The Two Faces of Saya Otonashi: From Blood: The Last Vampire to Blood+

I think everyone is familiar with the idea of a vampire hunter. We see it in cinema and fiction all the time. Whether it is the character Van Helsing or the Marvel character Blade, vampire hunters are society protectors who intrigue us.

This post is about a vampire hunter who intrigues me, Saya Otonashi. She appears in two entries in the anime horror genre which are strikingly different in tone and depth. The anime? Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+.

Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+ both explore identity, duty, and the burden of immortality through the character of Saya Otonashi. However, while they share a central character and some plot DNA, each offers a distinct tone and emotional depth that make them worth examining together.

Blood: The Last Vampire

Released in 2000 (two years after the first Blade movie), Blood: The Last Vampire is a compact, tight film that wastes no time showing viewers its dark world. Set on a U.S. military base in Japan during the 1960s, the story follows Saya Otonashi, a seemingly emotionless girl tasked with hunting Chiropterans—grotesque, bat-like vampire creatures that disguise themselves as humans. The film is notable for its minimalist storytelling. The dialogue is sparse forcing viewers to piece together Saya’s origins and mission through implication rather than explanation. This gives the viewer a sense of unease and isolation, making the violence (and there is plenty of it) feel sudden and clinical rather than heroic. Visually, the color palette is muted and that creates a gritty, almost documentary-like look. Below is the trailer for Blood: The Last Vampire.

A live-action version of Blood: The Last Vampire was released in 2009. Honestly, it’s not bad, but it is far from great. It was panned because the acting was, to be polite, stiff and it wasn’t true to the source material. In my opinion, it failed because it tried too hard to be like the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon movie and less like its original source material. It re-tells the story the anime told in the first 38 minutes of the film. Then it spends the next hour telling a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon origin story of Saya.  The problem is that the origin story told in this film makes no sense relative to the original anime and the movie audience knew it. The movie trailer is below.

Blood+

In contrast, Blood+, which aired on Cartoon Network in 2005–2006, expands the concept of the original anime into a full-length series with a much broader narrative scope. Here, Saya is reimagined as a seemingly ordinary high school girl living in Okinawa, unaware of her true nature. As her memories gradually return, she learns that she was born in 1833 and the only one capable of defeating the Chiropterans. She soon realizes that her past is deeply entwined with theirs.  Unlike the film, Blood+ invests heavily in character development and emotional storytelling. Saya is not just a weapon; she is a person struggling with fear, responsibility and the cost of her destiny. I last wrote about Blood+ in 2009 and my opinion of this superb anime has not changed.

One of the most compelling aspects of Blood+ is its exploration of relationships. Saya’s bond with her adoptive family, particularly her father and brothers, grounds the supernatural elements in genuine human emotion. The series also introduces Haji, her loyal chevalier, whose quiet devotion adds a layer of tragic romance.

These connections make the stakes feel personal, transforming battles from mere action sequences into moments of sacrifice and consequence. Eventually, Saya discovers that she has a twin named Diva and that her twin is the leader of the Chiropterans who are killing humans. She also learns that her blood is deadly to her sister and her Chiropterans, just as her sister’s blood is deadly to her and hers.  Saya struggles knowing that ultimately she must kill her twin sister for mankind to survive. We watch her go from a naïve school girl unaware of her past to a young woman who understands her life’s mission is to save mankind as shown below.

Stylistically, Blood+ leans more toward traditional storytelling, with a mix of action, drama, and slower character-driven episodes. It also incorporates global settings and political undertones, giving the narrative a sense of scale that the original film deliberately avoids. But I need to be clear. Some of the 50 episodes in the animated series can be painfully slow. And sometimes Saya comes across as incredibly stupid. But again, here, the trip is worth the destination. Two things make Blood+ standout for me:

•  It has a fantastic soundtrack written by Hans Zimmer and Mark Mancina. The music weaves the 50 episodes into one tight masterpiece. I guarantee you that you are unlikely to hear this level of musical orchestration in most modern cartoons. This is a link to a musical piece called Blood+ The Final Battle from the Original Soundtrack. (Saya is far from victory when this piece is playing.) Thirty-two of the 33 tracks of the Original Soundtrack are on YouTube here.  Suggestion – skip the first track (Haji plays the Cello). Your time will not be wasted listening to the rest of the tracks.
• The voice acting led by Kari Wahlgren is fantastic. Wahlgren voices Saya and her twin sister Diva in the English dub of Blood+. In the finale, Saya realizes that she not only will need to kill her sister, Diva; but she’ll also have to kill Diva’s two infant daughter. Wahlgren conveys such emotion at that instant that the viewer can’t help but feel Saya’s pain. All of the voice acting in this series is great, but Wahlgren is stellar in the roles of Saya and her sister, Diva.

Together, Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+ show how a single concept can be interpreted in vastly different ways. The former is a sharp, unsettling vignette that thrives on ambiguity, while the latter is a world-building, emotional saga.

You can watch the animated Blood: The Last Vampire at Dailymotion. As I write this, the live action version of Blood: The Last Vampire and Blood+ are available for purchase at Amazon. Sadly, they are not currently available for streaming in the United States.

Whether you prefer the stripped-down intensity of the film or the layered storytelling of the animated series, both works offer a compelling look at a heroine caught between humanity and monstrosity. Saya Otonashi is a vampire hunter. She is a monster who kills monsters. And she is worth watching in any medium.