Vampires… meh. I’ve seen too many lame ones in movies to ever get excited anymore, not to mention the oh-so-serious vampire hunters that go after ‘em. Smug dudes in goofy trench coats or plastic girls in rubber outfits, armed to the teeth and posing and flexing and Matrix-ing with flabby CGI baddies. And don’t even get me started on Vampire 90210, er, I mean “Twilight.” Thanks but no thanks.

I accept the fact that cool stories get ripped off ad infinitum. Secret wars between monsters? Brooding, distant anti-heroes? Human-vampire hybrids fighting for invisible government agencies on behalf of mankind? “Underworld,” “Blade,” “Van Helsing,” “Hellboy,” yadda, yadda, yadda… Way to be original, Hollywood. We’re fed a lot of the same stuff over and over with only minor variations to tell ‘em apart. “Underworld” is “The Matrix” plus monsters. “Van Helsing” is an 18th century “Blade” plus werewolves. So formulaic, so incestuous, it’s hard to say where these tired ideas came from first.

Despite any themes it may share, “Blood: The Last Vampire” (arriving Nov. 24 on Blu-ray) offers a unique anime look at the monster hunter genre. The setting is an American military base in Japan during the 1960s. Vicious shape-shifting fiends walk among, and feed on, an unwitting human population. A secret military group challenges these beasts by unleashing their greatest weapon: a katana-wielding devil killer named Saya. It’s pretty original with cool atmosphere, a creepy pace that erupts into thrilling action sequences, and provides a great counterpoint to Saya by pairing her with a timid middle-aged nurse rather than your generic hottie/hunk or annoyingly unfunny sidekick.

The animated “B:TLV” came along in 2000 and knocked people on their collective butts despite a brief 48-minute run time. The animation is remarkable and stands as a great achievement in blending 2-D, 3-D, drawn and digital animation. The colors are rich, the lighting is exquisite, the sound design is inspired and the action is off the hook. Definitely a must-see for fans of beautiful animation or horror-fantasy. A minor gripe might be that the voice acting is a bit stiff or stilted.

I was stoked to see Korean actress Gianna Jun Ji-Hyun don the schoolgirl outfit and slay devils in 2009’s live action “Blood: The Last Vampire,” available now on DVD and Blu-ray. When you take a story that’s 48 minutes and try pad it out to feature length, problems often arise. The more you add to a story, the more you may end up detracting from it… sadly, that’s kind of what happens here.

Let’s start with the awesome: The lead actress is pretty incredible. She’s easily the best thing about the whole flick. The photography is really, really good and the movie looks great. The fight scenes are cool, using a lot of those “fast-slow-fast” tempo changes as well as some acrobatic wirework.

The not-so-awesome: Remember what I wrote about generic hotties and annoying sidekicks? Ugh. Saya is burdened with “Alice,” who is both generic AND annoying, and seems to get more screen time than our heroine. This movie feels like it has to talk, talk, talk and has some pretty inane dialogue where the anime was left intriguingly quiet. The CGI demons, well… sigh. They removed the “humanity” of the devils. For creatures that survive by mimicking humans, the anime did a great job of treating them with sensitivity and emphasized their lifelike or “human” traits. Here, they’re the same old CGI caricatures we’ve seen bouncing around in every recent monster movie.

Overall, the live action film is good fun but it lacks the punch and originality of the anime. Here’s a weird observation: The live movie tries to realize the same scenes as in the anime but the anime is the more realistic production. It’s odd, since computer animation was used heavily in both. So what does it mean? To me it means the anime, a “cartoon,” comes away feeling more human than the “cartoony” live action movie which features actual humans. I’m confused.