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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Burn the Witch #0.8 Anime OAV Review
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jdnation
Posts: 2127 |
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Balgo does suck, mainly because the horny boy anime thrope is stale and old and there is no reinvention of that third wheel here.
But everything else about Burn the Witch rules! I am definitely on board this train to London! |
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InfiniteNothingness
 Posts: 198 |
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Rarely do I see a shōnen that I'd like to see not just the boy MC have a reduced presence, but be removed entirely like a gross zit. I can and have worked with so many (even if I frequently find they'd be just as acceptable if they were girls), and Balgo is legitimately one of the worst and most nothing characters short of an equally vacuous, outright sex pest as opposed to insufferable horndog.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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A few anime have had that. The closest example is the Kimagure Orange Road pilot / Shônen Jump special. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4830 |
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Yeah, things like the Jump Festa specials sometimes serve as pilots for later adaptations. One Piece got an OVA by Production IG (and directed by Goro Taniguchi of all people) before Toei started on the series proper. |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2735 |
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I also have some reservations about Balgo, though if he gets a unique power/ability thus being able to do something useful and develops a bit less of a sleazy personality, things could be fixed. I do really like the setting and what we have seen of it so far (be it the dragons, dual London, magical creatures, fairytale dragons and magic) makes me want a lot more. Whether we will actually get that though....
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BlueBeast33
Posts: 155 |
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Always felt that it was a mistake for them to not animate this first, but I'm at least glad they finally got around to it. It is the weakest part of the story though for what's out at the moment, but the anime adaptation continues to do a fantastic job in my opinion. The fact that they're doing this now though does lead me to believe that we'll probably get more soon, or at least an announcement in the coming year.
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1330 |
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Loose-Bleach connection aside, there's really nothing here that the Ancient Magus' Bride hasn't been doing better for over a decade now. Maybe we'll get more down the line, but I doubt it at this point.
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LastPage 3
Posts: 215 |
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The reviewer really had it right when he called it a pilot episode though, especially when it comes to Balgo. It seemed like Kubo wholesale copied over Keigo from Bleach when he came up with this character. Even in the limited material we've gotten since then Kubo has expanded on his character a bit, which is good.
IIRC Kubo has actually said something to this effect. |
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flamemasterelan
Posts: 497 |
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I think I felt the same way about Heaven's Lost Property. I liked almost everyone in the cast, and there were a lot of really interesting concepts that I don't remember anymore because it's been at least a decade...but I hated the main character so much. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2127 |
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I'm an Magus Bride manga-reader, still need to pick up my reserved copy of the latest English volume, but I have to contradict your assertion. While Magus Bride does share similarities - set in England/English magic/lore, female led, etc. but an action-comedy on par with Burn the Witch and it's assortment of bad-ass characters, it is not. The tone and pacing are completely different. Magus Bride takes itself more seriously, a more realistic-grounded-fantasy with a slower deliberate pacing aimed at older-shoujo-audiences and with an unconventional relationship dynamic between it's female lead and the male creature who is her legal spouse/guardian. Burn the Witch is closer to the traditional shonen action formula of bright outrageous characters, power levels/rankings, expansive cast, muscleheads and sexy chicks, explosive set-pieces etc. Magus Bride takes it's time slowly fleshing out its characters and world whilst building towards an explosive climax, whereas Burn the Witch is the buddy-comedy where things are escalating episode after episode. In fact, one of the big climaxes involving a dragon in magus Bride at the end of its season happens by Episode 3 of the Burn the Witch OVA, and you know there are even crazier, zanier, bankai things to come. Which series is better? Depends on your taste. These are practically different genres. It'd be like comparing Vinland Saga and Golden Kamui. Both are historical epics that involve fighting in the snow, and a large male-driven ensemble cast of fighting men and a mix of comical moments, and people searching for each other. But each is still very different. One has more intricate character studies, serious portrayals of war and violence and political machinations and tragedy, while the other is focused mainly on being a fun treasure-hunting/heist story. While there is some serious story, theme and political background in Golden Kamui, it doesn't dwell on it for too long and keeps moving along. So audiences will have different expectations from Burn the Witch versus Ancient Magus Bride. The focus of the Ancient Magus Bride is Chise's maturity and her relationship with Elias and what it means to be human. The focus of Burn the Witch is about magical power fighting and dragon-killing and watching two polar-opposite characters team up to good-cop/bad-cop their way to victory, and just who is their unkempt supervisor and why is he so powerful? And who is going to play Aizen this time? And how far does the power-scale in this world work and who are we going to see fighting next? |
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fathomlessblue
 Posts: 391 Location: Manchester, UK |
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Seeing all the Magus Bride comparisons is pretty funny to me, because even with the completely different tone & focus, it doubles down on just how much effort Kore Yamazaki put into learning about UK mythology & customs, when you compare it to a title where grown adults ogle school uniforms, teens are singularly obsessed with looking at panties and friends squabble over name order & seniority. I mean there's writing what you know, but transferring weird sub-cultural fascinations to a country that generally doesn't care about them, makes for a somewhat unintentially uncanny experience.
Consider the number of years I spent as an anime fan, Burn the Witch is the first work by Tite Kubo I've ever encountered, & if this is at all representative of his output, he certainly has a talent for character & creature designs, but is woefully lacking when it comes to everything else. Between all the continuous 'as you know' dialogue and the absolute charisma-void that is Balgo, I don't think I'd trust him to write a compelling script. I suppose that does seem to track with everything I've heard about Bleach over the years. Mostly the pilot just makes me wish for a dream scenario were Kubo was in charge of the art and a completely different team handled the writing. And now I'm imagining a version Burn the Witch made by the Lycoris Recoil staff. Ditch the scrub & the cheap, juvenile humour & focus on Ninny & Noel's slightly abrasive adventures. What could (& will never) be. |
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oilers2007
Posts: 130 |
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Do you think UK teenagers aren't horny or have schoolgirl fetishes? It sounds like your issue is more that is has fanservice than it not being authentic to UK culture. |
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fathomlessblue
Posts: 391 Location: Manchester, UK |
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Horny, sure. Focused around schoolgirl fetishes... well naturally there are always some, but as a cultural fixation that adult strangers in the street to stop to stare at, not really no. Public obsession with school uniforms is a clear regional sub-cultural fixation filtered in via a long-standing anime tropes, so let's not act coy & pretend it's something otherwise. Besides you conveniently skipped mentioning the rest of the comment talking about panty-shots, name order and senpai/kōhai relationships, which formed the wider part of my point about Kubo lazily slapping over generic 90/00's Japanese anime high school templates on to an entirely unrelated setting, oblivious (or perhaps uncaring) of whether it fits or not. So no, my issue isn't that it has fanservice, but that the fanservice (if it can even be called that), like nearly every other aspect of the ova outside of the visual design, comes across as uninspired & barely considered. Here, having an obnoxious guy endlessly scream about wanting to see underwear isn't the premise to a joke; it is the joke. Come on now. Horny Go Nagai & Rumiko Takahashi comedies were running circles around Burn the Witch in terms of creativity in the 70/80's, let alone the thought & effort most current shows are bringing comparatively speaking. |
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