Category: El Cazador de la Bruja

I’m not really happy, since this episode only seemed to have two roles: to show how Ellis is changing, and to save a bit of budget. I’m afraid to say it, but this has got to be one of the worst episodes of El Cazador. While Ellis was nice and all, she was the only thing that was nice about this episode. and perhaps the random destroyed objects that LA is leaving behind (notice the cactus at the beginning of the episode?) Both the animation and the writing were rather bad. While the series usually sparkles through its character-designs, this episode showed mostly recycled frames, or it just showed the characters from a very far distance. The case this time is about Ellis and Nadie going after a bounty to make money (even though they acknowledged that it would consume too much work in the previous episode), but it lacks the magic of the first half of the series. Especialy because we get almost no information about the guy that needs to be caught. To top things, Ellis and Nadie run yet again into Ricardo and Lilio with some god-like timing, and Nadie miraculously survives a shot from a gun that hit her directly without any possible explanation. I don’t know who wrote this rubbish, but Bee-Train: please fire him. Even the music couldn’t save this episode. There’s one interesting unrelated thing that came to my mind while watching this episode. We don’t see anymore random bounty-hunters after Ellis, do we? Does this indeed have to do with Rozenberg’s influence? I can imagine him passing out information about Ellis to the bounty-hunters, as an attempt to force Ellis to develop her powers. Please, Bee-Train. You can do better than this.]]>

The first half of the episode was nothing special. While I loved how it made sense, since Nadie can’t rely on Blue-Eyes for her money-problems anymore, which forced the two of them to take a job at a local Taco-restaurant (where else? :P), there was also not much going on, and everything was pretty straightforward. Even with the inclusion of Ricardo and Lilio. But everything changed once LA showed up. I’m not sure why, but he remains my favourite character of the entire series, and every scene with him in it turns out awesome for me. This episode was no exception, when we see Ellis use brute force on him, and we indeed get confirmed that she possesses huge physical strength. It was really cool to see the supposedly weak Ellis smack the hell out of that bastard. ^^; Overall, while the episode wasn’t as important as the previous one, El Cazador just remains fun to watch, with its awesome soundtrack and highly addictive characters, just what you’d expect from a Bee-Train production. And it’s obviously great to see that finally Ellis starts to act for herself a bit. :)]]>

Haha! It’s just as I hoped! Ellis and Nadie may have continued with their travels, the main storyline and characters now play a much bigger role than in the first half. This particular episode gives some major developments to all of its characters apart from Blue-eyes’s henchmen and the strange cult, and it even introduces a few new ones. One major event is that for the first time, Rozenberg runs into trouble. If I recall correctly, then the guy he talked to in episode 13 now got arrested, so the deals they made are off. We also finally meet his superior (who probably won’t play a big role due to his plain character-design). It seems that Rozenberg is doing something that could become problematic; my lack of Japanese couldn’t pick up exactly what, unfortunately. Ellis and Nadie, meanwhile, really were meant to get closer together in this episode. They spend their time at an onsen during this episode (which probably was one of the few onsen-episodes in anime where characters actually wore swimsuits), and at the end of it, they find out that they both knew that Ellis wasn’t a real human (something that has been quite bothering Nadie throughout the episode), resulting in quite an adorable scene (see screencap). Ricardo and Lilio meanwhile also were quite interesting, as it’s the last episode where they’re assigned to trail Ellis and Nadie. The fact that Ricardo still didn’t reveal Lilio’s history must mean that they still have some kind of role to play, but at least we now know for sure that Lilio indeed isn’t his real daughter. I think the reason they were unassigned was because of the thing that happened with Rozenberg. At the end of the episode, we also see him in the building where he killed the professor, along with a mysterious woman. Blue-eyes meanwhile also seemed to have changed her plans, when she tries to unassign Nadie from her duties, though that fails and Nadie refuses. Blue-eyes then dismisses that plan, and reckons that it’s fine if Nadie continues to protect Ellis as well. LA, meanwhile, gets even crazier with this episode. ^^ I really wonder… what could Rozenberg be plotting? Why was the governor who was arrested so important to his plans?]]>

