Sorcerer Hunters Coll

This is a great series for fantasy anime fans. It's fast-moving, hilarious but occasionally touching and dramatic, has killer art and animation, and is just very enjoyable overall. The bread and butter of any great anime series is the characters and Sorcerer Hunters delivers big-time in this area. The English cast is top-notch and delivers brilliant performances as the team of super-powered heroes sent out by Big Momma (yeah, I know it's a cheesy name, but what can you do?) to hunt down the world's evil magic users and exterminate them. The main hero introduces himself to ladies as "Carrot Glace, love machine" and that pretty much says it all. His only power is that when he's hit by magic, he becomes a giant, kickass monster. Cool character. He's probably the funniest anime pervert I've ever seen and he seriously hams it up every chance he gets. Then there's my favorite characters the Misu sisters, Tira and Chocolate. Tira is the shy one with coke bottle glasses, and Chocolate is the sweet but bold one. That is, until they change into psychotic dominatrixes in what have to be the coolest transformation sequences ever. They pursue Carrot endlessly and never fail to "punish" him for showing attention to every female but them. Carrot himself has no interest in the sisters (Chocolate:"Are you saying I'm more woman than you can bare?" Carrot:"I'm saying I'd rather make love TO a bear!" Ouch.). Anyhow, most of the comedy revolves around this cute little love triangle. There's also Carrot's brother, Maron, who uses magic seals to attack and is just a bit too effiminate to be straight. Gateau is the token big, strong guy who likes to pose and show off his muscles. There are also hints that he (ahem) plays for the other team, as they say.
Sorcerer Hunters is the rare anime series that can get away with every cliche' in the book and still come out smelling like a rose. The reuse of the sisters' transformation animation in EVERY episode, the male pervert (Carrot, of course), the cute fairy girl (Dotta, Big Momma's daughter and companion), the villain (Tira:"Somehow, I just knew he'd be wearing all black") who seeks to destroy the world and rebuild it as a utopia, the music video ending, and the good old moral struggle between the rights of the one against the needs of the many all serve as anime themes we've seen over and over. But when it's done right and the characters are this good, you just can't hold it against them. The series starts quite slow, but hits it's stride early and glides all the way to the last few episodes without any complaints from me. Unfortunatly, the ending is not to my taste. I can't get into the details without major spoilage, but let's just say it's pointless, solves nothing, makes little sense, and takes too long to build up and not long enough to wind down. Other than that, I loved every aspect of this series and would highly recommend it to my fellow Slayers fans or just people who love (or are looking to get into) fantasy/comedy anime.

I've always wondered what the fuss was about Sorcerer Hunters so I check it out. My question still wasn't answered. First, there are tons of stories with a lecher as one of the main characters, and most of them have a decent plot. Next, like Utena and Sailor Moon, these are a generic "magical girl" transformation shows with the similar routine. However, unlike Sailor Moon and Mosqiton 99 (which most people haven't seen), this is poorly pulled off. Mosqiton 99 has some of the same pitfalls as this one: repetitive action (the bane of all magical girl stories), lack of main villain (not that they don't have one, but none in the forefront like Sailor Moon), and an overlarge impersonal cast (the actual size of the cast doesn't matter, too big is when only one or two characters are involved at a time in battle). Sailor Moon had only one of these vices, and that was the repetitive action. Mosquiton 99 had all of these, but they found a creative way of working around it, and characters had motives for their quest(something that Sorcerer Hunters lacked completely). They tried to make each episode fresh and failing that add in between episodes (Sorcerer Hunters stuck to routine no matter what), they added the major villain so that it fit without him (Sorcerer Hunters has the villain set up for a deus ex machina appearance), and they solved this by the party system (only four people involved at a time). Don't get this, instead get Orphen or Gokudo, for these are real fantasy. Blecch.

It's wonderful to finally own a boxed set of Sorceror Hunters. This is a loveably goofy show with no real point to it, but who cares? It's too fun watching the interaction between the five main characters.

My one complaint with the box set is, the sub/dub choice seems pretty messed up. At first when I popped the disk in, it wouldn't allow me to select Japanese w/English subtitles. So I went directly into the settings and chose Japanese audio, English subtitles. Well, I could get the audio but not the subtitles. Finally, I stopped the disk completely, opened it, put it back in, and this time I could select Japanese w/English subtitles, but after hitting "play all" I discovered that it automatically switches back to english audio (although it keeps the subtitles) after every flipping episode. *sigh* Oh well, it was nice and cheap, for the entire series, but it is annoying.

The extras aren't much - some ads for other stuff by the same company, original trailer for SH, and profiles (which are strangely incomplete - they profile Tira and Chocolate but the boys don't get included, and then they go on to profile a couple of villains and, well, that's it).

In the end - yes, I'd buy it again. But keep in mind I had a $10 off coupon and got the free shipping.