Archive for the El Cazador Category


Yuri Drama CD: El Cazador de la Bruja, Volume 2

February 28th, 2008

My goodness,the El Cazador Drama CD, Volume 2 is a cute Drama CD. Set somewhere just past halfway into the series, after Ellis has started to realize that Nadie is more than a friend, but well before Nadie clues in, this Christmas story finds our two adventurers on the run with Santa Claus.

Not *the* Santa Claus, of course. In this case, the story begins with Nadie telling Ellis that she remembers a Christmas in New York City. Ellis presses her for details, which Nadie is loathe to share. When she – reluctantly – begins the story, it goes something like this. “Santa Claus was running away.”

At which Santa Claus comes running out of a store and into their car, importuning them to floor it. After some banter, they take off. Nadie is amazed at the irony when Clive, the Santa in question, turns out to be the *same* Santa as that in her New York story.

The opening credits are an opportunity for Ellis to keep changing the title of the story, inserting “New York” in every version, until Nadie puts a stop to it.

Eventually Ellis learns the New York story, and why Clive is (still) on the run. There’s gunfights and poignant moments, and Ellis using her newfound powers, and LA being a freak, and Ricardo being whipped by Lilio into dressing as Santa (red poncho) and walking around with a llama with a red nose. And each scene narrated dryly, as usual, by Jody “Blue Eyes” Hayward.

In the end, Clive was wearing a red shirt for a good reason, and Ellis and Nadie are forced to confront Clive’s mother, now a nun, with the gift he had made for her. Ellis’ innate honesty and goodness force Clive’s mother to forgive her son and they move on, having once again changed the world one person at a time.

The story is a little thin, but there were a few excellent scenes and one very un-excellent scene. ^_^

The best scene, IMHO, is Blue Eyes asking one of her henchwomen to stay for a drink, since it’s Christmas Eve and all. She begins interrogating the woman – likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc. None, comes the answer. Blue Eyes makes fun of the woman a little, but when the questions are turned on her and she doesn’t have any better answers, the henchwoman notes that they are the same. Scene fades out. My imagination doesn’t. ^_^

The most horriblest scene involves LA singing the Amigos tacos song. Try imagining it. That’s not nearly half as bad as it actually was. 0_0

And the funniest scene comes right at the very end in a 12-second track, when Ricardo, Liliio, and the llama, drive by Nadie and Ellis. ^_^

The bonus track was very long, with quite a lot of conversation from the main cast. Miyano Mamoru, LA’s actor, is quick to point out that LA is not, in fact, a pervert or hentai – his feelings are genuine love for Ellis. I agree, but it doesn’t make him any less horrible.

Hisakawa Aya is bemoaning the fact that Rosenberg’s voice actor, Miyake Kenta, isn’t with them this time and wouldn’t you know it – he walks in at that very moment! “Uso!” Hisakwa says, and a conversation that has nothing at all to do with us listeners erupts. ^_^

No physical extras, but the cover art is just about exactly as cute as the story inside.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 3
Service  – 4

Overall – 7

While not as love-love as the first El Cazador DCD, the second is still fun.





Yuri Drama CD: El Cazador de La Bruja

January 17th, 2008

Had a *brilliant* time at the signing last night, I’ll post pics and comments this weekend. In the mean time, a review of an actual anime-related thing! Can you believe it?

It’s not too often I can call a Drama CD just about perfect. Kotonoha no Miko to Kotodama no Majyo to: Madrigal Halloween is pretty much the only one I’d give that title to so far. But El Cazador de la Bruja: El Bosque del Eco must certainly share the title. It has everything an El Cazador fan could possibly want. Ellis teasing Nadie slightly inappropriately, Nadie saying, “Yuigon attara, dozo” in that way she does, with the smile obvious in her tone, Ellis brightly saying “Yes sir!” when she gets her own way, Ricardo saving the day, Lilio not speaking until she does and then creeping us all out, Blue Eyes sardonically narrating, and sharing a moment or two with one of her unnamed henchchicks. Unfortunately, Rosenberg pretending to be a decent guy to Melissa, who is desperately trying to trust him. And, of course…LA being a freakazoid.

