April Fools! Witch Hunters is not actually an anime – it’s a book. By me. Which you can buy on Amazon. In a creative sense there’s a degree to which you are what you eat, so if you enjoy some of the shows I’ve reviewed on this blog, particularly Battle School shows like Unbreakable Machine Doll or Urban Fantasy adventures like Mekakucity Actors, you might also like my work here.
The below “review” is spoiler filled, per my usual style.
Sitting on the misty border of Battle School and not is Witch Hunters. It has a lot of the same spirit, including the characters coming off as nebulously High School or maybe college-age, but technically, we start with something of a graduation from training. Training for what you might ask? Battling demons in their magitech cyberpunk cityscape of a home.
A couple of things are apparent pretty quickly. First, we have something of an ensemble cast. Some characters are more important than others, but there are quite a few worth mentioning. The main character seems to be Ezekiel (Zeke), the highest-placed of the lot in their tests and thus the one granted “squad leader” status as well as the only one with a name that’s not somehow number-indicative, but we also give a decent amount of focus to May (the nice girl and childhood friend style love interest, not that these characters haven’t all known each other forever), Octavia (the boisterous fighting-type girl and seemingly May’s romantic rival), Shiro (the irreverent “bro”) and Alpha (the angry rival), and the remaining four characters in the group all get at least a couple focal scenes.
Second… there’s something a little more dystopian about this setup than usual. The kids didn’t sign up for this, they were raised for it, down to being designer children who haven’t known another life, hence why nobody has a last name. Second, their home is very heavily automated and sterile. The only other human who seems to be around much is their commander and father figure, an old cyborg scientist called Dr. Volker. They seem reasonably happy in their arrangements, but there’s still something wrong with this picture of “home”. At the very least, I suppose, they clearly have some kind of allowance for outings, since we spend some time in episode 1 getting to know everybody at a celebratory dinner out.
Shortly after that (with interpersonal drama making time for itself on the way), we get our first sight of demons – big, ugly, glowing monsters that seem to appear spontaneously and get drawn to magitech, resulting in the things mostly making nuisances of themselves in infrastructure rather than rampaging in the streets. We’re told there are a lot of types, and indeed no two encounters are exactly the same, the first being a mostly rousing victory against a pack of ogre-type demons. During this, Alpha acts out, jeopardizing everybody because he doesn’t like taking orders.
In fact, this seems to be the first major issue the whole group has to deal with. Before it’s able to be resolved though, the kids are informed of a new threat, as it’s believed that a group of witches may be doing some nasty work.
Witches, in this setting, are humans that are natural spell-casters. Other people can use magic through science and technology (with magical scientists being called Mages), but Witches do it on their own. They still benefit from the vast power of the city grid, though, so apparently multiple clans have staked out territory in the city and their relationship with the Powers That Be is… icy, at best, seeming to range between cold war and active hostilities. Zeke and the others are informed to be on the lookout and be wary, but they also don’t want to kill fellow humans, especially not off the cuff.
And wouldn’t you know it, the team runs into a witch pretty shortly. They engage a relatively powerful demon (Green, when the rule seems to be that power level follows the electromagnetic spectrum so bluer is stronger.) and at the same time, a Witch appears in scene, very much looking the part. It seems though that this witch – Abigail Jaeger – isn’t the kind of person the kids were warned about, and is instead more of their equivalent, similar in age and engaged in hunting down demons that might pose a threat to the witch clans.
Before the situation is brought under control, though, Alpha once again does a great job of ignoring orders and, in this case, warnings, and the demon gets him good. They say that it’s possible for the technology in the setting to pick up somebody’s soul when their body is wrecked (which can then let the person pilot a robot body), but Alpha isn’t that lucky, and the battle results in his death. It doesn’t look great for everyone else for a while, either, but with Abigail’s help they’re able to put the monster down. Abigail herself passes out, which is as good a reason as any to bring her home temporarily and ask a few questions in a situation that’s not life or death. She goes her own way on good terms after coming to, and takes the warning the kids got fairly seriously, suggesting that if someone is making things worse, they can work together to deal with it.
