El Cazador 12 – WOW! Is it actually raining bullets for once?

armored-winebago.jpgbullet-rain.jpguncle-pedo.jpg

!

I’m definitely somewhat pleasantly surprised when these “watchers” from the council begin to fire simultaneously at Nadi, Elis, and uncle pedophile, who could be just your average hentai uncle from anywhere (I wanted to say the South[JOKING! JOKING!], but one of my fellow caster is from the South….) in the world.

uncle-pedo-helps-elis.jpgyewww-prequel.jpgyewww.jpg

However, I felt the quality of the gun fight animation wasn’t as good or exciting as what they had in Noir. Nope, not at all. Certainly the gun fight took place when Nadi and crew was in a speeding Winnebago, which means it’s hard to have a regular gun fight, but what we do get here is more character interactions and glimpses of people shooting at them.

Wow, an armored Winnebago-wanna-be…amazing…

It seems like the director is giving people a taste of bullet rain and fire fight. But what really delighted me was the interaction between Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury…I mean the chairwoman of the council and the female researcher Jody Hayward. These two seiyuu (Mitsuishi Kotono and Hisakawa Aya) go way back to the early ’90s. I’m not nostalgia about ’90s much, but it’s nice to hear old partners playing off each other (OK, end of an old man’s babble).

jody-calls.jpgchairman-on-the-phone.jpgjody-thinks-night-time.jpg

In this episode, we finally got to see some of Nadi’s gun slinging skills. Instead of the usual cheesy: “If you got anything to say before you die, say it now,” she just fired at these watchers through the broken windshield, and definitely (gasp!!!) she managed to take out some of them! Nadi isn’t a god like shot like Madlax, or Kirika, or even Mirelle – when these women fired, men dropped. Nadi’s like a younger sister of Mirelle when Mirelle is at her clumsy moments, but Nadi is even closer to a classic shojo heroine, at least with her clumsiness. She trips and falls, she’s easily knocked out by the gay boys and she let the young sick bastard who’d like nothing but do Elis all day if possible (so what if only I guessed?) sneak by without a twitch, she gets entangled in a wall tapestry and can’t get out, while Elis saves the day with her witch powers. To me, she’s not a delightful character by herself. It’s her interaction with Elis that made it better. She’s not cool, not mysterious, and frankly not very smart from what I saw. It makes me wonder why they cast a character like her in this show.

naid-nice-expression.jpg heh-amateur-skills.jpgnadi-talks.jpg

Also, so far the show doesn’t impress me much. There’s a plot but most of the time, the story seems to unable to decide its pace. Most episodes are slow and easy, save the occasional villains that show up, which usually results in some minor humor (the nuns were funny…and they kicked some serious ass, and that to me, made Nadi looking like an idiot). It’s rather ironic that Nadi made a snide comment on uncle pedophile’s “amateur effort” modifying the Winebago-wanna-be, while throughout the series, she had enough amateur moments where she got into different silly situations and she almost never saved the day. Yes, she seems to be able to tell some things apart better than normal people, but as for her skills, I didn’t see anything expert like until this episode. This isn’t a shonen anime and she had no chance to train herself, so her skill increase seemed rather sudden.

As for everything else, save the new characters that appeared – the council leader and the two members that had their own scheme going, everything else remained the same. Jody let her hair down and dressed a lot nicer, but there’s not much of a fan service, unless you’re into what uncle pedophile is into…I mean, if you also think that a young girl’s still developing butt is cute…I mean…OK, ok enough of that. It was rather gross to see uncle pedophile’s reaction when he stared at Elis’ butt. At least this character was somewhat amusing, and he fired a huge ass machine gun.

uncle-pedo-with-machine-gun.jpgwow-gunfight.jpgsicko-bishonen.jpg

This anime makes think about Quintin Tarrentino style of films a lot, or other films similar in style. We get a in depth look of people in their environment, good or bad, nothing glorified. Thieves, tricksters, pedophiles, awkward and amusing main characters with cartoonish, (well, I guess this is an anime so it’s perfectly all right) personalities, stereotype folks (drunken fat, greasy Mexican guy with cases of corona in the trunk), a “Lone Wolf and a Cub” with Western style outfits, and so on. Then we get the other conventional – anime conventional characters – a scheming femme fatale Jody who dresses prudish, and then changes into to a waitress uniform first, and then a hot OL Agent with her sexiness and elegance out (there was a decent humor about that), a ambitious researcher with a project, a secret organization with a council, a little fire witch with powers still not fully developed. I feel that only the young and sadistic bishonen was not entirely conventional. One thing that isn’t there, however, is the Quintin style dialogue that he did so well in his older films.

