A live action movie adaptation of Blood – The Last Vampire is on the way this summer, and there are a lot of people out there interested in checking it out. For those of you that haven’t heard of the name, Blood The Last Vampire was a 48 minute animated movie from 2000, originally intended to be little more than a testing ground for a number of new animation techniques involving the blending of traditional cel animation with CG elements. Upon its release it was something of a hit amongst anime fans and since then it has become a cult classic in its own right. In its first week of release, Blood The Last Vampire sold 100,000 copies in the US alone.

Trailer for the original animated movie:

That animated feature spawned a manga book sequel and also a fifty episode anime series that dealt with an alternate timeline, but was still well received by fans of the original film. Now, we have a full on movie adaptation of the classic anime to look forward to. Featuring Gianna Jun as lead character Saya, the film follows an expanded version of the original’s premise. The idea of a character who appears to be little more than a teenager actually being a vampire secret agent with incredible abilities and a hell of a skill with a sword is something that hit a nerve with anime fans, and the movie is looking absolutely spectacular. Check out the full trailer below:

Trailer for the live action movie:

From the new poster and the official trailers for this anime movie adaptation, it seems to me that Blood – The Last Vampire is about to get a heck of a lot more fans all over the world once the movie hits. While it may stray from the anime’s original plot in order to provide a more coherent story for moviegoers, this asian-produced action flick may well be the best anime adaptation ever. The effects look fantastic, the cinematography looks very promising, and the action looks top notch, but will it hit a similar nerve with fans? I think so, and I do believe this will be one of the surprise cult hits of 2009.

===
Want Anime T-shirts? Look no further!

Other than that there’s been the unveiling of those new Star Trek promo images, The Dark Knight doing mucho business Stateside and Jedi geeks gearing up for some animated Star wars action with The Clone Wars movie. It is a good time to be of the geek persuasion. Actually, it has been a good time for geekery for the entire decade thus far. There’s been a slew of movies that have proven that geek subjects can be covered with respect and dignity, and still bring in the box office cash. We’ve had an upsurge in book buying and comics popularity, anime and manga becoming more respected due to some high profile releases such as Death Note and Naruto bringing in droves of new readers and viewers. On TV there’s been Doctor Who’s return, Torchwood, Heroes, Lost, and countless others keeping the faith in people’s homes.

It has also been something of an era of change in the way that fans are perceived by the world at large. There’s still the Star Wars Kid stigma sometimes, but on the whole people are finally starting to ‘get it’ much more, and for that we have people like Russell T Davies, Steven Moffatt, Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, Zack Snyder and Mr Christopher Nolan to thank. Here’s hoping the next decade is as cool as this one has been.

In fiction there’s been the phenomenon of geeks taking control of their own creative careers, and the big example of this would have to be Infected, by Scott Sigler. Genre fans such as Sigler have been making their own way into fan’s hearts via podcasting and print on demand avenues, and this is paying off with big book releases like that one and smaller publishers bringing us book events like Matthew Selznick’s recent Brave Men Run and geek icon Mur Lafferty’s forthcoming Playing For Keeps novel (out August 25th from Swarm Press).

It really is a fantastic time to be a nerd, geek, dork, Trekker, Whovian, Jedite or whatever you marvellous people wish to categorize yourself as. I’ll even give a shout-out to the Cosplayers, just because. Now, go on you lot, get out there and conquer the media and bring the rest of us the stuff we’ve always wanted. Here’s to being odd.

The long-running anime/manga magazine Newtype was a wonderful thing, but, as ever, all good things must come to an end eventually. The death of that magazine has left a massive gaping hole in the magazine market. Granted there are other titles out there that cater for the same audience, but nobody has managed to match the style and content of Newtype.

Now we have Piq on the market, and, ladies and gents, I think we have a winner here. The content is very similar to that of Newtype, with a similar layout. Where it differs is the approach of the con tent itself, which comes across as Newtype mixed with the UK’s own SFX mag. The emphasis is on anime and manga, but the makers are happy to include material on other areas of TV and movie fandom. For example there’s a killer feature on the new Terminator TV show in this first issue. There’s also a rather fascinating interview with John Woo on his involvement with the new Appleseed move, APPLESEED: EX MACHINA, which looks stunning form the images included in the feature. Other features include a look at the Speed Racer movie that the Wachowskis are making, as well as games, comics and more.

On the whole this is a very promising magazine that will help fill the void left by Newtype, even if it doesn’t include the DVD inserts, posters and other giveaways Newtype was so loved for. It remains to be seen whether they will be able to gather such a loyal fanbase due to the malleable nature of the mag’s content, but then again this may work it Piq’s favour, as a less-specialized batch of contents is going to make is more interesting for a wider audience.

Piq’s fantastic debut issue is onsale NOW in our store- The Last Picture Show, 38-39 The Lanes, Meadowhall Centre, Sheffield.