And magic, and violence and miracles and action and great music.

Perfect.

For fans of the series, this was an episode that fits in the final third of the series – after Ellis has realized that she’s in love with Nadie, but not vice versa yet.

The story begins with our heroines arriving at a town with no money, and no prospects – there’s not even an Amigos Tacos in the place. A pervy old guy approaches them with a request to pose for inappropriate pictures, which is negotiated down a bit, until they are sidetracked by finding an emerald necklace. Oh, the pervy old dude says – that belongs to the Professor, it’s part of a treasure from the mythical Ringing Forest. So off Ellis and Nadie go to return the necklace and make the world right.

Only, they encounter the Professor’s wife dying from a gunshot wound, and who gives them a casket. They try to return all of this to the Professor who turns out to be a fake, in it for the money – and his partner, the pervy old guy. Nadie and Ellis fall for the oldest trick in the book and are drugged. Ricardo wakes them up, then watches hopelessly as they drive off to get their revenge – well, they don’t actually say that, but let’s be real.

LA delays the creepy guys, Ricardo saves their lives, LA eventually kills them anyway and in the end, Ellis and Nadie learn that the casket actually holds a skeleton, the spirit of which possesses Lilio and says that it has come home, followed by the manifestation of the El Bosque del Eco, the Ringing Forest. And all is well again. In the epilogue, Ellis tries to get Nadie into a daring bathing suit, if not for the pictures, then just to enjoy her in same. (She obfuscated a situation a bit earlier in the story, too, in order to undress Nadie – when confronted about it, all Ellis would say was that Nadie was sexy that way.)

In the beginning and middle of the story, Rosenberg lies beautifully to Melissa a bit, too.

This DCD comes with the extra of a postcard of the cover art of Nadie and Ellis looking happily at one another. And the cast and crew credits come in English and Japanese, something I thought was kinda cool.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5
Service – 6

Overall – 8

Unless I’m hallucinating, Jody “Blue Eyes” Hayward’s henchchicks never get any voice credit – or, indeed, names. Anyone know who they are and why that is?





Yuri Anime: El Cazador, End of Season Review

October 24th, 2007

Reviews are going to be very anime-heavy for the next few weeks, as I have a huge backlog of anime that I haven’t had time to watch, while I’m busy watching new stuff that I will review eventually.

But today I wanted to do a long-overdue review of a series from the Spring season. I had watched it raw but, I wanted to refresh my memory on what happened before I reviewed it. I happily watched it all over again, and am now ready to go on the End of Season review for El Cazador de la Bruja. ^_^

You might want to read my initial review of El Cazador to compare and contrast (and also to see how, ironically, that review began in almost the exact same way that this one did. And I can assure you that it was not at *all* on purpose! I didn’t remember that I had written that until I just read it now.) Okay, so I just re-read it and, I have pretty much nothing to add, except, I think Bee Train came through for us Yuri fans on this pretty darn well.

There is a contingent of people who liked Noir best and therefore did not like El Cazador because it was too fluffy, too silly, not serious enough, not angsty enough. And there probably is a group of people who liked Madlax better, although I haven’t encountered any, yet. I just assume that there’s always someone who has a different opinion *somewhere.*

But I can’t say I liked any of them better than any of the others. They were three different takes on a theme – girls with guns on the run. I commented in my original review that El Cazador almost seemed a parody of itself and you know, I think that that was exactly what they were going for here. It’s much goofier than any of the previous Bee Train series. In-jokes abound, even within the context of the story. Tacos will never look the same to any of us again. :-) And the opening and closing theme animation had just about nothing at all to do with the story, which was nice and pointless. No guy in a mask, no sniper cat. Thank goodness. LOL

Ai Shimizu was fantastic as Ellis. Without ever once sounding less flaky or ethereal, she managed to mature her character in such a subtle, magnificent way that it almost came as an afterthought. Itou Shizuka was great as Nadie, remaining pretty clueless and not-subtle from beginning to end. :-) I found them quite charming and am glad to tell my past self that yes, I came to care about them, as I hoped I might.

