Anime Meta-Review
Sorceror Hunters
Index's
Home
Alphabetic
Quality
Genre
People
Recent
By Date
Title Info
- alias: Bakuretsu Hunters
- seen: 1-6 of 25
- type: TV
- grade: flawed
- made: 1995
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
This anime impressed me, but for the wrong reason. This anime seems to have all the requirements for a good watch, but instead it just seemed empty. When I'd finished I didn't like it, hate it, or even have a good memory of what I watched. The series follows a group of `sorceror hunters' in a faux fantasy world. It's fake because while it is meant to be historical the characters and environment are modern, it never feels like a real fantasy world. This world is ruled, generally unjustly and selfishly, by those capable of using magic. The only hope for the normal people, who are subject to any whim of their local sorceror (and these guys have fairly exotic whims) is that the shadowy group called the `sorceror hunters' will come and execute them. The sorceror hunters are also a playing piece in a larger power struggle between the one who gives them their orders, some form of priestess figure, and her own personal opponent.
The sorceror hunters themselves are a mixed group, interesting, but we spend way too much time watching Carrot Glace, the lecherous, powerless idiot type with infinite hit points we are all too familiar with. Actually Carrot does possess a hidden power, but most of the time he's just an idiot. I'd call him comedy relief, but can't because he's actually the focus character (weird decision). In addition we have two females who transform into Bondage and Discipline characters to fight (weapon being wire for one and whips for the other) as well as a muscle guy and a magic guy who are almost totally characterless, which is a shame, because they are much cooler than carrot.
In between the stories where these guys kill sorcerors, and carrot desperately hunts for women, there are some romantic or humorous stories. If I had to identify the problem it would be that the writing is weak, both in the stories and the characterisation and dialog. Stuff that should affect me, such as near fatal rivalry between sisters, or the story of a lake spirit or even the evilness of the sorcerors, simply didn't hit. The humor, which seems to have been planned as a major component based on the stupid character names, is very simplistic and largely unsuccessful. In addition it seems like they tried to have all the familiar elements, wrapped into a very saleable product, but given the weak writing it just feels familiar, predictable and soulless.
The animation itself is fairly reasonable, the sort of cheery and bright OAV-like look, although the visual design is dodgy. The action, which I would have expected to be a focus, is fairly poor with lots of still frames and poor pacing and movement otherwise. Although there was one fight with a old male sorceror that indicated what we should have been seeing. I wondered if this `blah' response was because i'd seen too much anime, so I put `Kotetsu' in (a fairly average `simple-fun' anime) and once again found myself interested in what was happening. I really don't know why this anime just failed to interest me, but if you are considering buying it I recommend you watch some first.
Oh well, looks like i'm alone again, with anime-genesis giving it a good review as a "hillarious action fantasy anime". There's a huge review at Akemi's AnimeWorld but you might want to skip over the synopsis. The summary is that it is good fun, but a bit uneven and gets an average mark overall. I did find it interesting that all reviews mentioned that carrot has an `ataru' (Urusei Yatsura) heritage, but missed that the two girls have also inherited from Lum and Shinobu.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:25 WST 2009