Witchblade

This series is on par with HBO's Spawn:Animated series. The story is well told, the relationships of the characters are strong. The central mother/daughter theme is simple, powerful, and elegant. I enjoyed all the characters, and the changes they go through, because of a mother's love. For me, most anime is almost senseless, due to my ignorance of Asian culture. I don't care much for giant robots they crush cities and everybody seems to be fine with it. That silly mech. But the machines in this series are relevant, if cannon fodder. The fights were often anti- climatic, ending too soon in one way or another, but easily over-looked when taken into context. No sex, lots of bulbous bosoms (yay!), not much violence against humans and what little there is, is shown off screen or implied in some way. Anyway, worth watching.

They started quite a bit from the comic and it sort of worked. It does get old seeing the main character getting her ample butt kicked for most of the series. I felt they focused too much on form instead of substance. Its watchable but has some fairly repetitive episodes. With all the gushy reviews I guess I'm in the minority. If you havnt read the comic its probably easier to like.

I read the herione described as "very loving". What??? She is irresponsible and super neglectful. She was to busy getting drunk to notice her child is so sick she needed hospitalized. Her child spent the entire anime shouldering household duties and parenting her train wreck of a mother. If portraying a strong powerful female was the goal it was a miss. She came off as imature and annoying the majority of the time. Herione was a "Look at me! No one can tell me what to do!" cliche. This juvenile behavior is pretty consistent. Should read.

Witchblade: Fun loving semi-alcoholic mom raises young daughter in a homeless shelters 6 years. Mom gets possessed by sword/blade only to continue to neglect young daughter.

As many know, this is based on a not so great comic book and had a terrible movie adaptation followed by a iffy live action show. This anime tops all the other attempts but its still a bit "meh," and there is too much whining. Oh my god the whining over the kid and over moms... One thing I will add is that this reminded me a lot of Go Nagai's Devilman. Sort of had similar opinions of all those. Could have been great, but just not well executed and some questionable artistic decisions that were largely superfluous.

My biggest gripe is that the entire show is dedicated to motherhood and everyone had some sort of mommy complex. There is nothing wrong with this plot and in some ways they tried to make sense of it, but it kept getting hammered over and over and over and I just got tired of it. I get it, everyone loves their momma but come on... its just not interesting and as a result the characters came off childish (though this was on purpose in some cases) and were also not interesting.

But on the upside, the battles were entertaining. The art is actually good. The art style was basically just fan service nudity, which adds absolutely nothing to the show and probably deters some viewers for no good reason. You even had bots with a penis which was just... lame. This is why it reminded me of old Go Nagai work.

Id say above average overall but nothing to write home about.

This anime is just beautiful! The animation is very clear and smooth. It is a joy to watch the characters walking around in this anime. Also there are a lot of likable characters in this series. I promise you will laugh. The relationship between Masane (the woman who carries the witchblade) and Rihoko (Masana's daughter) is a special one. It is obvious that they love each other very much! And it seems that Rihiko takes care of the mother who is a bit of a wild one (maybe as a consequence of the witchblade,we don't know). And at the end we are witness of some change in Masana's character. She has to mature in order to provide the best care for her daughter. It is touching to see how strong the bond is and that it doesn't matter what obstruction and misery comes their way. Because of their love for each other they will overcome it. Maybe it sounds too much like a soap opera. But in my opinion there is nothing wrong with a bit of drama now and then. Especially when it's done like in this anime. This show doesn't contain as much action as one would think. But that is primarily because this is a plot based anime with some action in it. The action scenes that are shown are fun but not real special. Only the sexy outfit,the big boobs and other features keep popping up to add some flavor. Probably done to tease the male viewer (I think). The last episode gives enough closure,although we never get to learn about the origin of the Witchblade and how it chooses it's wielder. But since the focus wasn't about the Witchblade it doesn't matter that much. Overall this is a nice, fast paced anime with beautiful animation and great characterization.