This now-classic anime is still one of the best to be found.
Set in 12,090 AD, the setting is described well enough by the English prologue: "This story is set in the distant future, where mutants and demons slither through a world of darkness." So begins the story of a vampire, his prey, and his killer.
Vampire Hunter D starts with a girl named Doris Rumm (Lang in the American dub), who lives on a farm with her brother Dan. Despite the massive house the pair live in, Doris can only afford a little wisp of a skirt. Go figure.
Doris is out huting mutants one night when she is attacked by first a werewolf, who merely steals her crucifix, and then by a vampire, Count Magnus Lee.
Magnus Lee bites Doris, and the plot thickens.
After some ominous, yet cool scenery is displayed, we meet D, a wandering Vampire Hunter. Doris attacks him, seeking to tst his abilites as a Hunter. Then, having been humiliated by D (he brushes off her attacks with barely a twitch), she asks if she might hire him, and offers herself as incentive.
D, being the nice guy he is, refuses to take any payment, but agrees to hunt down Magnus Lee.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Dan Rumm is taking pot shots at the Mist creature which is eating his sheep. When D and Doris arrives, he helps D unload his stuff and then the trio heads into town.
Enter Greg (Grecko in America), who is one character you won't be sorry to see meet his end later on.
I'm ruining the story for you, and I know it--I revel in it. However, I'll skip over some of it in order to introduce the next few characters.
Back at the Rumms' farm, D has a rather interesting conversation with his hand (and the symbiotic being that lives in it), and we find that Doris' father was a Werewolf Hunter before his death at the hands of the local vampires.
Because it is the "Moon of Blood" Magnus Lee will not drink Doris' blood this night, but D cautions that he will probably send someone to take her instead.
Right on cue as night falls, a strange man called Reigensei and a lady named Ramika appear and challenge D. Reigensei proves to have the mutant power of spatial warping, which makes for some really nifty animation. Ramika isn't nearly as impressive, as she is only the Count's daughter. D warns the pair that "visitors from the past shall return to the darkness whence they came." The statement merely confuses Ramika, but Reigensei seems to understand, and he doesn't look happy.
The next day, being goaded all the way by the symbiote in his hand, D storms the Count's castle, only to be confronted by Reigensei and an old hag. Reigensei triggers a trap, and D falls several hundred feet into the catacombs, where evidence of the cataclysmic war that took place "ten thousand years ago" can still be seen in the form of thousands of skeletons and blasted buildings.
As D continues, he meets the Lamia (Snake Women of Midwitch), who promptly coil around D and start extracting hi slife force.
Meanwhile, Doris, Dan and their friend Dr. Peringo (Fering in America) are attacked at the farm, and Reigensei kidnaps Doris.
The self-professed million-year-old Count Lee speaks with Doris in his castle as D is drained of his life force. Just as Count Lee (who is easily twelve feet tall) is gloating over the fact that D is doomed, D reveals his fangs. He's a dhampire: as Ramika says in the Japanese script "the halfbreed spawn of a nobleman's (Vampire's) joke and a human slut." D makes short work of the Lamia, and rescues Doris from the clutches of the Count. Reigensei gives chase, but ends up killing his friend Gimletto instead of D.
Oops.
Having failed at that, Reigensei kidnaps Dan, having received the "Time Deceiver Lamp" from one of the Count's minions. The Time Deceiver Lamp is purported to paralyze anybody who looks at the flames or smells the incense--provided that vampire's blood flows through his veins. Before Reigensei can use the lamp, it is stolen by Greg. Unfortunately for the mutant, Reigensei doesn't know about this, and suffers the loss of his hand when D saves Dan.
By now, there have been several plot twists, all of which are too numerous to follow. I'll just touch on the highlights while maddeningly refusing to reveal the ending.
D is killed by Reigensei, but the symbiote in D's hand revives him. Meanwhile, Doris has been kidneapped again, this time to marry Count Lee. Dan also disappears, and is saved from death by . . . Reigensei?
In his last moments, Reigensei reveals a mysterious sensitive side, and attacks the count, saying (in the Japanese version) "Because of you all my friends are dead!"
The movie ends after the climactic battle between D and Lee, with some startling secrets revealed.
Vampire Hunter D is one of a few anime that is not based on a manga. Rather, like Record of Lodoss War, it is based on a novel, and was later made into graphic novels. The original Kyuuketsuki Hantaa D by Hideyuki Kikuchi is still a popular book in Japan, and can be ordered by mail in the United States as well (although you'd better have you Kana and Kanji down to understand it).
For a really cool Vampire Hunter D page with tons of art, check out the Vampire Hunter D Archives.