At least half of "Blood" is in English, which makes for an interesting Disc Setup menu. The menu offers a choice between 2.0 Dolby Surround sound or 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround sound, then offers a choice of watching the film with the subtitles off entirely, with the Japanese dialogue subtitled in English only, or with English subtitles and translated credits. Hardly a wealth of options, but absent is the sometimes-controversial dub feature
The least impressive of the DVD extras is a menu entitled "Manga Extras." However, it does include an easy to navigate run-down of the highlights of Manga Entertainment. The previews option, after a brief collage of all of Manga's major titles, rolls into a trailer for the "Magic Knight Rayearth" OAV series, then follows that with a trailer for "Black Jack: The Movie." "X: The Movie," "Ghost in the Shell," "Perfect Blue," "Ninja Scroll," "Street Fighter II V" and "Street Fighter Alpha." Laughably, all of the trailers are narrated by a melodramatic, gritty voice that makes every title seem like a Steven Segal film. A Manga DVD Catalogue features all of the company's DVD titles. The Merchandising and Catalogue Info features Manga's wares as well, only here each item flashes onto the screen for a duration of about two seconds, the line up moving from DVDs to clothing, baseball caps, etc.
The Photo Gallery contains 20 stills from the film, but none of the demonic vampires or combat. The frames focus on faces and backgrounds, which, admittedly, evince some of the creators' best work. Rendered with simplicity, each face evokes pain, determinism or hopelessness in ways akin to live actors.
The theatrical trailer opens with a testament to the film's digital achievements and follows that by touting Mamoru Oshii's name. But the trailer itself highlights some of the film's best scenes and is narrated only by lines from the film itself -- in a sense, letting the film speak for itself.
Finally, the "Making of Blood" documentary included on Manga's "Blood" release more than makes up for the fact that the film itself is only 45 minutes long. Cinematically deft, director Naoto Sumioka's beautifully-framed shots capture interviews with the people closest to the project, including creator Mamoru Oshii -- interviewed first wearing a sweater emblazoned with a beagle -- and Production I.G president, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa -- hunched toward the camera as if driven by the desire to reach right through the lens and engage the viewer. Scriptwriter Kenji Kamiyama, animation director Kazuchika Kise and others get a minute or two to speak about their role in the project as well. The documentary runs about twenty minutes and expresses in layman's terms nearly every aspect of production from original concept to musical scoring. The documentary doesn't include the process of dialogue recording, but that could very well be because the dialogue was recorded in Los Angeles while the documentary crew had to stay in Tokyo. And somewhat troubling, while name crew gets nominal recognition on screen when their interviews comes up, the documentary leaves the underlings interviewed nameless. However, descriptions of various technical elements of the project get visual aids -- images flash in unoccupied corners of the screen illustrating certain pieces of the process as they are narrated by the artist involved. A demo reel teaser placed in the middle of the documentary further illustrates aspects of the film while also providing a glimpse of scenes cut from the final version of "Blood." The demo reel, though, makes the film seem more like a horror film than whatever it really is. A fitting addendum to a release that defies definition, "Making of Blood" not only elucidates the process for this film in particular but the process of synthesizing traditional and CG animation as a whole -- an introduction for the future of animation.
