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Thoughts:
The first thing I’d like to address is Reina’s character and acting. Unlike Airi’s character from Brothers, Hisako was very well written. She starts off as the lone wolf character that possibly has a soft side but then becomes a deceptive cold-hearted servant who takes advantage of male emotions. Reina played her character exceptionally well by keeping an emotionless face throughout the entire movie but occasionally dropping smiles off to Shu to string him along. The highlight of Reina’s character came the day after Reina led Asagi and Shu into the trap at the abandoned warehouse. Although the plan failed, Reina manipulated Shu’s emotions and led him to part ways with Asagi. While this may not seem like a big deal in the acting field, I think it is a great milestone for Reina’s career. With her idol status, her previous acting experience was restricted to genki or comedic roles. Hopefully this first exposure to a darker role will open doors to a greater variety of acting roles for Reina in the future.
I agree, Reina did an amazing acting job. The way she portrayed her character was very well done. Especially since she wasn’t on screen a lot of times compared to Airi in BROTHERS. She had me wondering about a lot of things in the movie.
Like for example: was she a vampire already before the fun times with their friends? (aka in BROTHERS) Or was she actually bitten by someone later on? Well we find out later in the movie that she was actually bitten by Ai, the brother of Sei/Airi so here the 2 stories do already kind of meet. She then also became sort of a slave of Ai, which we came to find out way late in the movie as well. So for quite some time she had us fooled as to what she really was. Especially since you already saw her use teleport in BROTHERS, Which made you believe for CHASERS she might have been already a vampire for some time.
Reina also gets to teleport around screen a couple of times in CHASERS, which to me were great fun to see. So Reina definitely had some action going on in some of her scenes. Would you ever imagine your idol to teleport on screen?
Speaking of Reina’s teleportation ability, one disparity that I didn’t get was the difference between Hisako and Shu’s development. Both Hisako and Shu were bitten on the same night and by the same vampire. Yet by the end of the movie, Hisako’s powers were almost fully developed (she could at least teleport) whereas Shu was still a useless bloke. It is weird that within this series we have 3 newly converted vampires: 1 pure blood in Sei, and two halflings with Hisako and Shu. Yet all 3 of them developed powers at a different rate. Now in typical fantasy environments where magic exists this is a perfectly normal scenario. However, none of the three in this movie had any training or guidance yet somehow two developed fine and one remained worthless.
But obviously Reina already has innate talent in being an idol, singing, looking good etc. so wouldn’t that give her a head start as a vampire? She should be considered the best vampire in history ever!
Asagi’s powers are also something that interests me. He is a halfling like Hisako and Shu, yet his self-training over the years has given him enough power to take down several vampire minions by himself (a strength that is simlar to what Ai sama has shown). In the final battle, however, Ai sama is clearly stronger than Asagi, but would Asagi be more powerful than Sei or Hisako?
So Asagi is a new character that appears in CHASERS and we come to find out later in the movie that he is a really old vampire that lived for a very long time – kind of like a vampire hunter. He carries two katana’s that he got from his master who was also a vampire/vampire hunter? The master part is not fully known to my knowledge. But to me, Asagi gave me a smile. For one, he was the first and only guy in the whole two movies with a weapon. And he acted all bad ass like semi-Blade (not totally Blade cause that’s hard to beat) ^^. I liked that. I’m glad they added him to the story.
One small problem with Asagi – he is supposed to be a vampire right? Yet you will never see his fangs. It made me wonder where they have gone. Have they disappeared over all those years? Who knows…?
I was also really glad to see a character like Asagi in Chasers. Shu, like Sei, was too weak of a character for a proper vampire story. Asagi has a very mysterious past of being bitten by a vampire but fought alongside his master to kill the vampire so now he is a free-willed halfling. It seems like his vampire experience traumatized him so much that he has a lifelong goal to kill every vampire out there. I find that weird since he himself is a vampire, shouldn’t he have killed himself out of disgust years ago? In any case, he brings a lot of masculinity to the “good” vampire side and serves as a good balance to Ai sama.
As for the final battle between Asagi and Ai… So the battle features a weapon vs bare hands(strength). One would think Asagi has the advantage being a vampire and having a katana. But somehow he gets overwhelmed by the pure strength of Ai sama. Asagi proceeds to get stabbed by his own sword and semi collapses. After that he somehow has enough energy left to grab Ai sama, and Ai sama wasn’t able to break that with his strength? I don’t know, but the whole battle felt kind of pointless
I was really interested in the final scene after the credits where Shu and Sei cross paths a year later. They walk past each other on a bridge, stop and then prepare for battle. Sei spent the entire movie of Brothers convincing us he doesn’t want to be an evil vampire like his brother Ai. Shu has shown us he has taken Asagi’s sword – and principles apparently – to defend humans from demons. Why are they fighting?? One would think they would be on the same team! Why are they not like Batman and Robin!? It leads to a possible sequel in the future, but without Reina and Airi I’m not sure I care.
I smell a part 3 with Sayu as the best vampire everrrrrr!
One last point I would like to discuss that was briefly mentioned in the BROTHERS report is something we saw a lot more of in CHASERS. It is the dead effect.
It’s the typical “vampires die and turn to ashes” story. And to be really honest it looked quite impressive. I definitely liked it, and would rate this, the best effect used in both movies. First they killed off Airi (bastards) and now Reina (What the hell!?!). And since she is a vampire she also turns to ashes. The whole scene with Reina in the arms of Shu at her last moments before turning to ash was pretty sad and… T_______T Reina was amazing in everything she did in this movie, and she was the hottest vampire I’ve ever seen – I would’ve sooo loved to see Airi as vampire too…
Jicchan 