Haha! El Cazador is really getting fired up now! The first half did a great job of building up, and now the plot really starts moving! This episode, we get treated with an episode fully dedicated to showing Ellis’s time with the professor, before she shot him down (in fact, the cliff-hanger ends with the bang that killed the guy). My enthusiasm for this show is really growing rapidly with each episode! This episode was entirely meant to show what the professor meant for Ellis. They’re the only two people who get some airtime, along with a couple of shots of Rozenberg. Ellis got first transferred to the professor’s house so that he could study her. Eventually, they began to have feelings for each other (cue insert song! ^^;). Not terribly original, but I still loved it. It also seems that the professor got shot down on thanksgiving, when Ellis first confessed her love for him. The question, though, remains: how did the guy die. We do see a suspicious pair of feet enter the grounds of the mansion right before the shot sounds, but the fact also remains that there was a shot in the middle of Ellis’s package, right on the place of her chest. Where did that one come from? If I had to guess, then Rozenberg killed off the guy because he didn’t do what he wanted him to do (hence the shattered glass), but that doesn’t explain why Ellis blames herself for the murder either. If El Cazador can be able to keep up this pace for most of the rest of the second half, this series can very well become one of the highlights of the spring-season. It’s going to be the highlight of this week in any case. The big question now remains: will the next episodes focus more on the plot, or degrade back to the cryptic first half? Only time will tell!]]>

Yay for plot advancement! I knew that the creators were going to devote episode 13 entirely to the plot, and it doesn’t disappoint. This episode features tons of revelations, and finally we get some character-development of Ellis. After this episode, we should probably get a few more normal episodes, but if Noir taught us anything, it’s that the second half is probably going to be much more plot-centric than the first one. 🙂 Basically, Ellis and Nadie arrive at the place where Ellis was created. It’s all abandoned now, but it’s of course the perfect place to find out a few things. Ellis gets separated from Nadie, and then she runs into our good friend LA, who finally makes contact with her again. He then explains a few things about Ellis and the witches. It seems that there once was a family of witches that could manipulate flames and wind (I was surprised about the wind, but it does make sense, as Ellis used wind in order to put out the fire in episode 11). They were, however, destroyed. Probably due to the witch hunts that episode eleven talked about. Because of that, artificial witches were made, and Ellis is one of them. To make things even better, LA is also one of them, explaining his obsession over her. LA doesn’t have any magical power, though his physical abilities exceed that of a human. There were originally five witches created, though Ellis and LA are the only ones left at this point. It’ll be interesting to see what happened to the others. The professor was assigned to take care of Ellis, while people were probably doing experiments on her. When LA tries to take Ellis along with him, she refuses, though and goes back to Nadie. It’s definitely clear that Ellis has grown after this, and this episode definitely brought her closer to Nadie. Regarding the side-characters, things get even more complicated as another party appears: hunters with gas-masks. The woman we saw in the previous episode seems to work for Blue-Eyes, and has been ordered to trail Nadie and Ellis. Ricardo and Lilio keep protecting the two of them as well on orders of Rozenberg, who in this episode meets a new character with whom he makes a mysterious deal and Blue-Eyes is meanwhile in some sort of helicopter. The question, though, is where did the green-masked guys come from? Blue-Eyes seems to think they come from Rozenberg, but that doesn’t make any sense, since he hired Ricardo. They can’t be allies with the Blue guys, since they can only have total freedom at night, and this episode took place during the day. Ah well, looking forward to the second half. The 26-episoded series of Bee-Train have had the tendency to be slow for their first half and then explode during their second half.]]>

