Everyone has that first anime. Not the one you first watched, but the first one you owned. As you’ve probably guessed, my first anime DVD was the 2000 feature film Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and I got it as a gift for my 16th birthday. When I had received it, I had never read the (still ongoing) novel series by Hideyuki Kikuchi, or had seen the previous 1985 cult classic, released by TOHO. Nevertheless, it quickly became one of my favorite things, and I would sometimes watch it on a loop because I was just so enamored by every aspect. The narrative style, the animation, the art direction, everything about this film just spoke to the edgy teenager that I was. It had such a large impact on me, that I still have Bloodlust fanart hanging on my walls which was bought at Otakon over a decade ago. Also, it is very…