Their relationship was total win for me. In the beginning, the idea of the two of them as a couple squicked me out the door. There was no one moment where it changed and became something else – it was a slow process. It was, in fact, the point of all that stuff that other people saw as fluff episodes – they were there entirely to allow the characters to develop a relationship naturally, leisurely. And it wasn’t an even process either. Ellis comes to like Nadie, later Nadie starts to care about Ellis as more than a job. Ellis starts to fall in love, Nadie starts to realize that Ellis mean more than just friend to her. And on and on. Ellis, surprisingly, becomes the seme, the agressor, here; making her case for them as a couple long before Nadie clues in. And it is Ellis who declares her love first, and last. She shoots straight from the hip, too, no implication or ambiguity.

None of the larger plot is particularly shocking or revelatory. The conspiracy is never developed as well as it might be – where in Noir we spend episode after episode poring over Soldats, in El Cazador we spend more time with the people who represent the witches and Project Leviathan, than with the details of the organizations themselves. Which is perfectly fine with me. Rosenberg, the bad guy, is loathsome and his death was way too late in the series. And he treated poor Melissa terribly, something I’m not prepared to forgive, since she was so nice. LA, this series’ crazy stalker character, was loathsome AND annoying and his death was also way too late in the series. But I will forever think of him in conjunction with Ellis setting his crotch on fire, so that sort of evens things out.

Jody “Blue Eyes” Heyward was awesomeness and not *just* cause she was voiced by Hisakawa Aya, who for once wasn’t the creepy stalker character. She was sort of a “good” stalker this time. lol Mitsuishi Kotono, who seems to be working more often these days, which makes me happy, was wonderful as the chief witch, even if she never got a name or a story. Echo and the Bunnymen were never explained, nor were Jody’s henchwomen. But that’s okay. Soldats and Enfant never really made any sense, either. :-) Just go with it.

Ricardo and Lilio. I’m still not at all sure what their roles were – acting as foils, I suppose. The four of them were a kind of oddly functional alternative family for a while there. Or would have been if Nadie had had a clue about Ellis’ feelings for her. Which she didn’t, yet.

And then there was the epilogue. It was pretty much as I expected, in fact, as I would have demanded, with two exceptions – the motivation for the confrontation that would catapult Ellis and Nadie back into their real personas was much stupider than I expected, so that was pretty funny.

In the end, as Ellis once again makes her declaration of love – with an audience this time – there is a HUGELY wooja-wooja beat-you-over-the-head love song playing in the background that is a *strong* indication that this is not meant to be seen as ambiguous or plausibly deniable. The fact that the last line of the song is “My immortal love” helps with that. And so does Pedro’s reaction. (Don’t worry if you don’t know who Pedro is – he’s there to be defeated by Ellis’ love. That’s all you need to know.)

Oh, wait – three exceptions. Jody’s ingenuous comment about her assistant being identical to Rosenberg by chance….yeah, sure. It was a off-beat note that I liked *because it has no explanation.* It just is. Go with it.

So, no, its not Noir with its intense film Noir-ness. And no, its not Madlax with its alternate existences and war-torn world. In the end, it is simply El Cazador, with Nadie and Ellis on the road. And for that, I liked it bunches.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Not good, no. But not “AAAHHH!” either
Story – 7 Sure it had huge holes. Who cares.
Characters – 9 They just grew on me
Yuri – 7 If you weren’t grinning at the end, love song and all, you fail.
Service – 5 – Almost as an afterthought – oh, yeah, we could do an ass shot here…

Overall – 8

Tacos, tacos tacos, oi-ishi-i tacosu. Iketeru tacos ha oi-i-shi ta-co-su. Tee Hee.





