Witch Hunter Robin

"Witch Hunter: Robin" starts slowly as what seems to be a fairly unimportant Blade-ripoff and at first I thought I had wasted my money by buying all 26 episodes, but once I got to having seen a dozen episodes I slowly emerged into an intrigue that pulled me further and further into the story.

Labeled at Wikipedia as an "occult detective story", "Witch Hunter: Robin" is a thriller that gives you a believable world set in near future Japan where the Witch Hunts of the old days have continued up to the present by covert organizations. Our main character is a cute 15-year-old girl in a gorgeous dress with dormant magic power who joins such an organisation but ends up in the most dangerous and confusing situations as a consequence of it. The story is impelling, combination of CGI and hand drawn graphics works well and the film noir atmosphere at times is genuinely creepy while maintaining a sense of realism to it. There are few series I've ever seen that I find this enjoyable to watch and I therefor recommend everyone who's seen the first few episodes and got a little bored to at least continue watching until 15 because once they pass the first 12 episodes, the story should just suck you right in....

The first 2 episodes are a bit slow as it creates the atmosphere and introduces the fine cast of characters. Stay with it and you will be rewarded. However, this is not intended to be an action show, nor will you find any "fan service". The animation is 2D, but gives the look of a night-time TV crime drama. For its genre, this is a fine, memorable show. It would be great if they remade it as a live-action series or movie.

The first half of the series focuses on investigations of "abnormal" crimes and the capture of "witches", people who have developed powers. Some of the people who hunt these witches also have powers but are labeled "craft users". You are either a hunter or the hunted. The hypocrisy is obvious.

The second half of the series focuses less on "captures" and more on investigating and revealing secrets about Robin and the agencies. Conflict develops between the agencies.

It has a good ending and leaves me wanting more.

I've only seen about half the series so far because there is annoyingly little anime airing in the UK currently, DVD being the most accessible media for it.

What I've seen, I like. WHR is a dark and atmospheric series. A nice simple idea, a sort of modern inquisition hunts the supernatural "bad guys" with some very dirty grey morality underpinning the story (Are there really any "good guys"?) It's got a quite a few of the usual anime themes and devices, but has a wonderfully subdued and underplayed pace to it.

A welcome change!

when i watched this show i was immersed in a sophisticated storyline with great artwork and awesome characters. i totally recommend this show. this show gives a sort of humane drama which makes it entertaining to watch. The characters are the most humane characters i have ever seen in anime with real emotions. nothing too dramatized. The twists in the storyline are shocking which get you thinking. everything in there seems connected . the beginning and ending themes are very nice even though they are in Japanese. Witch hunter robin makes you actually believe the storyline. it is a melting pot horror, science-fiction, humane drama, and a tinge of violence to make the perfect anime series. Overall, Witch Hunter Robin is a must see and a great series.

This series is good, but considering the direction it came from, I say it was a failed project. You've got a secret commando style governmental organization like Section 9 in the Ghost in the Shell SAC series, but they fight people that discover their "witch" powers and use them for bad purposes, kinda like in Hellsing. Leave it to the Japanese to make a show about Genome X :)

Anyway, the things that made the named series good are missing or trimmed in this one. The violence is completely censored, like it was supposed to be a children's show. The content, though, with people switching sides from one organization to another, with betrayals and complex decisions, are not suited for a child. So what's with the non-violence thing? The way everything seemed to crumble beneath a gigantic gray force of state, the thing that made anyone really scared in the last episodes of Ghost in the Shell, it's present here, but also trimmed down, as if the show was made for heart patients. They start one direction and when the tension gets high enough to get interesting, the whole thing stalls. The interesting dialogs and ideas from GITS are missing, the true threats from Hellsing are not there...

In conclusion, this could have been a great, even if a clone, series, but it's not. Somehow, somebody made the decision to strip it down to a minimum. Add to it the fact that the whole series ends when things get more interesting and you have a failure. Sorry.