myOtaku.com: timechaser

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Vitals

Birthday
• 1981-07-28
Gender
• Male
Location
• Florida
Member Since
• 2005-01-14
Occupation
• Geek
Real Name
• Daniel

Personal

Achievements
• Worked on college newspaper and did an internship with the Florida Today. Graduated from university
Anime Fan Since
• Fall/Spring of 99/2000
Favorite Anime
• Haibane Renmei, Le Chevalier D'eon, Mushi-Shi, RahXephon, Noir, Witchblade, Black Lagoon, X [TV], Hellsing OVA, Ergo Proxy, Bubblegum Crisis 2040, Chrono Crusade, Speed Grapher, Requiem from the Darkness, Hell Girl, Devil Lady, Kurau
Goals
• Get a job, hopefully in journalism or something related. Get stories published one day and write novels
Hobbies
• Anime/manga collection, writing, music collection - mostly Progressive Rock/Metal, being a complete Doctor Who fanboy
Talents
• Quoting M*A*S*H dialogue from memory.

myOtaku.com: timechaser

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Witchblade Vol. 2
So, I bought the new Witchblade DVD yesterday and watched it when I got home. Once again it didn't fail to entertain me.

There wasn't quite as much action as the preview suggested (I should learn by now that previews are misleading and designed specifically to work up the veiwer), but that's not to say it wasn't a bad 4 episodes. Again, the action is balanced by a well-paced story and excellent character interaction and development. There was a bit more comedy this time around, mostly centered on the quirky tennents of the apartment building Masane and Rihoko now live in.

I love the dynamic between Masane and Rihoko: I don't think an adult being useless while the child is the efficient, responsible one is a unique situation in anime or film/TV in general, but they play it just right in this series. This also highlights the major important difference between Masane and the original Witchblade heroine, Sarah Pezzini.

I wanted to talk about this because in the comments for Gail's review of Witchblade Vol. 2, someone (I won't use names) said: "I could do without the fact that the Sarah Pezzini character has a kid." This comment irked me.
I think it's wrong to equate Masane and Sarah to each other at all; they are completely different characters. One is a cop, the other is a single mom suffering from amnesia.
I love how the Vol. 1 review on ANN covered this: while Sarah had her sense of justice as an internal motivation, Masane's maternal instincts and need to protect Rihoko from harm are her (external) motivation. Therefore, Rihoko should be thought of along those lines as an essential element of the anime series. It's an important distinction between this incarnation of the story and those that came before.
Though personally, I have no problem with Rihoko and enjoy her character (besides being a bit of a fan of her VA, Carrie Savage).

The promise of battle between the Witchblade and Cloneblades ended up being a bit muted, since we only saw two Clones, and only one really got into the fighting. What fighting there was was good though, and there was a glimpse at what could eventually happen to Masane as the Witchblade takes more control, with one of the Cloneblades consumed by her power.

All in all, I'm happy with how the show is progressing. You don't really need to knock out viewers with endless action so early in the story, so the build-up helps keep it from running away from the overall plot. It handles it's character extremely well, and that alone makes it more entertaining than a standard action series.

I forsee some danger ahead for Rihoko, as one of the Cloneblades has developed an interest in her...
_________________________________________________

In other news, I'm very happy today: I received shipping confirmation on my CDs. I made a bulk order of 10 (told I went crazy), and they've all cleared. I hope they'll get here by the end of the week.

Fingers crossed now.

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