Moon Child is a 2003 Japanese science fantasy horror action film starring Gackt, Hyde, and Leehom Wang.

[3] Although the original story is about a vampire and his friends, it "reverses the concept of marginalised Asians living illegally in Japan to that of a group of marginalised Japanese renegades hiding out in a fictional futuristic city on the Asian mainland, named Maleppa, following Japan's economic collapse in the opening decades of the 21st Century".

[4] In the year 2014, Japan suffers a major economic collapse and people are forced to emigrate to mainland China.

Three orphaned boys live in a fictional Chinese city called Mallepa, a 'melting pot' of different Asian groups.

During a theft gone wrong, Sho meets Kei - a vampire who appears to be a young man - sitting amidst a pile of debris and brings him back to the orphan's hideout.

Toshi is murdered by the local mafia for helping Sho and Kei in their heists by using drugged pizza to sedate their targets.

Before she leaves she mentions the feeling of someone watching her, and after her departure Sho appears as a vampire, thanking Kei for taking care of her all these years because he couldn't face what he had become.

The movie concludes with the entire gang back together at the beach in the daylight (something not possible for Kei in the past), presumably reunited in the afterlife or as reincarnations of themselves in another life.

Derek Elley of Variety called Moon Child "A half-chaotic, half-entertaining mixture of dystopian romance, gunplay and vampirism, [the film] is a futuristic fantasy-on-a-budget that, like most of Japanese helmer Takahisa Zeze's pics, would benefit from a further 30 minutes left on the cutting-room floor".

[5] According to Jasper Sharp of Midnight Eye, "Moon Child proves for the first time that Zeze has the technical ability both to handle large-scale action sequences, and to create elaborate comic book fantasy worlds.