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The Action-Goth Masterpiece That Never Got Its Due
Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s ahead-of-its-time epic was meant to be the movie that proved action anime could work on the big screen in America.
We don’t immediately see the demon that rides through the streets, but the camera tracks his lethal progress: He leaves flowers desiccated and fountains frozen in his wake before spreading sinewy wings and spiriting a maiden from her bed. Originally designed by Yoshitaka Amano and translated to the film by Yutaka Minowa, D is a slender, soft-spoken swordsman dressed perpetually in black — as if Timothée Chalamet were spliced with Yojimbo and given a massive wide-brimmed chapeau. The gun-toting bounty hunter Leila’s design delivers a different kind of femininity: She wears lipstick and heels but also armored shoulder pads, and she carries a gigantic pistol and a telescoping bazooka that she fires from atop a motorized unicycle.
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