Vampire Wars

Original Title: ヴァンパイヤー戦争
Romanized: Vampire Sensou
Literal: Vampire Wars

Plot Synopsis

What do NASA, Paris, an idol star, a terrorist and vampires have in common? They're all stuffed into a 60-minute OAV known as Vampire Wars.

Quick Review

Rating: 0 / 5
Reviewer: Legion
Review Date: 2002-10-21

Vampire Wars is the kind of title that you know is going to be bad--judge this one by the cover, and judge harshly. I rented this title so I could see how bad it was, and believe me, this one is awfully close to the bottom of the barrel. The choppy plot ranges from senseless to silly, the wild collection of junk in there is jumbled together, and there isn't even very much time spent fighting vampires. The characters are also an unappealing and underdeveloped bunch. It doesn't even look good--bland, ugly, and cheaply animated (the synthesized music is equally cheap an unappealing). The voice acting isn't completely awful, but that's about the most positive thing that can be said about it--unimpressive in Japanese and cheesy in English, though the dub is loaded up with swearing.

If this is the first time you've heard of this show, by all means don't look for it. It's not even good in a bad way. Even people who are especially interested in vampires will likely walk away sorely disappointed.

US DVD Review

Manga's disc is about what I would have expected. The video isn't terrible, but it's soft and kinda grainy at times. I noticed a bit of ghosting and a fair bit of edge enhancement as well. The audio is offered in a 5.1 mix in English only (which I didn't get to test), along with fairly decent 2-channel English and Japanese mixes. A literal English subtitle track for the Japanese language is also provided. Blandly animated menus give access to a scene selection that doesn't have enough chapters, the standard Manga extras and nothing else. (how much extra material would you expect for a little-known show like this?) At least Manga provided a fully credited Japanese cast listing in addition to a small, jumbled English cast.

Content Guide

16-up; has some graphic violence along with some mature themes. Put the kiddies to bed for this one.

Violence: 3 - Even the vampire bits are excessively gory.

Nudity: 2 - Nothing is ever shown.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - Kuki gets it on with some complete stranger.

Language: 2 - The subtitles had some profanity, but it seemed accurate. The dub would rank about a 3, though.

Notes and Trivia

Vampire Wars is based on a series of eleven novels of the same name by Kiyoshi Kasai, first published between 1982 and 1989. There have been a couple of re-releases since then, and the most recent (mid '00s) uses cover art styled after the anime version (the previous ones used traditional, non-anime horror novel art). Note that while the title is written with the Japanese characters for "Sensou" ("war"), it is usually subtitled "Wars" (in English), so it's reasonable to say that the original title is indeed "Vampire Wars."

The Sci Fi Channel also made a movie in 2005, apparently unrelated but vaguely similar sounding (perhaps inspired by this?) titled Bloodsuckers that goes by the title "Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe" on the DVD.

Availability

Available in the US from Manga Video on bilingual DVD. Previously available on subtitled and dubbed VHS.

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