Читать книгу Anime Impact - Chris Stuckmann - Страница 20

1985 • Vampire Hunter D

Banpaia Hantā Dī

— John Rodriguez —

As a trainer, I’m always looking for ways to engage with clients. Sports tends to be a go-to staple. The average Joe digs sports, and my job is to relate. So I make sure to remain conversant with the latest sporting world happenings. Now, sometimes that’s easy. I’m genuinely passionate about baseball anyway, and I really dig hockey. Other times, it’s a drag. I can really take or leave football. And basketball? Bleh.

But my preferences don’t matter. My clients’ preferences matter, and there’s all kinds. Most folks like talking about the big team sports, of course, but there’s also devotees to cycling, track, or competitive weightlifting. I even had a Canadian client who adored curling. What’s that all a-boot?

Not a single client wants to talk about boxing, however. And I never bring up boxing to clients. Which is odd, because let me let you in on my dirty little secret: I love boxing. Not just the big fights, mind you, but also the dinky little bouts hosted on Tuesday nights in Podunk, Iowa.

“Ugh,” you say. “Boxing is barbaric.” Totally, and my inclination toward it shames me. Over and over, I admonish myself for engaging with a sport that can leave its practitioners crippled by the effects of repetitive head trauma. I remind myself I should be sophisticated enough to turn up my nose at such wanton savagery, sanctioned or not.

And yet … I still love boxing. Something about it keeps bringing me back despite my misgivings. Maybe it’s my admiration for the rigorous discipline displayed by the men and women who partake in the sport’s highest levels. Or maybe it’s something less quantifiable and more primal: a vestigial impulse to tear off my shirt, beat my chest, and howl at the moon.

Whatever it is, I know better than to share this passion. This is the Era of Enlightenment, and boxing is so très pas cool. It’s a guilty pleasure at best, an object of ridicule and scorn at worst. But damn if there’s isn’t something gripping about the sport all the same.

Vampire Hunter D is the boxing of the anime world. It’s brutal. It’s bloody. It’s unsophisticated in the extreme. In short: it’s a throwback, and not necessarily a welcome one. Rather, it’s a reminder of a time when Arnold Schwarzenegger could get away with flinging Rae Dawn Chong over his shoulder while he mowed down seemingly half of Latin America with his M78. And that’s not going to fly for a lot of folks today. This is 2018, damn it, and we’re supposed to be woke! Yet Vampire Hunter D remains less woke than a narcoleptic on Ambien.

Take D, for instance. The film’s bad boy protagonist, D is everything heroes of 2018 aren’t supposed to be. He’s all strong, silent swagger, and his answer to virtually every conflict is to whip out his … wait for it … longsword and set to hacking. No articulate empathizer here. No, sir. D is a one-man army of stabby-stabby. D is a manly man’s hero. He’ll crush your spine or drive a sword through your spleen, but don’t be looking for him to express his insecurities.

Then there’s Doris Lang, Vampire Hunter D’s resident heroine/damsel in distress. Right from the get-go, we watch Doris from an up-skirt perspective as she stalks down the road on a midnight werewolf hunt. Now, to be fair, it would be hard to view Doris from any other perspective, given that her skirt isn’t long enough to cover her undergarments. I’d chalk this up to a sweltering sub-Saharan setting, but D goes about in a full cape and cloak. Maybe Doris has issues with underperforming sweat glands that leave her overheated? Or maybe Vampire Hunter D is more interested in the letters “T” and “A” than in any realistic portrayal of feminine dress.

There’s more, of course. I haven’t even started on the mayor’s son, Greco Rohman (seriously!), that charming chap who tries to blackmail Doris after she gets bitten by the vampire Count Magnus Lee. Oh, and then announces to the world that Doris got bitten when Doris won’t accede to his sexual demands, thus ruining her reputation with the townsfolk.

Yet before you strike Vampire Hunter D from your to-watch list, consider that this film, like boxing, has persevered over the years in the hearts of its not-insignificant fanbase. There must be a reason for that, right? And there is. Because, for all its inability to measure up to 2018 standards of what constitutes acceptable storytelling, Vampire Hunter D is wildly inventive. Its far-flung futuristic world is one of mechanical horses, space-warping mutants, and bloody mists that can strip the skin from your bones. And, oh, the wondrous creatures! There’s more biological creativity on display in just the scene where D first enters Count Lee’s castle than there is in most Hollywood blockbusters!

Vampire Hunter D even manages to be narratively adventurous in a way that few blockbusters would ever dare. It goes to great lengths to humanize Count Lee’s daughter, Larmica, despite the fact that she’s an unambiguous villain and racist. It even ennobles Larmica by the story’s end. And, let me tell you, making a self-righteous fascist seem noble is no mean trick.

But really, what Vampire Hunter D does best is tap into that river of machismo that soaked us in the ’80s. Here is an anime that invites you to take pleasure in your primal impulses. “Why should I judge you?” it growls in your ear. “I come from the age of Commando and First Blood Part II. So my protagonist isn’t a feeler. John Matrix wasn’t a feeler. John Rambo wasn’t a feeler. You still love them, don’t you?”

And I do. God help me, but I still do. Matrix, Rambo, and yes, even D. I love them all.

Look, I could try selling you on the notion that Vampire Hunter D is of an artistic par with many of the anime described in this book, but I won’t. It’s a throwback, a luddite cloaked in gothic sci-fi garb. Yet don’t write it off. Because, while it’s certainly not woke, it’s inventive enough to worm its way into your mind and primal enough to strong-arm its way into your heart, if only you give it the chance. And if watching it inspires you to tear off your shirt, beat your chest, and howl at the moon? Don’t worry: it probably just means you’re a werewolf.

John Rodriguez is a personal trainer whose devotion to physical fitness is exceeded only by his fervor for all things film and literature. John is currently finishing his first novel—a fantasy that’s sparked fantasies of a challenging new career.