By Comix
In Balkan folklore, a dhampir refers to a half human/half vampire creature that has all the powers of the bat undead without all that sunlight and garlic crap to ruins its fun. Traditionally believed to have unruly black hair and lack of shadow, they are most likely found creeping around human virgins looking to spread their seed. Vampire Hunter D takes those base legends and drops them into a post-apocalyptic world where monsters run wild, machines rust in the deserts, and vampires are a dying breed. A dhampire himself, D turns his back on his half animal nature in attempt to destroy the remaining vampire population, much to the distrust of the humans. Mixing sci-fi and dark fantasy, Vampire Hunter D has been entertaining readers for decades with its chaotic vision of the future.
The series Vampire Hunter D is set in 12,090 and is actually in a post- POST-apocalyptic world. In 1999, a nuclear war occurred that brought down modern civilization and amassed in billions of deaths. Vampires, on the other hand, were well aware of the possibility of a nuclear war and remained unscathed, eventually filling up the planet with demons and monsters while ruling what was left of human population. Thousands of years later, the vampires, now referred to as the “nobility,” collapse under the weight of a near perfect society and left the second civilization in ruins. This is where the series starts, with the mysterious and beautiful D, a vampire hunter with a possessed hand, as he travels the globe eliminating what’s left of the nobility. Never smiling and never leaving without his kill, he’s a creature of seemingly immortal life who explores the forgotten corners of the planet while breaking hearts everywhere he goes.
The series, most popularly known for the groundbreaking 1985 anime of the same title (followed by an equally well received sequel in 2000), was first presented as a series of a novels started in 1983 by author Hideyuki Kikuchi with illustration inserts by Yoshitaka Amano. The work is currently sitting with a very respectable 26 book series and has helped establish Vampire Hunter D as one of the longest running Japanese horror characters (and yes, there are English translations.) On top of the initial novels, Kikuchi also published three more novels expanding on a referenced “3,000 year war,” a collection of three novellas focusing on D, and a series of short stories mostly written for contests and Vampire Hunter D guides. It’s like the Lord of the Rings of vampire horror. There are also video games, manga adaptions, audio dramas, and a proposed live movie proving that the Japanese never do anything half-assed.
Now, if you’ve only seen the anime, you have missed out on a LOT of Vampire Hunter D lore, but before I get any further, I’m going to level with you. The books are pretty wonky. I don’t know if the nuances were lost in translation or it was written on the cheap, but the writing comes off a bit “fan-fiction.” But, if you can over-look that, which I surprisingly did, the books are amazing! I am absolutely addicted to this freaking series. The world, the mythos, the creatures, everything had been thought out so deeply, you can literally map out the entire chaotic planet just through reading the novels. Kikuchi has put so much passion into these tales and made this huge, over-arching journey for D, that you immediately got sucked into the pathos. This was the basis for all those weird, midnight animes you’ve seen on late night on TV or picked up on the fly in video store; a literal embodiment of the words “dark fantasy.”
Of course, that’s not to say that the Vampire Hunter D anime is anything to scoff at. This was one of the first animated movies from Japan, along with Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Princess Mononoke, that really showed what the genre was capable of. While we were slugging away with kids programming and Heavy Metal, Japan was exploring the animated medium and bringing it to a whole new level. They took what we thought of as “child entertainment” and showed that you can get serious, weird, and beautiful with a cinematic style that was literally unlimited. It was these four animes that brought the fandom to English speaking shores and launched a million, doe-eyed teenagers into full blown geek adulthood. You’re welcome, you weird fucks.
Anyway, as stated, the novels have been translated (though not all of them) by DH Press, an imprint of Dark Horse comics. To date, the company has released fifteen novels with a new one to be released in June 2014 and are also responsible for bringing Kikuchi’s other series to English speaking readers, Demon City Shinjuku. The books aren’t super long, you can finish one in about three hours, you know, it’s not exactly Dostoyevsky. There are also several manga adaptions of the novels released through Digital Manga Publishing and the “3,000 year war” novels, titled Noble V: Greylancer from Viz Media. If you live in the states, I highly suggest hitting up your used book stores for the books. I frequently find them for two or three bucks and they are way worth the money. Both the animes can be found on DVD and there are a buttload of art books out there to round out your collection. If you’re in the mood to interact with Vampire Hunter D world and have an old Playstation One for some reason, feel free to pick up the video game which is billed as a cross between Resident Evil and Castlevania.
A Lovecraftian vision of the future over run with demonic magic and roaming plagues of blood-thirsty creatures, Vampire Hunter D has proven that even thirty years later, it still manages to give a few solid chills.