Knight Hunters Eternity Vol. #1 (of 3)

By: Chris Beveridge
Review Date: Monday, July 26, 2004
Release Date: Tuesday, July 27, 2004



What They Say
Koua Academy is a prestigious school for the future leaders of Japan. However, a dark plot between students and teachers spells doom for those who don't make the cut. During a rash of mysterious "suicides," Sena Izumi arrives as a transfer student. He seems to be an ordinary freshman, but by night he is a member of the assassin group that secretly attempts to rid the Academy of evil once and for all!

The Review!
Fighting the real power behind the evil deeds that are done in the world, Knight Hunters returns in a new thirteen episode series.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its original language of Japanese. The series is a fairly standard stereo mix that's not unexpected for the shows content. The music itself is one of the areas that plays around with directionality and is pretty well done though the opening song will confuse some people at first since it sounds like the audio is dropping out. Dialogue throughout on both languages sounds good and has some noticeable areas of directionality but most of the dialogue feels full in general.

Video:
Originally airing in 2002, the transfer for this TV series looks good in general but suffers from a few areas where you can see some shortcuts in the animation itself. The transfer does a good job and has some solid source materials. In a way, the show often looks and feels like a number of recent hentai shows in that there are a lot of stills and panning shots (which means some aliasing in areas) combined with a bright color palette for the character animation that gives them a feel of not being entirely connected to the backgrounds. There's some good detail when it comes to the lead characters but most of the secondary characters tend to be a bit more generic and cleaner in general.

Packaging:
Showing off the pretty boy character designs that are key to this shows success, the cover is done from a sideways angle with two of them in their full dress uniforms providing just the right kind of smiles next to the gothic style logo. The logo is nicely done with the English version combined with the original series name as a subtitle. The back cover is done in the standard direction with a cross background that h as a good collage of images throughout it. There's a single small paragraph that goes into the shows premise and a rundown of the discs features and production information. I continue to hate the fact that once long ago, the major studios got away with calling interactive menus and scene access as special features. It's a feature but it isn't special. Media Blasters continues to score points with their technical grid along the bottom. The insert combines various elements from the cover and provides a rundown of the chapter listings for the five episodes on this volume.


Menu:
The main menu uses the cover artwork as the static image set to music from the show with the selections lined down along the right. It's an attractive enough menu and simply done with an easy to navigate menu with fast access times. Unfortunately the disc doesn't go by the players default settings and starts with English only; it doesn't even automatically start with the signs/songs subtitle track active either as a default to go with the English dialogue.

Extras:
The extras are pretty minimal with a textless opening and a few minutes of dub outtakes being included. The outtakes ranged from no reaction to some rather amusing ones and overall are still something I enjoy checking out.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having missed the original TV series, I've gone into the male version of Charlie's Angels without the background knowledge of how that show was. Well, other than it seems to inspire loathing and laughter from a lot of people but also generates a lot of sales with its appeal to women. The brainchild of one of the voice actors and designed to showcase their talents, Knight Hunters is your basic pretty boy show with stares and poses wrapped around with a lot of surprising violence.

The premise is very much like Charlie's Angels though. A team of four, ranged from teenage to what looks to be mid-twenties, operate as the Knight Hunters, a group dedicated to dealing with the real masterminds of evil plots as opposed to the low ranking types. Cut off the head instead of the tail type mentality. The group operates under the guidance of a mysterious man named Persia who provides the information and assignments via a darkened TV screen and a voice scrambler. All four of them are fully dedicated to the cause and are willing to put their lives on the line without question in order to stop the real evil in the world.

The real evil this time is someone masterminding a plot to kill off a wide variety of powerful and important people. In recent days, VIPs and other political and business people have been killed in assassinations and explosions around the world. What Persia has discovered is that a strange number of teenagers are among the casualties wherever these events are occurring. The incident in Japan has included the death of a student from a private academy named Koua, which is seated deep in the country and is like a fortress town that survives without aid really from the local town on whose property it sits. So Persia sends in several of the group to find out what the connection is there.

