Witchblade Complete Collection

Label:

MVM

Certificate:

15

Format:

DVD

Discs:

6. (24 episodes)

Running time:

785 mins approx

Subtitles:

English

Video:

16.9 anamorphic

Sound:

English 5.1, Japanese 5.1

Release date:

6th December 2010

RRP:

£39.99 - Amazon - Play - MVM

Brief synopsis:

Throughout time the awesome power of the Witchblade - a sentient weapon of immense destructive potential - has been sought by those who would use it to satisfy their own lust for power. For reasons known only to itself, the Witchblade can only be wielded by women and even then only a select few chosen by the blade itself are ever deemed worthy of it’s power. But with the great power granted by the Witchblade also comes a heavy burden and those who wield it find their fates permanently intertwined with that of the world’s most powerful weapon, and it’s a burden that will eventually lead to their demise.

After a catastrophic earthquake six years ago almost removed Japan from the face of the earth, a young mother and her newborn child were found barely alive in then midst of the destruction. With no memory of anything before the earthquake Amaha Masane and her young daughter Rihoko have survived ever since living on the edges of society, living on the run from the Child Welfare Ministry who wish to separate mother and child by taking Rihoko into care. When finally caught by the Child Welfare Ministry, Rihoko is taken away and Masane is put behind bars. In her attempt to escape and reunite with her daughter Masane unwittingly unleashes the power of the Witchblade. Getting her daughter back soon becomes the least of her worries as various clandestine agencies as well as influential corporations want it for their bio-weapons divisions and will stop at nothing to get their hands on it

Comments:

So what happens when you take a great American comic book series like Witchblade and let the Japanese have their way with it? Well what you get in this case is essentially what Japanese animation is most comfortable with: Tits, skimpy battle outfits, plenty of “Monsters of the week” – some of them quite silly monsters at that - more tits, lots of action and a semblance of a plot somewhere in the middle of it all. There’s several liberties been taken with the Witchblade mythos so if you’re expecting the various media to tie up nicely then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This does seem to be one of the rare cases of inversions where, instead of the US “re-imagining” a popular Japanese series such as Astroboy, Speed Racer or Dragonball-Z, and Not_Quite_Getting_It (you can read that bit as “completely stuffing it up” if you like) this time it feels like the Japanese writers have been given a pile of Witchblade comics to flick through but no-one’s translated more than the basics for them. It’s probably safer to think of the whole thing much like the various versions of Battlestar Galactica, i.e., the whole thing’s vaguely familiar but that’s about as far the resemblance goes. 

That said the plot’s pretty much what you’d expect: Heroine has Witchblade, various evil/greedy people/organisations want the Witchblade, violence ensues when they don’t see eye to eye. But then considering the basic premise and subject source material, where else were they going to go with it? They tried to add a plot, mainly to do with either corrupt and immoral organisations trying to turn the Witchblade into a bio-weapons to be implanted into genetically engineered human soldiers or our heroine trying to be a good mother whilst turning into the most destructive force on the planet every other day, and for the most part they pulled it off. It’s not Shakespeare by any means, and it’s hard to do “dark and moody” when one of your main characters is a six-year-old kid, but on the whole it’s still fairly decent. You know right from the get-go it’s not going to end well for the wielder of the Witchblade, but then, when does it ever?

The animation’s (mostly) well handled, but it is from animation production company GONZO so that’s to be expected. They’ve refrained from going overboard with the CGI which is a plus and the production values remain well above average throughout though apparently GONZO ended up animating many of the action sequences twice. This was because a number of the “battle outfits” were considered to be too revealing so they had to have two versions, one involving some rather skimpy outfits that were still fit for TV broadcast and another version, with ever skimpier outfits, for the DVD release. Many of the monster designs come from the “suspension of disbelief” school of thought and the majority have definite, and somewhat unsubtle, sexual overtones to them. Let’s put it this way; most of the “monsters” are male, most of the victims are female and the warriors are all big-breasted Amazonians. The writers seem to have somewhat of a one-track mind thing going on here and could probably do with getting out and meeting real women a bit more. 

Vocally the original Japanese version is impressive. Noto Mamiko, who’s usually know for playing young boys or gentle & softly spoken girls, is cast against type as heroine Ahama Masane and surprises by carrying it off well. Fan favourites Mizuki Nana and Itou Shizuka also do wonderful jobs. The English language dub version tries it’s best, pulling in many of FUNimation’s rising stars of dubbing such as Jamie Marchi and Colleen Clinkenbeard (and Carrie Savage does what she does best; playing an often-annoying prepubescent know it all girlie) though it never quite manages to match up to the original

Extras:

Video tour of Top Cow Studios with Founder/Illustrator, Marc Silvestri; “How to make a comic book” mini feature; Interview With Japanese voice actor Noto (Ahama Masane) Mamiko; Promo video, Textless Opening and Closing animation and a number of trailers

Witchblade Complete Collection will be available from most high streets and online retailers from 6th December 2010.

Samurai 7 Complete Collection

Label:

MVM

Certificate:

15

Format:

DVD

Discs:

7. (26 episodes)

Running time:

624 mins approx

Subtitles:

English

Video:

16.9 anamorphic

Sound:

English 5.1, Japanese 5.1

Release date:

6th December 2010

RRP:

£39.99 - Amazon - Play - MVM

Brief synopsis:

In a futuristic world where swords and samurai share the scene with fantastical technology and flying war-mecha, acclaimed anime studio GONZO brings us an update to Akira Kurasawa’s classic Seven Samurai.

