Spotlight on Fandoms: Witch Hunter Robin
Gather round, boys and girls, it's storytime with Ahdari. Have a seat, while she entertains you with tales of Witches and Hunters and episodes about killer Barbies (yes, really), and all things that go bump in the night!
AKA - it's time for your Spotlight on Witch Hunter Robin! She lights things on fire. He looks surly and broods. Together, THEY FIGHT CRIME.
Ahem.
The Premise:
Witch Hunter Robin is an anime released in 2002 by Sunrise. It follows the STN-J, the Japanese branch of a secretive global organization called "SOLOMON" that fights the harmful use of witchcraft, utilizing a database of those who have (or inherited from their parents) the power of witchcraft, so as to arrest or eliminate them should their powers "awaken". The series focuses on one of the STN-J's members, Robin Sena.
The series begins with the recruitment of Robin Sena as a replacement for an STN-J member who died almost a year ago. Robin is a Craft-user who was born in Japan and raised in an Italian convent. Robin's power is pyrokinesis, and she has been trained by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy to use her Craft to hunt down Witches.
In the world of WHR, Witchcraft is a genetic trait, dormant within a number of individuals within the human population. However, powers can be awakened in these dormant human "Seeds" at any time. Trained Hunters, always Craft-users or Seeds themselves, are needed to keep watch over Seeds and hunt those whose abilities become active, serving in secret organizations, such as the parent branch SOLOMON (and the STN-J branch in Japan), as self-appointed police to curtail the use of witchcraft in society. Even the police, who cooperate with STN-J in abnormal criminal cases, do not fully know what STN-J does.
The series begins when Robin arrives in Japan, posing as the new Hunter for the STN-J. Except, well, she's not. Or rather, she's not there just for that. Robin has been sent by Father Juliano to search Japan for a fabled item that holds the "secrets of the raft", while acting undercover as a new Hunter, using STN-J's resources to further her search. That's right, the same Father Juliano that our FH-Dōjima encountered recently. The man is very very sneaky!
Robin quickly learns that the STN-J works very differently than Headquarters. First off, no killing the Witch. STN-J runs a 'humane hunt' and uses a substance called "Orbo" to neutralize a Witch and take them into captivity, incarcerating them in a place known as the Factory. Each of the Hunters at the STN-J wears a pendant of Orbo at all times, to protect against a Witch's power, and their guns are loaded with special Orbo bullets, designed to deliver the liquid into a target's bloodstream. While Robin acquises to keeping the Witch alive, she flat out refuses to use the Orbo pendant or gun, calling it either "frightening" or "disgusting", depending on if you're watching the dub or sub.
At first, the series takes your standard "monster of the week" approach, and they do it pretty darn well. They manage to get the bad guy (or girl, Witches are equal-opportunity) and do some world-building at the same time. Not too bad! About halfway through the season, once we get the characters and the relationships between them established, the focus shifts entirely. Terrified by Robin's sudden increase in power and ability, SOLOMON orders her eliminated, and there is a terrifying attack on the STN-J. The Hunter becomes the Hunted, and Robin's off on a race, to find out the truth behind Witches and the Craft before SOLOMON can kill her.
The second half is where the serious awesome starts, simply because you meet my favorite character; Shunji Nagira, a private investigator with a side-hobby of rescuing Witches from SOLOMON, who happens to be Amon's half-brother. This is also where the other characters start to shine a bit; Michael chafs at his leash, Karasuma and her fading Craft-abilities, and Dōjima steps forward to kick some ass.
Yeah. Things get interesting.
The Characters: (Spoiler-Free Version!)
Rather than give you ALL the characters, I'm just going to do those that you'll need for the first few episodes, to avoid major spoilers. All names are done Western-style (first/last) to protect the guilty.
Robin Sena: Robin is a soft-spoken 15-year-old pyrokinetic Hunter and Craft-user. Her abilities manifest in a number of ways - from varying amounts of fire to shields capable of blocking both solid matter and magical powers from other Craft-users like herself. However, any use of her power causes her eyesight to weaken temporarily, which in turn greatly reduces the accuracy and effectiveness of her pyrokinesis. This problem is easily solved when she begins wearing glasses that Amon gives her. Though rather sweet and good-natured, Robin has employed her gift to the point of lethal force when necessary to either save someone's life or for the good of others.
Amon: AKA EMO BOY. Amon is a 25-year-old S-class (top level) Hunter and is assigned to be Robin's partner. At one point Robin asks what Amon's power is, since most S-class Hunters are Craft-users, but he never answers and it is one of the unanswered questions of the series. It's heavily hinted that he's still a Seed, and has not yet manifested, but that does not explain his classification.
He also wins the prize for "emotionally abusive love-interest", which sometimes makes an Ahddie want to scream and throw the dvds at the wall. I hate Amon! La!
Miho Karasuma: Miho is Amon's 2nd-in-command, and a Hunter with the Craft of psychometry, a power which allows her to touch an object and read strong emotions and thoughts a person had while holding it. She can also sometimes see past events that happened to, or around, an item or place. She's usually called on to use this power when examining evidence or crime scenes, since it's not much good in a fight. Canon claims she's only 19, but she acts like she's at least in her mid-to-late twenties, if not older.