Nadi is not quite conventional, but I see her and I think a less amusing, sillier, dumber and less street-wise version of Faye Valentine (Megumi’s voice wasn’t perfectly casted, many people would say, but her wits and her seiyuu skills were dead on. Faye was Faye because Megumi played her), not too mention Faye has a nice body and Nadi looks like a washboard in comparison.

Elis? Well, Elis is Elis. She’s no Rei Ayanami, no Mishima Reika, no Yuki in Haruhi no Yuutsu; she’s simply perkier. She makes me grin but she does nothing that makes me laugh. I like Shimitsu Ai as Elis because she plays the character well, other than that, Elis doesn’t impress me at all.

Looking forward to see Nadi display her “true” skills – if she has any.

whew.jpg jody-in-waitress-garb.jpgjody-got-the-right-outfit.jpg

68% recommended for your daily anime diet.

Post Note: upon rewatching this eps and trying to find screen caps, this episode just seemed a lot smarter and more interesting in sporadic viewings. 73% recommended for you daily anime diet.

Post Note no. 2: There was a clue which I missed because I was drinking – these watchers and the members of this organization (the witches) can be highly active at night without any rule constraints. Hmm…

Author: Ray

I'm a hardcore Anime Fan and I'm proud of it. I know so many things and I've acquired so much knowledge you wouldn't believe. But my love is anime. I've been drifting in this world for so long that I don't even know what an anchor means. I've seen so many shows that I've lost count. The only thing I'm sure of myself is that I care for the lowly and disenfranchised. I hate the rich and powerful and I love what I do, or what I can do. I like anime and I don't mind watching different types of shows. I have experience in different types of Japanese animation. I would be called an "expert" in a bizzaro world. One day, I'd like to start a revolution. I love the US, pizza, beer, sashimi, Chinese food, and steak. But I love freshly baked bread more than a well-aged steak. In reality, if I were born Japanese I'd be a real, hardcore Otaku. I love to love and I can hate strongly. I'm passionate in nature and I don't mind shedding tears. I can be reached at rayyhum777 at animediet. My Twitter is rayyhum777 at twitter.

6 thoughts on “El Cazador 12 – WOW! Is it actually raining bullets for once?

  1. Ooh, nice points about Ellis and Nadie not being characters you would cast if this were a real movie. 😀 Well, Ellis, maybe, for the strange skin colour, but Nadie kinda fails to stand out from the crowd. Then again… they do need an Everyman character.

  2. Around min. 20.15 you can see a shadowed character. I had the impression it was Mireille from Noir. Did anyone have the same feeling? *me getting excited*

  3. allexiel – I think you meant 20:45, and if that the shadowy figure you were talking about (cause I looked around 20:15 and I saw nothing…the stuff on the corner of the ground when the camera took in the entire view of the van from the back was a piece of clothing wore by the watchers), then yeah, she kind of look like her, except her hair seems more grayish…could be the light of the dawn?
    Nei – interesting thought. I’ll have to respond to that later.

  4. Hi there 🙂

    Well yes you found the right woman (with glasses). We probably have different versions of the anime 😉
    It would be so nice if they do some cross-over, or at least including characters from Madlax or Noir.
    I remember reading an article where the director pointed out tht there would be some connections!

  5. I agree with what you said about Ortega and his winebago, but I think its necessary to have imperfect characters like Nadie, it gives the anime more realistic characters. Instead of the “perfect” idea of a person like what you see in other anime it is more like a real person which I find important for good anime. A good example would be Evangelion, one of if not the best anime in history and none of the characters were perfect with anything, but thats what made the characters good, they were more like ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.

    1. I wish I could agree with you but the antics of Nadie simply turned ridiculous after a while. Also, as far as I can remember, the series never showed her “normal beginning” as an ordinary person, correct me if I’m wrong. However, I will say that my expectation of the show, growing out from my expectation of the “girls with guns” series really put a damper on any positives that I found in the show. Perhaps Nadie’s character is meant to provide a different type of comic relief to the audience.

Comments are closed.