- L'Écran Fantastique Prize, 16th Fantasia Film Festival (2012).

Overview
Feature film Blood-C: The Last Dark is the new chapter from the world-famous Blood: The Last Vampire saga that started in 2000 and that now is standing as one of animation house Production I.G's flagship titles.

Blood-C: The Last Dark is a creative collaboration between Production I.G and popular all-female artist group CLAMP, supervised by Junichi Fujisaku, one of the key members of the team that developed the original concept for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) and who later directed the TV series Blood+ (2005).

Like the former chapters of the saga, Blood-C: The Last Dark features a heroine called Saya who slays vicious creatures with a Japanese sword, but with totally new designs and an unpredictable story twist.

Directed byProduction I.G's enfant terrible, Naoyoshi Shiotani, Blood-C: The Last Dark opened in Japan on June 2, 2012.

What the World Said
The amazing editing and horrifying Lovecraftian bestiary, as well as attention to textures and lighting make this production a great animation film which caters as much to fans of fantasy horror as Japanese animation. (Yves Rivard, L'Écran Fantastique)

Spectacularly hyperreal, utterly three-dimensional without being in 3D, and full of gleaming lights and fleet-footed virtual camerawork. The action feels squarely in the tradition of I.G's urban SF-conspiracy thrillers, going back to Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor in the '90s. (Andrew Osmond, SFX Magazine)

Story
Tokyo, winter.
Following the enforcement of the new Youth Protection Act, minors are forbidden to circulate in the streets after 9PM and the use of the Internet is regulated. However, young people continue to fight underground for their own freedom.

A group called Sirrut, in particular, has declared war on Fumito Nanahara, a man whose great influence at both political and economic level has virtually made him the ruler of Tokyo.

The Sirrut fight their war with the weapon they know best: Internet. And while searching for more information about their enemy in the cyberspace, they come across a number of urban legends referring to the existence of the "Tower," a mysterious organization behind Fumito that is rumored to be conducting experiments involving human beings, and alluding to people being... eaten.

Determined to expose the truth, the Sirrut members start investigating. But as they are in the subway following a lead, a monstrous creature appeared from nowhere starts attacking the passengers. As panic and mayhem spread, one girl stands firmly in front of that living nightmare, a Japanese sword in her hand, her eyes as cold as ice...

About Blood
Theatrically released in 2000, Blood: The Last Vampire was Japan's first fully digital animated film, and also Production I.G's first and highly successful attempt to create a project based on a fully in-house developed original concept. A dream team including Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Junichi Fujisaku (Blood+) and Kenji Kamiyama (Eden of the East) assembled for this purpose. The movie featured Saya, a teenage girl in school uniform slashing metamorphic monsters with a Japanese sword -a unique concept contributed by Junichi Fujisaku. Combining this powerful heroine with stunningly cutting-edge animation, Blood: The Last Vampire has been mesmerizing moviegoers and renowned creators alike all over the world, starting from James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino. The character of Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was reportedly inspired by Saya. In 2005, I.G expanded the movie's concept with Blood+ -a 50-episode TV series directed by Junichi Fujisaku, which reached out to a wider market. The Blood franchise includes comic adaptations, novels, and videogames. In 2009, a live-action remake directed by Chris Nahon, starring Gianna Jun (Jun Ji-hyun) and produced by Pathé was released worldwide.

About CLAMP
Debuting in 1987 with RG Veda, CLAMP is an all-female Japanese comic artist group consisting of Nanase Okawa, who provides the storyline and screenplay, and three artists whose roles shift for each series: Mokona, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Satsuki Igarashi. As of today, over 100 million CLAMP comic volumes have been sold worldwide. Their works include, X (1992), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993), Cardcaptor Sakura (1996), xxxHOLiC (2002-2011, over 11 million copies sold in Japan alone, #6 best-selling manga in USA according to New York Times in 2009), Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (2003~2009, over 20 million copies in Japan alone, #5 best-selling book on Waldenbooks' list in 2004). CLAMP comics and their animated adaptations are released in many countries and have gained the artists a huge fan base on global scale.

About Naoyoshi Shiotani
Born in 1977, Shiotani Shiotani belongs to Japan's new generation of animation directors. His early works include TV series Windy Tales (key animation supervisor, 2004) and Blood+ (2005), for which he also directed the kaleidoscopic third opening film, Colors of the Heart (check our special feature here), selected in competition for the 11th Holland Animation Film Festival. His directorial debut, Tokyo Marble Chocolate (2007) was awarded with the Grand Prize in the Feature Films Section of SICAF 2008. His talent was confirmed in Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (2009) a CGI movie for which Shiotani contributed storyboard and animation direction, that eventually won ten awards in Japan and at international film festivals around the world. Blood-C: The Last Dark marked his directorial debut in a full-lenght feature film, and it was greeted with the Ecran Fantastic Prize at the 16th Fantasia Film Festival for the "amazing editing and horrifying Lovecraftian bestiary." Since 2012 he's been working on the highly praised dystopian SF series Psycho-Pass.
He's a soft-spoken nice guy with a naughty boy inside.

Shiotani joined Production I.G in the days when Blood: The Last Vampire was being completed, and apprenticed under Kazuchika Kise, chief animator for the movie. With Blood-C: The Last Dark, Shiotani solemnly promised he won't disappoint his master.

Release in Japan: June 2, 2012
Format: 1 x 106'

© 2012 Production I.G, CLAMP•ST/Project BLOOD-C Movie