"Alongside all the ninja, samurai, magical fairy wand-waving girls, and sci-fi robot pilots, you'll find no shortage of exorcists, mediums, seers, witches, ghosts, goblins, and monsters. But interestingly, anime monsters aren't just there to provide the heroes with something to fight. Often as not, they're the heroes themselves" Julie Davis- Animerica October 2004 (30).

Now that is a lot to deal with, so I am going to break it down into something more manageable, something that I know a little bit more about, which is vampire anime. In talking about vampire anime I think it is important to look at a little bit of history (folk lore). While researching this it occurred to me that I didn't know anything about when vampire lore started, so of course I had to find out, but what was found was a very ambiguous answer which was found in The Vampire Book by J. Gordon Melton p. xiii

"Belief in vampire-like creatures probably goes back in human experience long before written record. Both a respectful fear of the dead and a belief in the magical qualities of blood may be found in cultures around the world. Ancient and modern tales of supernatural night flying bloodsuckers such as the lamia are features, in various forms, of many world cultures." 

After watching vampire anime for some time it seems that most of their ideas for it comes from the Western notion of what a vampire should be like for Melton writes, "The Japanese, while lacking an extensive vampire lore, in the last generation absorbed the European vampire myth and contributed to it. But while doing some free reading on the vampire in The Vampire Book I found the kappa and the "Vampire Cat of Nabeshima" Melton p. 337

"The kappas operated from the edge of the water in which they lived. Many stories related attempts by kappas to grab horses and cows, drag them into the water, and suck their blood through their anuses. However, they have been known to leave the water to steal melons and cucumbers, to rape women, and to attack people for their livers." Melton p335

The Vampire Cat story is about a young princess and prince and one night a cat comes in and kills the princess and then takes her form and slowly starts to "sap the life out of the prince" night after night. p.336

As we can see in this video the ideas of vampires in anime are very much based on the ideas of the Western style of vampires instead of the stories of the kappa or the stories of the vampire cat.

The first individual who flashes upon the screen when watching the first You Tube video is a character by the name of D. This clip comes from the movie Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust which is the second film in the Vampire Hunter D saga. As it suggests in the title D is a vampire hunter, but D is special because he is a Dhampir, which means that he is half a vampire and half a human. In this story he is hired by the family of Charlotte because she was taken away from them by a vampire by the name of Meier Link, but he is not the only one the family has hired to go after the girl for they have also hired the Markus brothers. This movie made number 4 on horror anime list in the 2004 Animerica.

The man that dresses all in red with the crazy hat is from an anime called Hellsing. Hellsing is an anime about the ultimate vampire Alucard who serves the Hellsing organization and whose job it is to eradicate vampires in England. Alucard, himself, is a vampire and it is unknown who he really is and how, being pretty much an invisible killing machine, he came to be a servant of mere mortals. This anime was ranked number one among the horror anime list in the 2004 Animerica. 

The last little clip in the first seconds of the movie show the character Saya from Blood the Last Vampire. In Blood the Last Vampire, which is a very beautiful short 60 minute movie, Saya being the last true vampire, and who works for the government, is in pursuit of vampire like creatures in order to destroy them and in order to do this she must infiltrate a school. This is not on the Animerica list but then again not everything can be. 

In all of these movies and shows the main character can be descibed as a monster in their own way. Alucard is defiantly not the kind of hero that Americans look for because he is the epitome of evil. It goes along with what Davis says about monsters: "monsters in Japan, are as likely to be loveable and admirable as creepy and scary --often both at once" (Davis 30). Though he is evil he is admirable and he is actually a hero of the story. D and Saya are also monsters who are the hero's of their stories. 

Most horror anime--especially the ones seen above--are set in dark and eerie places and often times it is altogether grim. In their darkness they skew the lines between good and evil and often times they also are very complicated to understand in entirety Oh and one can not forget about the blood!

I have mentioned a list by Animerica of the top 13 scary anime so here they are:

        13. Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy 

        12. Demon City Shinjuku

        11. Gungrave

        10. Demon Lord Dante

         9. Paranoia Agent

         8 Ninja Resurrection

         7. Witch Hunter Robin

         6. Wicked City

         5. Perfect Blue

         4. Vampire Hunter D

         3. Devil Man

         2. Boogiepop Phantom

         1. Hellsing

 See also: Anime