Reception
Blood: The Last Vampire received multiple awards at various film festivals around the world. In 2000, it was selected as "Public's Prize Best Asia Feature Film" at the Montreal Fantasia Film Festival where it debuted, it won the Grand Prize in the animation category at the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs' Media Arts Festival, and it won the Ofuji Noburo Award at the Mainichi Film Competition. In 2001, it won Special Prize at the akasaki Film Festival and it was selected as the Best Theatrical Feature Film at the World Animation Celebration. Director Hiroyuki Kitakubo won an award for his work on the film at 6th Animation Kobe. It received the Grand Prize for animation at the 2000 Japan Media Arts Festival.
In the first week of its North American release, more than 70,000 DVDs and 30,000 VHS copies of Blood: The Last Vampire had been sold. Within the first month after its release, it became Manga Entertainment's top selling title in the company's history. The film also appeared on both the Video Business, Billboard, Video Store Magazine and Entertainment Weekly lists of top DVD sales. The company attributes this success to their use of two unconventional marketing methods: a limited theatrical release before the DVD release to market the title and offering the entire film for free on the day the DVD was released through a streaming video broadcast on Sputnik7.com where it was downloaded by more than 61,000 viewers. Marvin Gleicher, then president of Manga Entertainment, stated that the film's "success has proven to be a landmark time in the history of Manga Entertainment."
Michael Stroud of Wired News praised the film's blend of 2D and 3D elements and quoted Academy Award winning director James Cameron as saying: "Digital imaging has entered a new era. The world will come to consider this work as the standard of top quality in digital animation." In The Anime Encyclopedia, Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy praised the film for its groundbreaking use of English, its "stunning animation" and its high end action sequences, but criticized its short length and lack of a conclusion. Animerica reviewer Urian Brown called it a "piece of superb animation" that a "pretty and gritty...sleek, dark, and sexy" film that will make a viewer forget its lack of "story, depth, and character development."
According to Electronic Gaming Monthly, Blood: The Last Vampire was one influence behind the "striking visuals" of the video game Crackdown.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)