Witchblade, Vol. 1

A very promising beginning!
On the run from the Child Welfare Department that wants to take her 6-year-old daughter away from her, jobless and homeless Masane Amaha has come to Tokyo for a new start. Masane is a beautiful young woman with a tragic past. She remembers nothing of her life before a destructive earthquake hit six years earlier. When the Child Welfare Dept. catches up to her once again, she makes one final, desperate act to keep little Rihoko and lands herself in prison. While there, a confrontation with a local murderer that is more than what he appears brings out a hidden power in Masane. She has been endowed with the Witchblade, an ancient, living weapon that attaches itself to select women throughout the ages, turning them into savage warriors to satisfy its lust for violence and blood. As Masane's battle in prison allows for her escape, her clever daughter Rihoko pulls off an escape of her own with the help of a photographer with journalistic ambitions. Rihoko eventually makes her way to her...

Great story, skimpy costume!
The storyline of "Witchblade" is classic manga, with an interesting twist. Masane, the heroine, is a young mother, who with her 6-year-old daughter, Rihoko, struggles to cope after a disaster wipes out their home. Regaining her memory, she finds herself on the run and burdened with a mysterious glowing bracelet. Whenever Rihoko is threatened -- by a child welfare agency trying to putting her into foster care, or by mostrous felons -- Masane morphs painfully into a superhuman warrior. Aside from the government agency trying to help her, there are industrialists trying to capture her and regain possession of the bracelet, which courses with the power of the Witchblade, an ancient power-giving object. Masane must navigate between these powerful interests, with the reluctant help of a young freelance cameraman, to rid herself of the cursed Witchblade and gain her daughter's freedom.

The story line of WitchBlade is engaging, and its characters symptathetic and nuanced. The child...

WHA'HAPPEN?
It is said, by Westerners who have lived and worked there, that Japanese culture and society are so foreign to ours that most of us can't even comprehend the differences, nevermind their causes and effects. Perhaps the one popular medium where we get some feel for the divergence is the increasingly popular Japanese anime market. Even the most accessible films--the Ghibli Studio stuff or an adaptation of classic American animation, like Little Nemo--have aspects, subplots or even large swathes of narrative that are basically incomprehensible. Take a great family film like Kiki's Delivery Service: it's not only impossible to tell where or when the story is taking place but so much of the underlying mythos is left unexplained that each step of the plot is surprising, if only because it seems so odd.

This adaptation of the American comic book Witchblade is kind of like a Miyazaki film in ways both bad and good. On the plus side, the animation is terrific, pretty nearly...

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