While a good amount of time is spent trying to cope with Alpha’s death (he was everybody’s friend, more or less, even if he was abrasive and more of a jerk to the audience), we get to the next major battle. Here, the kids arrive on scene and there is at first no demon and just a Witch. They try to talk with him, thinking it’s like Abigail, but this guy is not one of the good ones, and he puts a nasty curs on Zeke and causes a demon to appear. He books it, but not before Octavia gives him a huge face wound, meaning that he’ll be obvious to know if anyone encounters him in the future (including if he tries to go somewhere to get that fixed without a scar).
Abigail is called in to help Zeke, which she’s able to do, and she’s clearly broken up about finding out that the authorities were right about there being witch terrorists running around. This leads into the final arc of the first season where, some days later, the team gets a panicked call from Abigail, who is trapped in the undercity area, where a blue-ranked demon is now stalking, with two other more experienced witches presumed dead to it.
The kids confirm that the city authorities know about the demon, but much stress is placed on how rare and dangerous a blue demon is, likening it to a natural disaster. No hunter teams were willing to go after that kind of monster, so the city is presently evacuating the area in the expectation that they’ll have to use heavy ordinance in order to bring it down.
With Abigail almost certain to be killed if nothing is done, team main characters volunteers to take it on, even knowing that the terms of the engagement mean they’ll be entering an area on lock-down, and won’t be allowed to leave while the demon still lives.
Once on the inside (where they get after an appropriate amount of confirming that yes, everyone is in and willing), they manage to rendezvous with Abigail, who is a bit dumbstruck at the idea that they willingly entered a death match, rather than just pulling a rescue. All the same, she’s able to report some of the demon’s abilities (for one, it warps space, changing sewer tunnels into a broad arena for its bulk), which lets the team, spearheaded by their junior mad scientist Septimus, come up with a plan to bring it down.
The climactic battle, like you’d expect, has plenty of stages. At first the demon is a space-warping giant turtle monster, but when the team manages to collapse the space warp on it, a snake body emerges from the shattered and crushed shell to keep fighting with massive size, evil eyes, and other mystical powers. Octavia takes the focus for much of the fight, seeming to be the most capable of going toe to toe with the monster as they struggle to put out its mystic eyes and then dispatch it with a combo attack between Zeke and Abigail. Battered, bruised, and down much of their gear though they are, everybody gets out of the depths alive.
If that seems like it leaves quite a few things unresolved, that’s probably intentional – this is only season 1 of a three-season story. Sure enough, a post-credits scene confirms between one of the few adults who actually seems trustworthy (Hanako Yashida, the closest thing the kids have to a mother figure, who isn’t around because she took a promotion to cyborg politician in the past) and a new character (a digital presence called the Programmer-at-Arms) confirming that there seems to be quite a few different shady dealings going on, both in terms of demon-summoning witches and possibly in terms of the city authorities as well.
Now, this would be the point where I’d normally analyze and grade a show but… Yeah I’m not keeping this sham up any longer. April Fools, folks!
Witch Hunters is actually a book. One that I wrote. And that, as of this past week, you can now buy! The timing was too good to not go with this April Fools gag, so I hope you all can forgive the shameless plug.
And, if you’re reading an anime review blog (that is what you’re reading here, in case you managed to get all the way to the end without realizing that) there’s a good chance that my writing might be of interest to you. I started this blog in large part because I love anime, and the kinds of stories that often get told in the format. That doesn’t mean I don’t love other kinds of story telling or that I love every single anime (Haruhi knows I’ve handed down my share of Fail grades), but a lot of the body of arcs and styles, the creative lexicon, is near and dear to me.
As such, Witch Hunters (and ultimately the trilogy it begins) is my own take on using a segment of that creative lexicon – the sort of Shonen action-mystery segment – in the context of a Western novel. If you like reading and also like shows such as Unbreakable Machine Doll, the Toaru series, Mekakucity Actors, or Beatless (to name a few that I enjoyed), check it out.