Quite an interesting episode this was. The people who were expecting action-packed episodes from El Cazador will probably rejoice, as it’s basically one huge gunfight, though the plot also features some nice progression (in El Cazador-terms, of course). Usually, Nadie and Ellis would run into a random bystander and they’d end up helping him or her somehow. This time, it’s the opposite when the guy ends up helping Nadie and Ellis escape. Remember the blue guys from the previous episode? Well, let’s just say that they aren’t as passive as Ricardo and LA, as they waste no time launching an all-out attack on the couple. Nadie then runs into an armoured car, and she gets the driver to help them escape. He’s a bit of a lazy guy this time. He likes weapons and computers, but he’s basically your average armed nerd. With this episode, I also realized that Ellis is being guided by the rock she carries. It’s also interesting to see how she reacts to the people that are after her life, she doesn’t seem to worry at all. I also liked the use of phones in this episode, when Nadie kept looking for ways to contact Blue-Eyes (did she really forget to bring something as important as a mobile phone with her? ^^;). Also, remember the mysterious woman that appeared alongside Blue-Eyes during the OP? Well, her identity is revealed: it’s Blue-Eyes herself, with her hair down and a different outfit. LA, meanwhile, “obtained” a new hat and managed to catch up to Nadie and Ellis again, while Ricardo gets left behind, due to Lilio getting sick, which forces him to take care of her. I wonder what Rozenberg will do when he finds out about the blue guys, because I do believe that he doesn’t like to see Ellis dead. This episode also introduces two new characters. One is an ally of Blue-Eyes, she also seems to work for her. The second is even more mysterious, as we only see one shot of her, no more. Near the end of the episode, something interesting also happens. The armoured car has stopped, and the blue guys are shooting at the vehicle from all possible sides. Then, suddenly they’re taken out, but we never see who did it. There are three possible explanations: – Ellis used her powers in such a way that the blue guys were taken out all at once. – The above-mentioned woman had something to do with it. – LA went berserk again. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was hiding in the trunk of Nadie and Ellis’s new car, by the way.]]>

Okay, screw what I said in episode 9. This series rocks, and that episode was just an example of a bad episode, not a bad series. El Cazador is probably the most bashed series of the spring-season, due to the fact that most people stick with it, even though they don’t like it. Still, I’m appreciating this series more and more, the suspense and mystery are excellent, and I love how each episode develops the small storylines that all centre around Ellis bit by bit. I think the problem with most people is that they’re all comparing it to Noir. To be honest, Noir suffered from its repetitive format in my opinion. El Cazador is handling this quite a bit better, due to all the different storylines and characters. Another great strength of El Cazador, in my opinion, is its impact. Most of the airtime is light-hearted, but there definitely are dark elements in the storyline and history. It’s always nice, waiting for these dark moments to appear, making their impact bigger than in just any other series which constantly tries to get darker and darker. The incredible music also really helps in this. The current episode was really worth watching, even without the chance of seeing half of the cast with nekomimi-ears. ^^; The story this time resembles the third arc of Ghost Hunt. A woman pretending to have psychic powers makes it big, and then gets discovered. A few years later, she came to a village, and she successfully made the villagers believe that she was a psychic who preached for the god Chappi, who in fact turned out to be her dead cat. It’s surprising how this anime doesn’t pay any attention to the topics that are usually addressed by other anime when they deal with an episode where a person forces others into a religion. In fact, Nadie and Ellis never really criticise the fact that she deceives, and in stead the episode mostly focuses on the woman herself, and the pain she had to go through. People started to see her as a witch when she was young. It’s also interesting that she does have one power: reading memories. We also see her begging Ellis to stay with her, as Ellis is a girl who does have real powers, it’d be natural for her to indeed cling to her. We also see her do something quite interesting: make a phone call with a certain “White House”, where she plans to tell them all about Ellis. Okay, she gets executed before she can meet them, but still, why would she do such a thing? Anyway, this episode also introduces some new important characters: the ones who shot down this woman, and their superiors. I believe that they’re on the side of Blue-eyes, and the reason for them to appear probably is because Blue-Eyes sent them the information she got from Rozenberg’s desk. This was actually quite a difficult episode to understand, especially since these guys like to use big words, and they never really showed their intentions, they just spoke of them, like what usually happens in El Cazador. This makes it really difficult to understand, I may have to rewatch this episode subbed. Despite this, though, I loved the climax, which showed a bit more of when Ellis killed the professor. Apparently, he had a gift for her, and she shot right through it. It was also interesting when Ellis looked at the pictures of some witch-hunts. Regarding the other characters, LA is back, and Ricardo and Lilio still keep following Ellis and Nadie, though their role is minimal in this episode. Rozenberg, meanwhile, gets back from his trip to the desert, while he spots Blue-Eyes with the intentions to go there, based on the things she found in his office.]]>

