Monday, April 29, 2019

There is no Anime like Witch Hunter Robin

Glass Reflection had said in his pre season video that he thought Fairy Gone might remind him of Witch Hunter Robin a little bit.  That of course was a speculation based on seeing none of it yet, now that the first two episodes' Dubs just went up I watched them and can say it's not really similar, this is one of those SteamPunkIsh Anime.  I have my doubts I'll follow it to the end but I'm not dropping it yet.

Anime is very diverse, as I've said before way more diverse then Western Animation which is why all the attempts to stereotype it annoy me.  But while Anime may have a lot of boxes, and a lot of variety within said boxes, most Anime can be put into some kind of box.  Even most shows you might be thinking are obviously more "unique" then this mostly forgotten 2002 show fit into the elusive box of "other stuff from the same bat$h!t Insane director".  But in the case of WHR I honestly don't right now know if I've seen anything else from the same creators.

By the broadest possible definition of the genre you could perhaps call Witch Hunter Robin a Magical Girl Warrior show.  But it's very clearly not what one expects of that genre, even Vampire Princess Miyu is closer to fitting into it.

Witch Hunter Robin is one of the very few shows I think very highly of that has absolutely no Yuri content to speak of.  (It also has no Yaoi either but one character who I think might be coded as Gay.)  It's not a Harem or a Reverse Harem and isn't set in a High School, and honestly I can't even guess whether it's marketing classification was Shonen, Senien, Shoujo or Josei.  And thankfully it has no creepy Fanservice. 

I've compared it to Noir as being the only other show I've seen that uses it's 26 episode structure in a similar way, but that says nothing about the content of the story those episodes tell.

Basically, if someone told me this was currently the only Anime they've seen but they love it and wanna see more, I'd have no idea what to recommend them to watch next.  Usually that wouldn't be a problem for me at all.

As someone who does constantly compare things in my mind, what this does remind me of (or more often other things reminding me of it since I first saw this a loooong time ago now) is Western stuff.  It's the only Anime I've seen that I think might appeal to fans of American TV Police Procedurals like NCIS, and absolutely the perfect example of how to blend that Genre with a Supernatural element.  There is one character I remember thinking could be played by Bruce Campbell based on his performance on that Burn Notice show.  I also thought of it when I was watching episodes of both TV versions of Nikita (Noir is more inspired by the original French movie).  But the one thing WHR does have in common with other Anime is my ability to find it more satisfying then it's western counterparts.

But all this could be because compared to most people blogging about Anime you could say I still haven't seen a lot.  By my MAL count I've watched only 69 days worth of Anime, less then 4,000 episodes and under 400 entries completed.  But considering I only became a full time Otaku less then 5 years ago it's amazing that I'm already nearly a third of the way to catching up to Digibro.  Still maybe I just haven't seen enough shows from the same studio or same director or same writers or even the same year.

Update: Apparently the studio is just friggin Sunrise, I certainly wasn't expecting to find it came from the same machine as Gundam and Code Geass.

The director has indeed done other stuff I've heard of before but haven't watched yet.  I'll have to try one of them sometime soon.

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