Spring 2007 Anime Season: El Cazador

April 11th, 2007

It’s going to be very anime-heavy in the upcoming days, as the new 2007 Spring season has begun, and there are several series worthy of attention from the Yuri fan. And, thanks to the continued generosity of my readers, I have an even larger pile of anime to watch now. There’s also a greatly belated end-of-season review I really must do sometime soon. So, manga, live-action and Drama CD fans, I’ll try to get at least one thing in a week for you. But anime is where we’re at for the foreseeable future.

So, here we are just barely into the spring anime season. Which of the several series of interest do we with start with? Well, as the large bulk of attention is being paid to Nanoha StrikerS, let’s buck the trend and start with El Cazador instead.

El Cazador is the third of the “chicks with guns” trilogy by Machimo Koichi and Bee Train – the trilogy that began with Noir and continued with Madlax. (And, I’m of the belief that the latter will be hard to beat, given Bee Train’s preference for ambiguously yuri relationships.)

This series has all the “6 degrees of yuri” signposts: the aforementioned director and production company, Fiction Junction Yuuka and savage genius for EP and OP artists, Ai Shimizu (Mikoto in Mai HiMe/Otome, Hatsumi and Fuji-hime in Yamibou among others) and Itou Shizuka (Rei in Maria-sama ga Miteru, among others) voicing the lead roles. Also joining the cast are Hisakawa Aya (who was Chloe in Noir and Rimelda in Madlax making this a hat trick for her) and Toyoguchi Megumi (Sei in Maria-sama ga Miteru). So, cast, crew and music all scream “Yuri.” The big question now has to be – what about the plot?

We don’t yet know, of course. ^_^ Bee Train stories usually take a good 8 episodes to get going. I’m always willing to give any series about that to gain, keep or lose my attention. And we’re only two episodes in at this point. But I expect it to be in the same realm of ambiguously Yuri relationships as the first two entries in the trilogy – that is to say, I’ll bet there’ll be enough Yuri somewhere in here to make us happy. (I sincerely hope we don’t revert to the Avenger model, which was not at *all* the kind of thing I’m looking for.

Let me be lazy for a second and abstract some of my initial response to El Cazador from the Yuricon Mailing List :

El Cazador has so many of the elements we have come to expect from Bee Train that it almost seems a parody of itself. ^_^ The credits have all the same elements as the Noir and Madlax sequences did. It felt a bit like watching a James Bond flick when Cubby Broccoli was doing all the opening sequences. There was a…uniformity…even though they are all different. Same here.

The setting is different from both Madlax and Noir – this time the American southwest or perhaps a Mexico-ish place. The characters look different but again, they are similar – tough, competent, but slightly flaky gunwoman; cute, flaky younger woman with no memory of the past. Repeated murder in the past footage (without plinky musical theme, though…). Weird object with no meaning as of yet, and grand conspiracy in the background. This time, instead of Soldats or Enfant, we have Project Leviathan.

Last, but hardly least, the end credits give us annoying guy in a mask. Oh, and NOW we know where Friday Monday’s little brother got to. He’s the bad guy in this one. ^_^

I was a tad disappointed by the animation for the first episode. The people all look thin and featureless. But it does set off the highly detailed backgrounds of sand and office doors nicely…

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – I’m deferring this until the story gets going
Characters – 7 (By episode two I kind of like both Nadi and Ellis…)
Yuri – 0 as of yet, unless you count the fact that Hisakawa Aya’s character is clearly an Evil Psychotic Librarian type.
Service – 3 (Crotch shots, maid costumes, I’m sure there’ll be bathing scenes.)

Overall – 7

Nadi’s the goofy, tough gal with a heart of gold type, Ellis is flaky with a distinctly sexual thing going on with her mysterious power. So, there is definite potential and a good track record backing it up. But only time will tell whether Bee Train comes through for us on El Cazador, or not.