(1996)
Episode 3 - Bloodlust
Running time: 40 minutes
This is a cyberpunk style anime with [sic] references to Bladerunner.
Summary: Cybercity Oedo 808 is set in Tokyo, 2808. Crime has reached the point that high technology violent criminals are used to fight cyber crime. The three main characters are codenamed Benten, Gogol and Sen Goku. All are violent thugs, kept in line by surveillance systems and exploding collars. Their boss can set time limits on the collar which puts each case onto a countdown for the character. All of them have been sentenced to unserveably long prison terms - one has a thousand years remaining to serve. Years are deducted for good and given for bad behaviour. Their police status is shown by the Sai that they all carry, which is the traditional police weapon of Japan from the Edo period.
There are, available in English, three Cybercity stories. Each story is centered around on the key characters and is told from their perspective. Bloodlust the third episode features Benten (named after the fortune of beauty) this is an accurate naming because is a beautiful man almost feminine in appearance. This is not uncommon in Anime where the pretty-boy is a stock character type. The start of the story is the traditional vampire setup. People are dying with neck wounds. Benten is assigned as the investigating officer. The twist is partly in the nature of the vampire / vampires. The vampires are created by genetic engineers looking to make very rich people immortal. Their have been many test cases but only one survivor. None of the test subjects were volunteers, being people undergoing cryogenic suspension for illness. Understandably the survivor is upset with the rich people and their engineers. The vampire is now eliminating the engineers one by one with the intention of stopping more people from being abused and to destroy all their work. Benten locates the vampire and, as is traditional in such things, discovers that she is a young woman. The vampire is a tragic figure, she has been in cryogenic for centuries, her parents and home area are long gone. She has been woken against her will and altered to a state against her nature. She has to kill to stay alive, but she is not yet a killer (unlike Benten). In the meantime Gogol has made a poison to kill the vampire. When Benten refuses to kill her, Sen Goku is sent after both of them. Benten loses Sen Goku and tracks the main figure behind the plan to his lair in a space station. The main vampire is far nastier than the younger one and incredibly powerful: regeneration, flight, psychic powers and physical superiority. The fight between Benten and the head vampire is savage which leads to the vampire being victorious. Benten flees badly wounded to a shuttle bay and tricks the head vampire into it. He then opens the airlock and blasts the vampire into space, tearing it to pieces and temporarily stopping it. (Evidently Hard vacuum isn't garlic. If it comes to a point in this instance garlic isn't garlic). Benten kills the vampire using the poison given earlier. Now that the vampire threat has been defeated the vampire woman is ready to die. Unwilling to kill the woman he loves, Benten places the female vampire into her cyrogenic coffin, launhes her into space, sending her on an eternal journey.
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