released 05 feb 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of the Japanese anime video series WITCH HUNTER ROBIN (WHR), we meet the heroine, a teenage girl of course named Robin, who has come from a convent in Italy to Japan to become a member of the "STN-Japan", an organization that runs down violent rogue psychics. She becomes part of a team of "Hunters" who are called in to deal with bizarre crimes, particularly murders, committed using paranormal powers, usually telekinesis. The "Witches", as the perps are called, are subdued and hauled off in an armored van to a mysterious location named "The Factory". Robin has paranormal abilities herself: she's a "firestarter", though she has a few problems getting on top of her aim.
The initial impression I got of WHR is that it is a watchable but mediocre piece of work, with fair (though not impressive) production values and reasonably entertaining (if also unimpressive) scripts. Oddly, although it is run-of-the-mill, it's not run-of-the-mill anime: it looks more like a typical low-budget live-action syndicated adventure show, with a team of young specialists dealing with "the psychic menace of the week". If you ever saw the FOREVER KNIGHT series, about a Toronto police detective who was also a vampire, WHR comes across as being in about the same category, though there's no specific parallels between the two series.
Unfortunately, on watching through the rest of the series it became apparent that WHR was simply incapable of doing any better. After running through the "menace of the week" formula for ten episodes or so, it starts to bring in intrigues, with different factions in the STN fighting each other and nobody quite sure who to trust. This only seems like an improvement for a while, since it gradually becomes obvious that the intrigues don't have any more of a brain than what came before, being just as pointless or predictable. It was typical of the whole series that I figured out the "big secret" of the Factory after the first few episodes, but the scriptwriters wouldn't reveal it until the last, as if it could still be a surprise. I went through the last few episodes in a sitting simply so I could be done with the thing.
Comparing WHR with FOREVER KNIGHT is not quite accurate. In terms of production, they were similar, but at least I thought FOREVER KNIGHT was fun, cheesiness and all. In the end, WHR is just a forgettable bore.