I'm glad that The Washington Post dedicated a front page article to the lives that have been taken in the D.C. area in the past two weeks by hands (and gunshots) other than the sniper's. Eighteen people have been killed in the violence that permeates the city on an ongoing basis. These murders generally don't garner more attention than a few sentences in the daily paper. Most occur in areas where violence is rife and so they don't cause such waves of panic and alarm. I asked a guy at work who lives in Southeast what he thought of the sniper attacks. His response was, "It's nothing new where I'm from. That kind of thing happens all the time." It's just a way of life and life must go on. In the county I live in alone, there were 6 unrelated murders in the past two weeks. I even think I went to elementary school with one of the people who was found dead in the woods in a county next to mine. Although the sniper attacks are terrifying, the community and the country acts as though these lives are the only ones which have been tragically taken. And that we're at greater risk of dying by a bullet from the sniper's gun than the bullet of another gun during a robbery, carjacking, etc.
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Last night I decided to venture into the realm of anime and watched Blood: The Last Vampire on DVD. From the outer packaging the film looked as though it had the potential- the reviews said the animation was brilliant. It summarized the plot as a young Japanese woman works with a group of undercover agents to kill the vampires who have infiltrated an American air base just before the Vietnam war.
My motivation to see this movie came from the fact the protagonist is a goth female vampire. She caries a samuri sword and destroys the other vampires ( though the movie never explains why she's the "last original," unlike the other bloodsucking, human-hunting, blood-thirsty vampires who she kills). I love the way that Asian films portray women in powerful roles like these - a la Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Where American films generally reserve this role for men, Asian films, especially the anime I've seen, have no problem with making their woman both physically and mentally powerful. Blood remarks on this to some degree within the film. The human American nurse is the biggest coward in the movie. While the "last original" fights it out with a demonic vampire on top of her, the American nurse holds a gun to her head and says she can't take it anymore. The girl tells her to put the gun down and to take action - to drive the jeep out of the burning hangar.
The movie, which is barely that with a 45 mintue playing time, isn't worth watching. There are gaping holes left in the plot development. Like why does the "last original" work with the undercover agents to kill the other vampires? The only point in the movie where she shows compassion is when she has killed a vampire and she stands over him, as blood drips from her wounds onto his dying corpse.
The only way the film makes sense is to read it as an extremly anti-American allegory. When the Japanese girls meets an American school girl on the base, the American asks, first in English and then in Japanese, "Are you Japanese?" The Japanese girls responds "Leave me alone." She also tells the nurse that the only reason why she's defending her is because she "can't kill humans." The "last original" shows a tacit antagonsim towards all the other characters, who are American. She seems to represent the dilemma of the Japanese people at that point in time (1966) - she sees the actions of others like her (the other vampires) as monstrous for their crimes for humanity, yet they are very much like her. She feels more compassion for those who she kills, and she is also unable to escape being associated with the other beasts in the Western mind. She aids the Americans, not because she likes them, but because she must (according to her beliefs or because of coercion, but that isn't explained either).
1:45:15 PM 
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