Vampire Hunter D’s Leila Marcus and Finding Strength in Softness
I’m a horror girl born and raised. My first idols were final girls and avenging angels and witches and warriors; Ellen Ripley’s maternal badassery in Aliens, Laurie Strode’s survivalist fighter, The Grand High Witch’s bloodthirsty soft-camp, and Nancy Downs’ chaotic power (she’s the real hero of The Craft, and I will die on that hill) to cite just a few examples of female characters that had a massive impact on me growing up. (Within the boundaries of humans, that is—I could go off about Mothra).
There is another important horror heroine of my formative years who I’m surprised has rarely if ever been mentioned to this day: the steampunk futch biker babe with violence in her heart, Leila Marcus of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. For the purposes of this article, I will only be referring to Leila in the movie and not the original novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi, in which her treatment is less than appealing.
Vampire Hunter D and I go way back, to the confusing middle school days when I begged my parents to let me rent the VHS of the original 80s anime simply because the cover art was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. The artist behind his inception, Yoshitaka Amano, crafts sumptuously beautiful and romantic fantasy work. To this day I have not been as instantly fascinated with a character as I have been with his lonely, gothic, brutally gorgeous vampire hunter with Dracula as his dad and a human as his mom and an impossibly giant sword and a cyborg horse. Oh yeah, and a demon in his hand that appears as a wise-cracking grinning face with the ability to literally suck entire creatures and souls into its mouth for consumption. Aesthetically delicious. To this day, he and Cary Grant are the only men I’ve ever crushed on.
I was 13 in the year 2000, when the second of the two movies, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, had a small US theatrical run. As a surprise treat, my dad took me to see it the one night it played a long drive away from our small town (shout out to The Heights Theater in Columbia Heights, MN!). Both of us came away beaming from this quintessential work of animation.
It’s a gothic feast for the eyes perfectly illuminating Amano’s painting style, fleshing out an action-packed and romantic story full of intrigue and surprising heart that also plays out as a near ‘best of’ in references to every other vampire movie up to that point (take a shot at every homage to Coppola’s Dracula). Seriously, if you haven’t seen Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, do yourself a favor and put on your best puff-sleeve blouse, light some tall dripping candles, hang some crosses on your door, and make a night of it.
What surprised me also about Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust is comparable to the surprise of watching Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time. While the title of the movie features the franchise’s male character, the story actually focuses on the female ‘sidekick’. In Fury Road, we have the now iconic Furiosa; in Bloodlust, we have Leila Marcus. And just like Fury Road, Bloodlust is her movie. D might have the marquee value, but she gets the emotional arc of the story and is responsible for the ending. She also refuses to fall into the trope of becoming a romantic interest. (I would argue to some extent that she gives me major gay vibes, and D always struck me as asexual. But then again that’s my millennial queer habit of reaching for crumbs again).
Leila is the only woman in a family of vampire hunter siblings, alongside four other Marcus Brothers (though it’s revealed she’s only related in name only), joining up with them as a means of both escaping her grief-filled past and avenging her mother who was killed by a vampire. She has a giant gun, a single-wheeled cyberpunk motorcycle that would put Kaneda to shame, and an armored red ensemble that deserves its own artbook. In the English dub, she’s voiced by Pamela Adlon, which in the year 2000, had me shouting “is that Bobby Hill???”. She takes no shit, asks for zero help, and has a vibe that wouldn’t be out of place in a dyke bar (look at this picture and tell me she doesn’t look like Agathe Rouselle of Titane).
And, over the course of the movie, Leila goes through tremendous growth, especially as she confronts her inner child during a haunting. It’s this that made her so significant in my mind: that strength can come not only from physical prowess and fighting ability, but the capacity for tenderness, and that true healing comes from what therapists have mentioned in our sessions as ‘reparenting your own childhood self’. And that carries through into the final fight scene.
To view the full arc of her growth, one need only compare Leila’s first encounter with Charlotte—the ‘kidnapped’ woman at the heart of the story—and the climactic battle at the end of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust When Leila first meets Charlotte, a calm (and Ghibli-esque) moment is broken as the supposed victim of a vampire reveals not only her consent to her flight from home, but that she is doing so out of love and in fear of violence from her family. Leila responds to this by not only mocking Charlotte, but by slapping her to the ground, angrily berating her into coming back home. Leila is still acting out a trauma response.
As a former victim, she uses aggression and violence as a misguided method of protection. One could argue that she is subconsciously berating her younger self as she yells at Charlotte. At the film’s ending, Leila meets Charlotte for the second time, only now Charlotte has been killed. Leila having now lost not only her biological family but her chosen family in reckless pursuit of vengeance now understands the endless pattern of violence she has woven into her life. Rather than see any more bloodshed, she puts down her gun and takes Charlotte’s ring, throwing it into the fight. This is the crescendo of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust; not a vanquishing of an enemy or a moment of triumph, but the two main opposing forces being reminded of their casualties, and choosing mercy.
My favorite moment comes towards the end, when D offers her his hand to get on his horse, and she declines it with a knowing smile. It’s a small but significant scene. Despite their growing camaraderie, Leila makes it known to D that she is still her own person, a wielder of her own power. That soft smile to herself lets the audience know that she has come to truly understand this strength. It’s the closing of the real story, and the true core of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust—a woman who had only known grief and violence has confronted the barbarity the world has put her through, and found her heart. Violence begets violence begets violence in an endless cycle that only results in more loss and grief. At the center of it all, we’re only violent to mask and attempt to erase our own scars.
Back then, and even more so now, Leila’s emotional journey resonates deeply; she’s a child of trauma. After decades of lashing out in furious anger in order to release herself from this trauma, she discovers the path to healing is not through hardening herself to meet the aggressive toxicity of her male peers, but to rise above it all in the acknowledgment of her hurt. She chooses to believe, finally, in love and kindness, and that breaking the cycle of pain is possible.
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