An inventive twist on vampire legend, garnished with all the customary anime trimmings: teen girl, school uniform, sharp sword and nightmarish fiends.

Though clipped, no gaping plot holes keep this tight story from realizing animated brilliance, but that brilliance obscures provocative themes resting passively beneath the surface.

Saya's dispassionate glare doesn't crack until the penultimate scene. But subtle tremors in her otherwise staunchly professional relationship with David insinuate a tragic root to her ambivalent present.

Full digital while retaining the textured care of cel drawings, "Blood" is stylized with naturalism. Faded tones resulting from computer coloring fit the darker themes explored in this vampire tale.

Set on an American base, English dominates most of the dialogue. However, the sparse Japanese sounds a lot better against the western inflected English than it reads across the bottom of the screen. The subtitles could use a dose of naturalism.

Youki Kudoh ("Snow Falling on Cedars") lends a necessarily understated voice in English and Japanese to Saya, supported by Saemi Nakamuri as the nurse. Though Nakamuri performs with aplomb, both her English and her Japanese diction come out oddly.

Cursing and graphic bloodshed drags "Blood" across the serrated edge of PG-13.

Where would the industry be without the secret longings that teen to elderly men have for skinny, sexy, salacious school-girls?

Speak softly and carry a big...sword?

Could I have more please? It excited me, it touched me and then left me convulsing in a pool of my own tears. But I'll bounce back. I will survive.