Haruto Sakaki: Sakaki is an 18 year-old Hunter working with the STN-J, and the newbie before Robin joined. He is bold, brash, slightly hot-tempered, ambitious, and yet very supportive of his teammates. He's slightly insecure of his place on the team, and often rushes into danger during Hunts in an attempt to prove his worth, and this often produces unfortunate results. Sakaki is not biased about choosing friends however, and welcomes Robin to the crew.
Yurika Dōjima: Dōjima is what one might call the black sheep of the group, only she's not a rebel. She's carefree, a little ditzy, often late for work, stuck up, and pretty girly. She never gets in trouble for her behavior because she’s “special.” Dōjima occasionally talks about her family, and it is quite clear that she only got her job because of her family's influence. She seems to especially get under the skin of the Chief of the STN-J, who is found yelling at her frequently. These rants don't phase Dōjima in the least, and she usually has something witty to come back with.
Seen as carefree, lazy, narcissistic, vain, and immature, Dōjima would sooner go shopping than go on a mission. She is consistently late for work and rarely does anything around the office. According to her, her parents had STN-J act as somewhat of her "caretakers" and had the authority to get STN-J in trouble. She also disappoints the other workers, acting somewhat stuck-up, and doing the most minimal work during missions, ditching them immediately when she no longer needs to play a role.
Michael Lee: Michael is the teammate that is not a Hunter. Instead, he serves as a hacker and the technical support expert in the STN-J. He is confined to the STN-J building 24/7 after being caught hacking into the STN-J's computer network. Zaizen had given him the option of either working for STN-J or being killed on the spot, and Michael had opted for the former. Obviously. It's implied that Michael is a baseline Human, which is what has kept him from being assigned as a Hunter. That, and he's a nerdboy that would be SO BAD at the job.
Chief Inspector Shintarō Kosaka: The Chief is a rather brusk and short-tempered man who works directly under Zaizen, overseeing the day-to-day running of the STN-J. Not much is known about his work, as he is mostly seen criticizing the employees while they are investigating a case, or not doing work when he thinks they should. He constantly yells and scolds his employees, and he mostly fusses over Hattori and Dōjima. Although he may be an annoyance to the rest of the Hunters, he shows some concern for them. He was originally a member of the city police force, thus, he possesses connections that come in rather useful when the hunters are unable to use the STN-J databases.
Shohei Hattori: Hattori acts as the office assistant and bookkeeper, pretty much doing the filing and other various jobs Kosaka requests him to do. They often bicker like an old-married couple, much to Dōjima's amusement.
Takuma Zaizen: Zaizen is the head administrator of the STN-J, and owner/creator of the mysterious "Factory". The Factory is the place that manufactures the Orbo that the STN-J uses to Hunt down Witches, and the place that the captured Witches are hauled off to. Zaizen is about as friendly as a cobra, and and always has something up his sleeve.
Father Juliano Colegui: Father Juliano is one of SOLOMON's top officials, and one of its greatest Hunters ever produced. He is Robin's former guardian and mentor, and is responsible to assigning her to the STN-J.
Why You Should Care:
WHR is made of pure awesome, that's why. Take a dash of Buffy, an ounce of La Femme Nikkita, half a teaspoon of Alias, a cup of X-Files, and stir well. When I'm trying to pimp it non-anime viewers, I tell them that it's what the X-Files wanted to be in its later seasons, with the various layers of conspiracy tangled together, and never resolved right until the very end. Pretty much everyone has a hidden agenda, there's tons of UST, and it's just a load of fun. It's also short - just 26 episodes long - so it's not a huge time investment.
It's also an early "Who's Who" of the dubbing and Fandom world! Kari Wahlgren, Crispin Freeman, Johnny Yong Bosch, Dave Wittenberg, Wendee Lee, Doug Stone, Lex Lang, Dave Mallow, Jamieson Price...
Come on, that's Power Rangers, Naruto, Bleach, Eureka SeveN, a few different Final Fantasies, Ghost in the Shell, R.O.D., Avatar, Justice League Unlimited, Trigun, Twelve Kingdoms...forget playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, I can probably link it to the Fandom of your choice in three!
Where Can I Find It?
You can download it from mininova, go here and pick a website to stream it from, buy it legally from here for $30, or ask me very very nicely and I'll try to figure out how to rip my dvds for you. The upside of buying the legal copies is the VA interviews with the Japanese cast - Yurika's actress is freakin' adorable.
There's also currently an LJ Comm dedicated to watching the series together once a week online. Go check it out, they haven't gotten even half-way through the series yet.
Where Can I Learn More?
Anime News Network
WHR @ Wikipedia
Escaping Broken Dreams (Image Gallery)
Usuyami no Sekai (Episode summaries, images, multimedia, character profiles. Has a great terminology list for all those darn acroynms!)
And that, cats and kittens, is why Ahdari says you should all go watch her fandom. Now shoo. Ya'll have a show to watch.