Awesome, it seems that my worries after the previous episode were completely unnecessary. This episode featured lots of plot progression, new information, character-development and a great case. And not to forget the awesome background tune that returned! I had just one problem with this episode: PLEASE MAKE THE TACO-SONG STOP!!! Seriously, I’m fearing that I can’t get it out of my head if it continues for much longer. The case this time features a guy who works at a taco-shop, along with his wife/girlfriend (Margarita). The guy, however, spent a part of his life as a serial-killer. At that time, he became acquaintances with a guy named Markes, who was about to be sent to prison. Margarita was with him, back then. For some reason, when he got out a year later, he begged the guy to kill her. He couldn’t kill her, and fell in love with her instead. Or something like that. You wouldn’t suspect that El Cazador has such a difficult dialogue to understand. Anyway, Ellis was awesome this time. She really takes lead of the episode at times, for example when she starts wearing the waitress-costume. A large part of the episode also focuses on her, learning to smile at the appropriate times (with some hilarious results). During the climax, when Markes comes to take his revenge she also makes sure that Margarita is out of danger, and knocks the guy out by smacking a bunch of maracas on his head. That last part was actually quite interesting. You wouldn’t say it, but Ellis definitely knows how to fight. I mean, maracas can be hard and all, but to knock out a grown male with them, and breaking them in the process does require a lot of strength. Because of this, I really do wonder what the second half of this anime has in store for us. Seriously, this series keeps dropping hints that something special is going to happen in the future. Either that, or I’m turning paranoid. I’m also glad to see that L.A. finally escapes from Rozenberg. We don’t see him for the rest of the episode, but the souvenirs he left suggest that his sanity took a turn for the worse. Something tells me that this was exactly what Rozenberg wanted, so that he’d awaken “Ellis’ true powers”. I also loved Blue-Eyes. While she was a bit silly in the previous two episodes, it was a perfect build-up for what happened at the end of this episode. She finally got her hands on the document, explaining everything about project Leviathan. It seems to be a project that was started a long time ago. If it succeeds, it might even have consequences on te entire earth. What kind of consequences, we’ll never know, as she then reaches a page with “You look much better without your glasses” scribbled on it. Seriously, how did Rozenberg know, and why did he want her to actually read it? Heck, why did he want her to know that he knows that she read it? Ricardo also once again proves how dangerous he can be. He seems to have a bad history with Markes, so he brutally kills the guy after the climax, when nobody’s looking. The strange thing is that he just let Lilio come with him. I’m not sure whether she saw him actually kill, but that is not something you should do near a little girl. We also see hints that Lilio isn’t his real daughter. Why did he decide to take care of her? Heck, what happened to her voice? I’m glad to see that this episode restored my faith in this series. It also was great to hear the music back, seriously, it should have been played more frequently. But then again, the track has become so awesome because it has only been played so little.]]>

