El Cazador de la Bruja, Volume 1 [DVD]

This series has some of the best music I have heard in an anime. There is enough action and mystery to keep it from getting boring. The producers were apparently trying to give it the feel of a Western, but since it is set in modern times, the action had to take place in Mexico. The characters do tend to be stereotyped. One obvious example is giving the scientists involved german names, with overt references to their ethnicity, even though that is totally irrelevant. The girl named Ellis seems a little young to be driving vehicles and getting a job as a waitress, but the driving age and child labor laws might be different in Mexico. Some of the scenes are not very well thought out. For instance, the two bounty hunters who were overpowered at the monastery should have been tied up, their weapons confiscated, and turned over to the local police. The nuns could even have waited several hours to turn them over, to give our heroes time to escape. Instead what our heroes did was totally illogical (You'll have to watch the episode to find out). I think there was a little fan service in Volume 1, despite what one of the other reviews said. I think this series has a unique mixture of science and mysticism.

I would love to post a fully detailed review, which I've written somewhere else, but that would be too long. ^-^ So I'll just put it out simply--this show is a ton of fun, and you'll find yourself falling in love with the characters within it.(I recommend the Japanese over the English dub, because the Japanese dub is great; also, this show is nowhere near MA! It's more like a tame PG-13)Animation:4.5/5Story:4/5Music:4.5/5Characters:4.5/5As for the DVD set itself, it's very well done, with a cardboard outer case that houses a slim DVD case for each DVD; each DVD case also has a unique cover picture, as well as a unique inner picture. For its price, this DVD set is a great deal.^^

This is a good series, kind of on par with Noir. The only complaint I have about this series is the lack of blood. You would think a bounty hunter who encounters shootouts, sociopathic children, and witches would see much more graphic violence. Other than that, the animation is great and the story is that of friendship, not one of violence and gore. If you enjoy good animation and a semi-decent mystery, this one is for you. Second season is a little faster paced than the first, but worth adding to your collection.

This product is sooo boring that I quit it at the end of the first volume and just put it away ,leaving another thing for my hiers to dispose of. There is really nothing new,different,exciting...anything that would recommend one waste a moment watching it. The character designs are about average at best and even if they ran around bare bean and buck naked (there is zero fan service)there would have to be SOMETHING else catch and hold one's attention. There simply is nothing to recommend this product to those not semicomatose and tied to a chair with their eyes glued open.

I will readily concede that El Cazador de la Bruja's plot is not great. In fact, it can be downright silly in places. But El Cazador de la Bruja is not a show where the plot particularly matters. Like Noir, its true substance is composed of characters and moments, where plot needs only to be good enough to not get in the way. This show is about witnessing - from beginning to end - the formation of a powerful bond between two people, and all the things that make up that bond. For Ellis and Nadie, the bond is particularly evident in how they speak to each other; shared experiences forming the basis of an increasingly private language between the two, until they eventually can't go five minutes without making some joke, tease, or endearment in this "code" that only they (and the viewer) can understand. And then there's a moment where they communicate and agree on a plan of action using only glances and smirks, and you see that for many things they no longer *need* to speak to each other at all; but they do so anyway because they just enjoy it so much.This is the point of El Cazador de la Bruja (much like Noir before it, albeit by very different means): to make viewers *feel* the bond between the main characters to such a degree that they could almost think themselves included in it. And on this point, for this viewer, it very much succeeded.