Anime fans you might not know this about me but i'm a big comic book fan and if your a comic book fans you might not know this but i'm a huge anime fans. Anyway this weekend I have a few reviews planned that will combine my love of both so to start us of here is my review of Witchblade.
The plot of the series is a young woman and her daughter are cought in the cross hairs of an evil organization and have to take it down. I'll admit i've not seen this kind of plot in any anime before but at the same time it's also a very typical comic book plot. So I can't work out if the anime if paying homage to the comics by having this kind of plot or if the plot to this show very comic book like in it's nature.
Starring in the dubbed version of this show is Jamie Marchi as Masane Amaha , Carrie Savage as Rihoko Amaha , Robert McCollum as Yusuke Tozawa , Mark Stoddard as Reiji Takayama , Colleen Clinkenbeard and Reina Soho. I thought that the dubbing for this show was really well done which isn't really a surprise since it's done by Funimation and because of how well the dubbing is the action itself is also really good with each of the actors turning in a solid performance.
I would say that i'm shocked that not alot of comic book fans are talking about this but Witchblade is such a little known property anyway that it actually doesn't surprise me that not alot of people know about this show. What does set this show apart from other comic book adaptations is that it doesn't feature any of the characters or locations from the comic book it's based on instead choosing to feature new characters and shift the location from New York to Japan.
The animation for the series was done by Gonzo and I have to say that in my humble opinion the animation is one of the worst things about the series. When I say that I mean it's not good but it's also not as bad as the animation in Eiken but it's still pretty freaking bad with very limited lip movements and alot of really of drawings. To me this whole series could have been made better if the animators redrew some of there drawings.
I noticed that the main theme for this series is parenthood and how far would you go to project your kid. It's a theme that's really present in a lot of the shows episodes heck in the first two episodes it plays a part in the plot. It really is interesting seeing the character of Masane go from someone who at first can't really look after her daughter transform into someone who can look after her.
As I mentioned before this series is adapted from the comic book of the same name created by Marc Silvestri , David Wohl , Brian Haberlin , Christina Z and Michael Turner. The book was first published by Top Cow Productions from 1995 until 2015. After a two year break the series came back with a new creative team but even tho the series has never been that well known it has spawned a live action TV show , this anime , a manga , a Japanese novel and at one point there was even going to be a film based on the comic book made. So then you could say that this is the comic book series that could because despite not being that well known it's spawned alot of fans.
As you'd expect with any comic book adaptation the original company is involved with the show altho there not that involved. Basically Top Cow's role on this show is that of a creative consultant in that they have very little to know say in what goes in the actual series they just say yes or no to certain things and that's really it.
I can't be the only one that has thought this about this show but the main character's armour is both incredibly impractical and it makes the other characters look dumb as hell. It's impractical because it projects nothing in fact she'd be safer in her normal clothes because there's no skin showing and it makes the characters look dumb because you can tell that it's Masane and it takes the minor characters a full twenty three freaking episodes for them to be told who it is.
Yeah that's right they don't work it out they get told who it is because that armour really hides everything. Since they were pretty much only taking the lore of the comic books couldn't they have made the costume have a mask or something anything would have done since then the characters face would have been covered.
As for what i thought about the action scenes in my opinion they were the best thing about the whole series. No joke I loved every action scene that came on because they were wildly inventive and cool to look at true they weren't as good as other action anime but I thought that these scenes kicked alot of ass.
Overall this was a decent show and if that's all you want just something that's decent then this is the show for you but if your looking for something that has a little more meat to it then avoid this show. it's not as bad as Eiken in my opinion because nothing is as bad as that show but it's not a good one either so it gets a 5 out of 10 from me.