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....

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.

Witch Hunter Robin is an interesting show which has an X Files feel to it. It focuses more on characters and investigation than it does on high concept storytelling. Though it deals with cases on an episodic level, subplots dealing with the characters continue through out the series and it's not a good idea to watch the out of sequence.

That said it has great character design and storytelling and makes good use of limited animation. Pace is a little slow and the viewer is kept at a certain distance from the story, giving it a sort of detached but suspenseful atmosphere. Like Cowboy Bebop, which comes from the same studio, WHR is more like live action shows than animated cartoons.

It's a good show, I just wonder why it seems like it never got as big here as Cowboy Bebop or Evangelion, which have become household names. This show hit the US a little too late. Now that Western Countries have become Anime Saturated, shows like this only get noticed by lucky accident (as with me) or by word of mouth. And while it has its devoted fans, I think it deserves better recognition than it has.

It may not be for everyone, but it is definitely worth checking out.

This is a great and intense show!! I do have to say it was a bit slow in the beginning, but it picked up very quickly. Many don't like this show because the don't understand the plot since it is complex, but the story is good. The music is one of the greatest contributions to this show. The opening and ending theme are very catchy, and the music during the actual show is great too. My favorite part of this show is the complex storyline. Some other nice things about this anime is the action and conflict distributed between the characters. Another cool thing about this anime is that everything connects. Any die-hard anime fan will want to check this one out.

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.