Honestly, I rewatched 'Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust' recently and the thing that stuck with me wasn't the big fights, but the quiet moments with Meier Link. His whole arc feels like a tragedy about instinct versus choice. He's running away with Charlotte, sure, but it's framed as this grand romantic gesture. Yet you can see the vampire hunger is always there, simmering. The way he almost loses control when she's hurt? That's the instinct punching through the cultivated, noble persona. It's not a clean separation. His love feels real, but it's also tied up in possession and that ancient, predatory nature. He can't escape what he is, even when he's trying to be something more. It makes the ending so much sadder.
D is the flip side, the ultimate control. But even he isn't immune. The film hints at his own buried emotions and that lineage. The instinct isn't gone; it's just channeled, weaponized. They're two sides of the same coin—one succumbs to the emotional side of the hunger (love, passion, possession), and the other denies it, but both are defined by the struggle.