I think that this can be classified as the first real filler of the series. Nothing is done to change the situations of any of the characters in any way, unless Ricardo really did lose track of Nadie and Ellis. I think we can expect episodes like these for the next month as well, until episode twelve or thirteen comes with the first major climax. But, in order to make up for this, the creators did present us with a funny episode, and probably the coolest hunter yet. Seriously, though, it’s a shame that he died this episode, as he was hilarious and cool at the same time, I especially loved how he took his own horrible sense of fashion seriously. ^^; As for the case of the episode, this time the anime starts playing around with raison d’êtres. We’ve got ourselves a girl who lives in an abandoned town, and works at an abandoned mine. How she gets her food is beyond me, but the reason she’s stayed as the only one was because of her father. He was looking for a strange silver relic when he still lived, but he never managed to find it. The girl then saw it as her task to continue this, even though everybody else gave up hope. In true anime-fashion, this relic is found and buried again, under the rubble. She then discards her father’s wishes, and chooses to live her own life: continue working on the mine. It’s unfortunate, while I watched the episode, I never noticed anything, but as I’ve been writing this entry, I began to notice some considerable flaws in this episode. The scene with Blue-eyes illustrates this best, I think. While it was funny, it also shows how the plot is going nowhere. At least Wellber no Monogatari keeps track of where the main party is, but with El Cazador, the creators just can keep extending this journey as much as they like without it feeling strange. The hunter, in fact, was the only really good point in this episode, now that I look back. The case itself was mundane, when compared to the others. Nadie was okay, I guess, not good, not bad. My main problem is Ellis, though. Her antics can only remain cute for a limited period of time, unless she changes somehow, which has yet to happen. This episode again, just showed her usual antics and nothing more, and for the first time, these antics began to drag. The thing is that I’ve got nothing wrong with episodic series. Heck, I love them, but they’ve got one disadvantage: the episodes can either be incredibly good, or incredibly bad, depending on the case they choose. This clearly was a bad one, boring is the better word. Normally, I wouldn’t mind this so much, but the beginning episodes of this series have spoiled me so much when they had so many revelations in each episode, that it’s becoming disappointing to see a filler. Let’s hope the case for the next episode is going to be a bit better.]]>

With this episode, I knew: El Cazador is at its best when its themes centre around death. The past few episodes with background on Nadie and the fight between LA and Ricardo may have been nice, I now finally realize that the best stories are the ones in which death takes a central theme, finally, after four episodes of absence, we have another episode like this (the death used in episode 6 was more of a plot device than a focus, in fact). Also, is it me, or are the creators really trying to save their best songs for the later half of the anime? For the past few episodes, I nearly forgot that this series has the brilliant Yuki Kajiura behind its music. So far, after the first three episodes, all we’ve heard were her standard tunes, but the fact remains that there are some great musical pieces among the soundtrack of El Cazador (for example, the track that was played during the climax of the first episode). The track that we heard when Nadie lied in the hospital in the middle of this episode also was a pure delight! I want more! El Cazador’s episodes have always had one character who gets most of the screen-time and development. Episode 6 had Nadie, episode 7 had Lilio, while the current episode has Ellis as its main focus when Nadie gets shot down and put in the hospital. It’s nothing serious, as she’s able to walk again just a few hours later, but it does enable Ellis’s character to develop, as a mafia-boss sees her remove the bullet from Nadie’s wound and therefore thinks that she can heal his bed-ridden superior, whose health is in bad shape. The guy is nothing like the stereotypical maffia-boss that you’d expect to see. He’s actually pretty worried about his superior. Ellis, however, can’t heal the guy. All she can do is melt metal, which doesn’t really help with a weak old guy. A large focus of this episode was for Ellis to understand the difference between good lying and evil lying. It’s interesting how nobody told her to do so, she actually figured it out herself, which is quite interesting if you consider her personality, and the fact that she claimed that she doesn’t like even the slightest lie because the professor told her that lying is bad. When the old man was about to die, though, mistaking Ellis for his dead daughter, she indeed tells him that she’s Paulina (the daughter’s name). The side-characters also were once again very interesting. Heck, each of them has some kind of very small but important role in this episode. LA is now indeed captured, and instead of trying to escape, he keeps freaking out over Ellis’s pictures. Rozenberg meanwhile made a little trip to the desert in order to question the guy personally. And I still wonder: HOW THE HECK did he get the footage in LA’s camera!? Blue-eyes meanwhile uses this opportunity to spy on Rozenberg’s office, by dropping herself down from an air-shaft above his desk. At least, that was the plan; she first needs to lose a few pounds before she’ll be able to do it. xD Ricardo meanwhile sends Lilio to give Ellis’s whereabouts to Nadie… why? I mean, there was not really a need for her to go there, was there? Or was he worried about Ellis, being taken away by a strange man?]]>