Production I.G staff member Kenji Kamiyama has served as the animation director for "Jin-Roh," the storyboard artist for "Medarot 2" and has since written the script for "Wild Arms." Akadot's Sara Ellis was able to speak with him at Production I.G's offices in Kokubun-ji, Tokyo about "Blood," "Jin-Roh" and his thoughts on the anime industry at large.

"Blood" is short at 45 minutes. Is there more to the story or are there parts that were omitted or not filmed?

Kenji Kamiyama: "Blood" wasn't originally meant to be a theatrical release but one for video. We were thinking about a three-part video release. Our first idea was that "Blood" was going to be the middle of a three part series. The first part was going to take place in immediate post war Japan, and the third would have taken place during the present, or the 1990s.

What was the reason for setting the story at a U.S. military base? Were you thinking about the various conflicts arising from the U.S. military presence in Okinawa and other parts of Japan?

KK: During the initial planning stages we weren't thinking of that at all. The reason we set it on a U.S. base is that Japan is an island country, so it doesn't have any borders really. The 'fence' around Japan that the U.S. military bases have created is in fact the only real borderline that has been drawn around us. These borders create a certain kind of tension. We were thinking of that when we set the story on a military base. Honestly, we weren't really thinking about making any kind of political statement.

All the other kids are wearing civilian clothes. Why is Saya the only one with a Japanese school uniform? Is there a symbolic meaning to her being in a school uniform?

KK: One of the reasons we have Saya in a school uniform is that the school uniform is sort of a semiotic sign in Japanese animation. By putting Saya in the uniform our audiences would immediately recognize her as the vampire hunter. The second reason is that the sailor uniform is used so often in Japanese animation that we wanted to create a sort of paradox. It creates the sense of misunderstanding or falsehood about her and the organization backing her up. We wanted a sense of parody, it's not an attractive uniform, it's certainly not practical for her to wear, but despite all of this she's misunderstood her surroundings and is wearing it anyway.

Will the video game clear up any story points or expand upon themes touched on in the movie?

KK: We planned to make the video game from the initial planning stages of the movie. The first advantage of the video game was probably that as an adventure game it would have more information than the film. We thought the game would be the most suitable media to establish the story of the vampire and of Saya. There's an enormous amount of information in it. At the time I was working on it, however, I wasn't thinking about telling more of the story but giving a basis for the player to feel more involved in the game.