Oh, I didn’t know Witchblade was a small budget production. From the artwork, animation, sound and music, I thought it was on par with Fate/Stay Night. And both are closer to OVA production quality (with their higher budget per episode) than the normal TV series.

Either that, or they have outsourced to cheaper Chinese labour across the border, just like everyone. 8D

That said, I’m flabbergasted by the prospect of Gonzo being able to string two plot points together coherently in a show with as shoestring a budget as Witchblade had. Maybe it’s worth going back to take another look.

Let me explain: I love the fact that Masane sacrificed herself to protect her ‘foster’ daughter extremely touching. And also the general storyline about the different types of parent-child relationships in the series. (reina soho-rihoko, reina soho-maria, etc)

I agree about the MILFblade character designs were what attracted me to the series in the first place. But subsequently, the storyline took over. 8)

>>blacklotus
To be honest I never found myself incredibly absorbed by Witchblade as a franchise. It’s all about the Uno Makoto designs (and Sumita Kazuasa’s work on Takeru) for me, though I do find a several of the concepts and characters in the anime attractive in themselves (*cough* MILFblade *cough*).

But after watching the whole series, I find the Japanese version to be superior to the original American version storywise. 8D

translation plz

Regarding the Shaft / Shinbo feature, I’ll have to take a closer look at it to see if there is anything groundbreaking. It seemed like a pretty standard page-filling exercise but there might have been some exclusive material…

Sometimes, I’m quite interested to see what all these magazines article features are like. Eg the shaft/shinbo one, does it have any ground-breaking new info or is it just the same rehashed public information?