It’s been five years since the Great War ended but the cessation of hostilities has done little to bring peace to the land. Once proud and mighty warriors now scour the land as lawless bandits, stealing what they can from the hard working villages and killing all those who oppose them. Once such village decides to make a stand and sends their beloved Water Priestess to the nearest major city to seek the aid of any samurai willing to risk their life to defend them in exchange for nothing more than a few bowls of rice. There she finds a novice warrior looking for a chance to prove his honour and a battle weary veteran with a track record of never picking the winning side. Two samurai become three, then four, until eventually they have seven samurai willing to aid them. But will it be enough to save their land, their homes and their very lives?

Comments:

There’s been a number of “re-imaginings” of older works over the last few years to the point where it’s become somewhat of a fashion. Some of these offerings have worked impressively and surprisingly well such as Battlestar Gallactica’s triumphant return to the small screen and a what many are calling a “franchise saving” return to the big screen for Star Trek. Some however, are less inspiring and feel more like a flimsy attempt by big business and/or desperate studios to dig up our golden childhood memories, tart them up a bit and flog them back to us for all they’re worth. **cough cough** The Dukes of Hazzard, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Transformers **cough cough**. Ahem, sorry about that. This re-imagining of Akira Kurasawa’s classic Seven Samurai however, while far from awe inspiring, still falls squarely towards the “doesn’t suck” end of the spectrum, which is one hell of a relief. 

It takes some balls to tackle a re-imagining of a classic movie, especially if the movie in question is Seven Samurai, easily one of the most influential movies of the 20th century. In this case, not only is this classic being remade, it’s being **gasp** extensively altered and expounded upon. Gone is the 16th century setting to be replaced with a futuristic steam punk world, though still heavily influenced by feudal Japan. The story itself has been expanded and updated for the 21st century and, while not necessarily better than before, it is definitely bigger and brings a whole lot more to the table in terms of story and character development. This also isn’t to say that it abandons the original as many characters, lines and even entire scenes are carried straight out of the original.

Visually, the first sixty seconds of screen time are, to be honest, a bit crap quality wise but then the big money-shot kicks in and we have 5 minutes of pure eye candy. It’s a bit like the start of Team America where you’re initially disappointed but then they pull back to say, “hey, fooled ya, look what we can really do”. Unfortunately it doesn’t stay that way for long, as GONZO are known for being a bit hit and miss when it comes to animation quality and sadly this show is now exception. I’ve previously seen shows from almost all studios fluctuate in animation quality between episodes, or even between scenes but never have I seen such abrupt changes within a single scene before The 3D integration is better here than in some of their later shows such as the god awful Blassreiter, but will never be as seamless as work from the likes of Production I G. GONZO seems to spend it’s time trying to be the new Production I G or Gainax but never quite manages it, leaving them somewhat relegated to the proverbial Jack of all trades of anime. Poor old GONZO; always second best no matter how hard they try. It’s a shame really as had the production quality been consistent across the board then this show would have had a much better shot at true greatness.

The Opening and Closing animation are overlaid with very impressive Japanese kanji, which MVM aren’t dumb enough to mess with. Actually, there are no English credits to be found anywhere on these DVD’s apart from those for the DVD authoring which is kind of odd. Usually the ADR team make a big thing about getting the best position in the end credits but for this release they’re totally absent.

One thing I have to point out about this show is that, like a number of other shows out there, the Dub and Sub versions are so different in both tone and content that it’s really worth watching some parts twice to get the full value of this series. As is the case with many other series such as Bleach where a heavy emphasis is made on the concepts of Honour and Bushido the sub stays truer to the original Japanese in intent and feel with all the honourifics left intact while the dub is a touch more humorous, casual and, dare I say, “Americanised”. 

Actually, while I’m talking about honourifics I’m going to spend a bit of time on what was my biggest bug-bear regarding this show’s dub track, i.e., their total lack of consistency re prefixes and suffixes. Basically, the dub has some of the characters using honourifics only some of the time. Even then they’d keep bouncing back and forth between western style prefixes such as “Lord” or “Lady” and Japanese style suffixes like “-sama” or “-dono” which left me wanting the scream at the TV “For Pete’s sake, pick a convention and stick with it, you morons” or something like that.

Apart from that though the Dub is actually rather good. It’s no surprise to hear Colleen Clinkenbeard as the female lead as it seems that over the last year or two she’s somewhat supplanted the likes of Amanda Winn Lee or Wendee Lee as the world-of-anime-dubbing’s golden girl. Not that it’s undeserved as she does play a good “empowered young woman with plenty of guts and not too much whine” and also makes a capable ADR director to boot. The rest of the cast are also good generally restrain themselves from heading into OTT territory, which would be all too easy to let happen when you’re dealing in samurais and swordfights.

Extras:

There’s not the most impressive array of extras in the world. There’s a couple of trailers per disc, character profiles, the original Samurai 7 promos, a trailer for Akira Kurasawa’s original Seven Samurai movie, a Director/Actor commentary for ep 14 and versions of the opening and closing animation with the Japanese kanji removed – you get these seven times each which seems bit like overkill to me.

Samurai 7 Complete Collection will be available from most high streets and online retailers from 6th December 2010.