Elf wo Karu Mono-tachi II

Sometimes after watching a serious anime you need to watch something a little lighter and less intense. Like in my case, after watching Blood+ this is just what I needed to make me laugh and feel optimistic about the world again. There's never really been a lot of talk about this show and I only stumbled across it myself because I wanted to see what other shows had Shelly Calene-Black as part of the cast. This review will be about both “Those Who Hunt Elves” 1 & 2 since I'm a marathon watcher and the show might as well have been one complete anime....like Saiyuki ... [why give a series a different title, if it's just a continuation of the first series?]

~art
Both part 1 & 2 are only a few years apart, like 3 – 4 years so the art barely changes. Part 1 was made in the 90s and therefore has that 90's anime look and the second part was 90's inspired so the shapes and coloring are very similar....but you can tell that the second part was slightly newer because the coloring was a little smoother and edges aren't as sharp.

~sound
I watched this show in English dub, and the biggest perceptible difference between Those Who Hunt Elves 1 & 2 is the dialogue. Just like with the first part of Saiyuki the language is seriously hardcore, people were calling each other bitches and even f-bombs were being dropped every now and then. And frankly, I like anime shows that talk dirty like that, maybe because that's how I speak and it just seems more genuine that way or it just seems funnier to me. I just don't find many people who speak in a squeaky clean fashion anymore....not since grammar school anyway.
But I guess as compensation for cleaning up the language in the second part we get Shelley Calene-Black as Celcia which is cool because she has this incredible knack for conveying a lot of sarcasm and is way funny....although the first actress who played Celcia wasn't bad either.

~story
The story concept is pretty original: 3 individuals from the world as we know it get transported to a fantasy land that has elves and a bunch of other strange creatures. Due to a botched ritual to send these 3 individuals home, Elf High-Priestess Celcia scatters the elvish spell symbols all over this new world and now they have to go around stripping female elves to recover the spell symbols. But even though the concept sounds original...it's really sorta like Inuyasha in a way with the collection of the Shikon shards.
Also the narration is rather simplistic...not that I'm saying anything is wrong with that. Actually I think keeping it simple really worked for this anime, it allowed us to really enjoy the humor without having to look for hidden meanings or interpret any subtext, there weren't any complicated plot twists or surprise character appearances. Just a new and funny adventure that gets resolved each episode.

~characters
I really love small casts. It seems more intimate that way and it makes the viewer feel like they are part of the gang. With a cast as small as this [4 main characters] you get the opportunity to become familiarized with each character and although this is not a hard-hitting dramatic anime with overly complex characters you still get a little insight on how each character thinks as they develop along with the show.
I had no favorite character for this series, I liked all four characters equally. Junpei, being the only guy in the crew, was very funny he's very blunt and eventho he doesn't it it...deep down we know he loves stripping those elf-women naked. Celcia is by far the most sarcastic, her comedic timing and one-liners keep me laughing non-stop. Airi I like because she puts out this refined Meryl Streep Oscar-winning vibe on the surface, but deep down she's pretty sadistic and likes toying with people. I also liked how nobody can fool her, she's really more of a psychologist than an actress. And then there's Ritsuko this teeny-bopper girl with a severe military fetish who likes to play with landmines and grenades and has a pet tank that's possessed by a cat-demon and a teddy bear that shits toilet-paper. They are all so very original.

~verdict
don't pick this title and expect the reinvention of the wheel...that's not what this show is about. It is a funny, simplistic show that makes fun of itself and the fantasy genre of anime. This show has a decent amount of slapstick which is always good however if you are a quick-witted person who likes a lot of fast-paced witty banter and verbal exchange then you will truly appreciate this show more.

Even though the second season of "Those Who Hunt Elves" doesn't seem all that different from the first, I found it a lot more entertaining, and not just in a so-bad-it's-entertaining kind of way (though there's a bit of that too). I'm not sure whether this is because the second season is better executed, or whether I just became more tolerant of anime humour by the time I got around to watching it. Maybe a bit of both.

Whatever the reason is, it's safe to say that I found "Those Who Hunt Elves II" considerably funnier, in particular the abuse-filled exchanges between Celcia and Junpei. The ... stories seem better too - even though it's essentially same thing as the first season, the episodics seem more imaginative and interesting. It also feels like there's even less serious content than the first season, which is good because the first season fell flat on its face on the occasions when it tried to be more serious. This isn't to say the plot doesn't have its problems, a glaring one being the lack of urgency on the part of the protagonists, which totally contradicts the events that led up to the second season. The ending was also poor, and was in fact so meaningless that I'd struggled to what happened within a couple of weeks of watching it. In addition to its own problems, "Those Who Hunt Elves II" also inherit some of the senseless problems of the first series, such as Junpei continuing to strip elves in the most crude manner possible and the others making no attempt to persuade him otherwise.

While "Those Who Hunt Elves II" retained the general feel of the original, there were some small changes here and there: the episode titles now have a common theme; they introduced this adorable teddy bear who doubles up as a kind of mascot for the series, which worked pretty well; there's also the addition of a bizarre but strangely funny line at the end of each next-week-preview clips, but it only really works when Junpei says it. Oh, and they've added a new combination of open/ending themes. The new opening is nothing to write home about, but the new ending theme is great.

"Those Who Hunt Elves II" may satisfy the conventional goals of a good sequel - building and improving upon its predecessor - but the first season was so far from being good that this second season needed to improve a lot to be considered good itself. Unsurprisingly, it falls short. It's funny at times, but not consistently so; it's better, but still suffers from too many of the original's problems. It's an example that, no matter how much you decorate and polish a turd, it's still just a turd.

Wow… this is, um, different. It feels that they sort of ripped off Slayers and Lost Universe with the different dimensions that the characters cross over. Hoe a high school girl gets her hands on a tank, not to mention all the guns and ammo she has, I will never know. Not to mention, she actually knows how to use them well. Jumpei is really freaken stupid and does tick me off. I have heard of stupid macho men but he is the worst I have really ever seen. And Airi is so high and mighty about being a actress, though she does have a ... kind side, it just a little off. And yet… it feels like it all works. Even when the tank itself becomes a character, it works pretty well. Unfortunately, the ending of season one just feels like a cop out so they can do season 2 and really give a whole lot.

The artwork is lacking a lot. Characters look blocky, animation loops, and a lot of it doesn’t have a lot of textures. Characters also seem to thin. I feel that the animation is some of the weakest that I have seen in a while. It’s sad because I think that it just needs a bit more love in the drawing. It really looks bad, seriously.

The music is a bit strange for the opening, and doesn’t sound right for the comedy in the show. I love the dub since it adds more comedy in it though it goes off from the original script sometimes. The voices though don’t sound very good. They seem more like Bible Black.