With Witchblade Volume Five, the anime proves it has a schizophrenic nature by changing from a jiggly breast-fest into a meaningful series *gasp*!

Plot Summary

After her encounter with her “mother”, Maria has become a sober young adult over night. She has vast new insight into herself, her purpose and her relationship to Father.

Masane, meanwhile, has been reunited with Rihoko and has become an overly doting mother, much to Riko’s discomfort.

Masane continues to work for Doji Industries, but her job becomes more dangerous as hidden alliances unfold behind closed doors. A malevolent force is trying to create a new Blade, stronger even than the Clone or Witchblade.

The situation becomes sticker when Masane finds herself romantically involved with an unlikely suitor. Masane has many burdens to shoulder besides the Witchblade; that of mother, lover and protector. Which will she choose?

review

Volume Five of Witchblade was a good volume, especially when compared to the abysmal first three DVDs. This volume and Four don’t even feel attached to the rest of the Witchblade series, they’re so different in tone, depth and story. The story has honed in on actual plot and is focused on it with surprising clarity. It’s as if the series fell asleep behind the wheel in the first few volumes of the anime and then woke up, downed a few Red Bull’s and began cruising along.

Character Development

The story for Witchblade has become developed, fleshed out. Witchblade, the second half, is a tale of harnessing great power for personal gain. That power is the Witchblade and the Witchblade is Masane. The Cloneblades also desire the power of the Witchblade, but for a different reason. There are many people who need or want the Witchblade or Masane so it’s interesting to watch all these desires play out in different ways. It’s completely different from the first three volumes where the desires were borderline pornographic.

Characters have stepped forward in Volume Five and become compelling in themselves and not as showcases for various lumps of meat. Reiji Takayama has become infinitely interesting as has his rival at Douji Industries, Wato. There are now intricacies between characters and their relationships to one another, whereas before, the only intricacies were who could get naked faster; the Witchblade or the Cloneblades.

Maria is fascinating in the way she’s changed. She’s still unstable, but like the anime, she now has a purpose. Maria was scary before, but now she’s terrifying.

Masane is not nearly as annoying since she doesn’t have as many opportunities to display her abject ignorance. She’s really toned down in this volume and even displays a few touching moments of sentiment. The love interest between her and a certain someone added an additional note of humanity to the series, giving the anime more layers of depth.

It’s actually pretty phenomenal how everything in this anime has massively changed.

Production

Dale Kweon did the cover art for Volume Five of Witchblade. The way he portrayed Maria is dead on. She looks just as intense in his artwork as she does in the anime.

Conclusion

Despite the fact the story, plot and pacing have finally resolved themselves, I’m irked it took three frick’n volumes to get to this point. Why was it necessary to prolong the drawn out episodes filled with partial nudity and jiggling anatomy? If this story could be told in thirteen episodes, and I believe it could, why waste time and money making thirteen superfluous ones?

Ignoring the first three volumes, completely, this series is engaging. The characters are interesting, human and sympathetic and the story is thoughtful and well paced. On the other hand, taking into consideration the first three volumes, the series is half gratuitous and half developed. But fifty percent of a good series is better than one hundred percent of a crappy series, so in the spirit of positive thinking, I consider Witchblade’s cup of rating half full.

Rating

Witchblade, Volume Five gets 3 outta 4 Hammies!

Retail Info

• Publisher: Funimation
• Release Date:March 11, 2008
• Retail Price: $20.99
• Number of discs:1
• Episodes:17-20
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Language: English, Japanese
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen