Cinnamon Ass

OP - Hikari no Yukue (savage genius) - it’s aa/takumi’s typical song structure with the plinky synth and strings of Yuki Kajiura, with naked girls and coloured imagery; see, you can tell what kind of show this will be almost immediately…

ED - romanesque (FictionJunction YUUKA) - DUDE WITH A MASK! CAT WITH A BAZOOKA! WOMAN WITH FLAMING UNDERGARMENTS! Plus nice flamenco-esque arrangement of the music here.

Chanting girls’ voices, a butler shot by a little girl and a monologue about entropy and Maxwell’s Demon - yup, Koichi Mashimo’s back with the next Noirlax!

In some kind of South American town, a young girl named Ellis tries to earn money by doing nifty, seemingly impossible card tricks; however, there is a bounty out against her, and the crackshot bounty hunter Nadie intends to be the one to claim it. In true Mashimo style she can shoot guns out of people’s hands and kick higher than a gymnast, but Ellis still escapes by leaping impossibly over a fence. It appears that she has “witch” DNA inside her, and not only this but she murdered someone in the past although Ellis has no memory of it, much like Nadie has no memory of her real name. A whole bunch of sad exposition later, and not only has Ellis melted someone’s gun with her mind (mmm, Witch Hunter Robin) but her shamanistic mother-figure has been murdered and entrusted Ellis with a mysterious stone and told her to go to Wiñay Marka, the Eternal Place (apparently a lake somewhere in Peru). Nadie commandeers a jeep (having been told to look after Ellis by Shaman Lady), and off we go on another mad Bee Train adventure!

Oh, and there’s an evil maid man thing wearing frills, a scientist named Rosenburg trying to make Ellis part of his Project Leviathan, and a junior female scientist with a mysterious Escaflowne-esque pendant just waiting to have a tenuous link to the main storyline!

(plus a travelling sheriff type figure with an already annoying squeaky little girl following him around, but I’m going to forget about them)

I tend to fluctuate on how I feel about Koichi Mashimo shows, and El Cazador hasn’t yet proven easy to categorise. Essentially, much of it is as per usual - the distinctive storyboarding, the mysterious storyline, the Yuki Kajiura music etc. but there are some notable differences from the usual template; for one, Nadie is a relatively light-hearted character thus far. It makes a rather pleasant change not to be quite so deadly serious as usual in a Bee Train show, althoguh I’m not sure how well it will work out in the long run as the distinctive atmosphere Mashimo tends to bring may not be so easily captured without the same levels of gravitas.

Much like Madlax, it’s actually quite difficult for me to say how I feel about El Cazador yet. Realistically the first episode of Madlax is pretty crummy compared to the rest of the series, and whilst this was a great deal better I’m still a little wary about it - the supporting cast doesn’t seem as strong, and it may just be more of the same as always. But with magic powers and floating topsy-turvy cities from the get-go there’s a good chance El Cazador will turn out just as enjoyably mad as Madlax at least!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 11:04 pm and is filed under El Cazador. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.