, an even more dangerous enemy waits within - bloodthirsty vampires walk among them. Appearing human, the beasts lurk in secret among the soldiers, waiting for the moment to attack. Saya, a fierce and beautiful vampire hunter, is sent to lead a team of undercover agents whose mission is to decide who is human and who is not, and wipe out the vampires before they can wipe out the base. But even though Saya is a powerful warrior whose skill with her Japanese sword is lethal, her ferocity may not be enough.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse; 1st DH Press Ed edition (December 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595820299
• ISBN-13: 978-1595820297
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,516,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the action?, March 29, 2006

By 

Childe Roland "Gunslinger" (Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood: The Last Vampire (Paperback)

The book's cover is deceptive. You see a picture of Saya, the "Immortal Vampire Slayer." In the nearly 300 pages of text, you see Saya 3 total times. She gets 5 total pages of time in the lime light. The rest of the book is spent following a 15 year old Japanese high school student who is protesting the oppressive conservative Japanese government. There's a lot of filler in here. In fact, the entire book seems like a bunch of random research papers put together (inaccurately) on how to dispose of a body, the evolution of the species, and how protest and anti-establishment organizations work. I kept reading, hoping that something would come of it, but in the end I should have just stopped and saved myself the random philosopical musings of an anime director trying his hand as a writer.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts, November 28, 2005

By 

Kenneth W. Wolfe (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood: The Last Vampire (Paperback)

The subject of this novel is Saya, the vampire hunter who appeared in the film Blood: The Last Vampire. Night of the Beasts is not directly related to the events in the movie, but it does take place in more or less the same setting (Tokyo area in the late sixties), probably soon after the events of the movie. The events in this story are related from the point of view of Rei, a teenage boy who dabbles in radical left-wing political activism and can generally be described as bored and disgruntled. The story starts off with Rei taking part in a mass protest which turns out to be anything but boring: running from riot police, Rei stumbles across Saya dispatching a vampire in her usual bloody fashion. Rei's role as witness to this event gradually draws him into a web of intrigue and deceit as he is sought out by various people of questionable motives who are also interested in the activities of Saya and the organization she works for.

Blood: The Last Vampire is actually an extended project that encompasses novels, manga, PS2 games, and of course the movie. So far only the movie, this novel, and one manga (Blood: The Last Vampire 2002) have been translated and distributed in English. Most readers of this novel will likely be most familiar with the movie (also directed by Mamoru Oshii), so I should point out right away that though most fans of the movie will enjoy this book it is very different from the movie. Where the movie was driven mostly by action, Oshii's novel is driven mostly by dialogue. Through conversations with various people who are involved in or investigating the activities of Saya and the vampires that she hunts, the main character begins to learn more about the background behind the horrific event that he witnessed. Rei turns out to have more backbone than his original impression would suggest, and however reluctantly he becomes actively involved in the hunt for the vampires that are threatening both him and his friends. Through this we learn a great deal about the vampires and about the organization that is helping Saya to hunt them.

The great strength of this novel is that Mamoru Oshii has clearly done his homework before writing this further contribution to the Blood project. He approaches the idea of the vampire intelligently from the viewpoint of legend and myth, evolution, paleoanthropology and history. By the time the story is done he has provided a very rich context for the creatures which in his movie were just mysterious blood-sucking monsters. Unfortunately, this creates a couple of drawbacks. First, many sections of the novel move very slowly. Characters provide the background information in long, rambling speeches which often feel unnatural and appear to be just rather clumsy attempts to provide this information to the reader. Secondly, the character Saya who should really be the focus of the story is pushed to the background... characters talk in great detail about her, but almost never talk *with* her.

The slow pacing is really the only serious problem I had with this novel. Because Mamoru Oshii has done such a great job of constructing his own rich and consistent context for the vampire legend it really did not detract from my enjoyment of the story. For that reason alone, this book is a must for any fans of Saya or just fans of vampire stories in general.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This Could Have Been a Contender, May 1, 2006

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Blood: The Last Vampire (Paperback)

Probably the best way to critique this book is to state right off that it simply fails to deliver what it promises. Blood was one of my early encounters with anime, a fine and chilling film that still sticks in my mind years later. When I found this book my biggest concern was that turning Saya Otonashi into the subject of a boys adventure story might spoil the fine edge that the film managed. But I need not have worried, Saya Otonashi is hardly the subject of this tale. Actually, it's hard to say just what is the subject of the story. Maybe it's the woeful lives of high school radicals in a conservative society. That I can connect with, but not in the context of something that claims to be horror fiction.

Rei Miwa is a boy in his late teens who is deeply involved in the politics of the Japanese anti-war (anti Vietnam War) movement. He gets caught up in a protest march that goes wrong, and in his flight from the police he stumbles on the scene of a slaughter. The victim is some form of horrible monster, and the killer is a young high school girl with a long sword and the eyes of a demon. When he wakes from unconsciousness later he finds that he has been suspended from school, and grounded to boot. But the sudden appearance of a police detective - Hajime Gotouda - draws Rei into a thickening plot that entangles his fellow radicals and brings him face to face with creatures that can only be called vampires.

Had the book kept going in this vein (sorry) it would have been a top grade story. But suddenly Mamoru Oshii seems to lose control of the plot, and everything bogs down in a pseudo-philosophical discussion of parallel species, the hunter hypothesis, Descartes, the international Jewish conspiracy, and the evils of the Catholic Church. Saya is reduced to a few walk on appearances and the reader, if he has good sense, promptly falls asleep. But the time things start happening the story has fragmented and Oshii rushes everything to a whimsical conclusion. It all turns into a more or less depressing coming of age story. I know you are sitting there thinking "Oh wow! A Blood novel." But pass this one up. You'll feel better for it.