Whenever retro anime of the metal-as-hell variety makes the rounds on social media, it never fails to leave me in awe of the artistry its creators mustered back in the day. Think Bubblegum Crisis, Demon City Shinjuku, and Wicked City—all certified classics that’d rightfully make any old-head anime fan get on their soapbox and wax poetic about them as if they were the fire Prometheus stole from Olympus. But of all the old-school anime whose titles serve as diamond tests for an anime fan’s taste, the ones that endure are the vampiric epic Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and its less-discussed prequel film, Vampire Hunter D. Having recently given them a back-to-back rewatch (a year late from the latter’s 40th anniversary, oops), I was left with the takeaway that everything I’ve ever found cool in anime owes a huge debt to Vampire Hunter D for doing it first. While everyone and their mother has heard of Studio Madhouse‘s 2000 film, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, not many people are aware that it’s the sequel to an even older 1985 OVA, Vampire Hunter D. In all fairness, the gravitational pull of Bloodlust‘s gothic glory—a tone Madhouse remains the undisputed king of to this day—would make it easy for anyone to forget that there was a film before it. Still Studio Live and Ashi Productions’ joint effort to bring Hideyuki Kikuchi and legendary artist Yoshitaka Amano‘s 1983 novel to life is every bit as deserving of the flowers its sequel often receives as a cultural reset in dark fantasy anime.