Witch Hunter Robin

Director
Shuko Murase
Production
Bandai, Sunrise, TV Tokyo
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
26 episodes
Year
2002

Witch Hunter Robin Volume 3

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
20th Aug 05

The previous volumes of Witch Hunter Robin did not turn out to be quite what the title and first episode seemed to promise. Volume three means that we are halfway through the release of this title, and hopefully we will get some sort of overall plot emerging…

Containing another four episodes, the fourth volume gets a bit more personal. “Sign of the Craft” episode nine starts with the STN-J looking for a witch who’s already killed a man. Incidentally the witch in question is a distant blood relative of Robin, and seems to have similar powers. Finding the suspect is in fact dead the STN-J hit a dead end. All they have is an apparent suicide note admitting the killing, and the killing of two other men, who haven’t been killed yet…can a sprit of a person who has been wronged really come back and extract revenge? “Separate Lives” is probably the most boring episode of Witch Hunter Robin yet, Robin and Dojima are on the look out at “Harry’s” for Harry’s son who having used his witches power to kill countless people as an assassin in America has returned to Japan to extract revenge on his father for making him flee Japan. The STN-J is given yet another (dull, predictable, tedious) “strange” case in “The Soul Cage”. This time they a hunting a witch who controls electricity, however what they can’t figure out is how his powers awoke so quickly without the STN-J realising. The last episode on this disc entitled “Precious Illusions” is certainly, what I encountered when watching it. This is one of the first episodes in the series to connect to a previous episode, and I was confident it might lead to development of the story in a major way. I was wrong, while there are a few things brought up, which may play a part in later episodes this was very much like your previous episodes, Witch vs. Witch Hunter.

The last episode on this disc does bring a number of small things that are likely to become important later on, but there’s nothing that’s worth the wait. The episodes of Robin, while being formulaic and predictable are enjoyable; the only problem is that since the first episode there were many potential plot points laid down, points that have not even been remotely addressed. Were about halfway through the series and there’s nothing to add to the plot raised in that first episode. This is extremely disappointing as by the halfway mark most series would be at least starting to kick in some sort of plot, look at Trigun, Noir, Nadesico, Evangelion and even Azumaga Diaoh was mentioning final/practice exams halfway through. If only the episodes varied a little then at least there’d be something in diversity. Witch Hunter Robin still holds the potential to improve, however I’m not at all confident it will be able to.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 20th Aug 05

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