El Cazador de la Bruja - The Complete Series S.A.V.E.

my favorite from Girls with Guns series
[Note: I own the thinpak version of this anime, but it's not likely to be much different than this re-release.]

This is the last of Bee Train's "girls with guns" series of animes, the first was Noir, second was Madlax, and lastly El Cazador. I've watched all of them and it's been a blast...mapping analogies and comparing plot developments between them. It's been like listening to variations on a theme for a musical composition.

Personally, my favorite of the three is El Cazador. This time the gunslinger isn't superhuman. Yes she's an extraordinary sharpshooter, but she makes mistakes. The other half of the duo also isn't nearly so helpless as the analogous characters in Madlax were. Ellis' skills develop at a nice pace through the entire series, so I never had to roll my eyes at a character being rescued or getting in the way *yet again*. What's also nice is that the primary characters develop a comfortable relationship with each other over the course of...

Realism in the Southwest (Spoiler Alert)
El Cazador de la Bruja is a top-notch story of Nadie, a bounty hunter, and Ellis, the 17 year-old girl she is protecting. The anime qualifies only distantly as a "girls with guns" story, since Nadie is in fact armed, but the shoot-`em-up elements are minor compared to the story of Nadie and Ellis' relationship as they wander around somewhere between the Southwestern US and Mexico being chased by a hell's-brew of wealthy government agencies, witches, love-sick mutants, and other bounty hunters all with suspicious, if not downright nasty, agendas. We quickly learn that Ellis is not what she seems to be (we never thought she was), but the focus isn't on the dramatics. So if you want a slam-bang noir-flavored gun story, watch something else - because otherwise El Cazador de la Bruja is going to bore you witless. The settings and characters nearly always involve poor people, marginally linked to society, in a picaresque road-trip tale of near-misses and near-disasters as Nadie and Ellis...

Great story with a lot of heart
I watched on crackle. Was hooked from the first show. The chemistry between Nadae and Ellis. And the mystery of Ellis's situation.
At the end of the series I was left wanting more. I was hoping to find a sequel, but no such luck. What will they do next?

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