The youngest of the group, Sena, joins the academy as the latest student to transfer in. His arrival day is marked with a suicide that happens right in front of him as a girl jumps from the building. To his surprise, nobody tries to stop her or even cares about it afterwards, except for a small group that comes out to simply clean up the mess. As the other students tell him, why care about someone who wanted to die? With her death, she becomes the eleventh suicide in less than a year for the academy, something they're able to clean up with complicity with the local mayor. For Sena, this affects him strongly and he has a hard time wrapping his head around the student's attitudes.

Aya infiltrates the academy as the newest teacher while Kyou takes on a classmate status as well. Over the course of the first five episodes, we learn a lot about this academy and its high pressure nature. As is usual, there are various levels to the classes and there are the specially rated S Class students. These students are kept in a separate building on the academy grounds and are subject to more intense studies. Or at least that's the appearance of it, as the S Class students are given much leeway in all that they do as they're practically revered by the regular students who want to join their ranks. Even the teachers are deferential to the S Class students and particularly to freshman Todo, the leader of S Class. With his closeness to the head of the academy, he's able to have teachers fired easily enough.

The S Class becomes the focus, through a friend of Sena's being accepted there, and through her we see the reality of what goes on inside this building which is like a fortress within a fortress. The actual plans and evil that's being perpetrated there comes across in both a really insidious way but also rather campy at times as well. Within the building there's a special G Class that's set up as enforcers that have plain white face masks to go along with their uniforms. This gives them a suitably creepy look but they're involved in goofy ceremonial pieces half the time and when they do fight they come across almost a bit comically. Their camp and goofiness is offset by a surprising amount of violence. From the opening sequence where the girl tosses herself off the building, you realize that this will make you squeamish at times. Rarely in these kinds of shows do you actual hear the "squish" sounds of brains splattering on the pavement or see the body afterwards with blood spreading all over. Or even hours later the chalk outline with blood still on the pavement. These moments come out of the blue sometimes and are quite surprising.

The series puts on a strong element of moodiness through the opening and ending sequences, combining the music and visuals strongly and to great effect. This doesn't carry quite as much into the show, partially due to the brighter nature of much of it since the school is awash in standard colors, bright blue and white uniforms and lots of daylight. There are definitely dark moments though and they come across as surprising but not quite the overall mood you get from the opening and ending though. The character designs for the show are obvious what they're aiming for and they succeed well. The lead characters are all striking and attractive in their own ways and have a good amount of obvious appeal. They tend to make out better than most of the others in the show with a bit more fluid animation, but the show is served heavily by panning shots and other stills. What makes this feel so much like a hentai release in addition to what was mentioned before is just watching their mouths and in how they really feel more like they're painted on than a part of the design. Some of the camera movements across them as they talk just scream out cheap.

The Media Blasters release is good overall, particularly since they're doing thirteen episodes over three volumes, but there's some strangeness to their release. For example, the episode title cards have the DVD generated subtitle along the bottom of the screen but the title card itself has no text and there's no voice over. They look to have gotten clean title cards, which I have no problem with, but they didn't put anything there in place of it, leaving it to just the DVD generated subtitle. It just looks wrong that way. The other is voice actor crediting. During the ending sequences, neither cast is given credit as it's all just the Japanese production team. Even the usual English production credits are absent. It's only at the end of the volume do we get the English production credits and voice actor cast.

But no Japanese voice actor cast. And this is a series that was originally made solely through the popularity of the Japanese voice actors and their talents. It was designed as a showcase for them, though it became one of the cheesiest things out there and didn't do quite what it was intended. But to not include any Japanese voice cast? Seeing how as TMS was involved in this release, I'm wondering how much of the issues should be shifted towards them since they've made strange requests in the past with other releases, notably in the Lupin TV release.

In Summary:
With no knowledge of the original series, it's fairly easy to get into this sequel series. I didn't find it to be as bad as people have claimed the original to be but at the same time I didn't find it to be all that engaging. Much of the first five episodes could have been tightened up much better in terms of the plot and pacing, but that would presumably eliminate some of the style and flash that's important to the show. It's mix of camp and outright heavy violence is an interesting aspect to it and surprising when it really kicks in, but not enough to bring the series out of its cult status and following. On some levels, it's an interesting show and they provide some potentially good things to follow through on, but in the end it seems to focus on the obvious paths with a few surprises mixed in that aren't explained well yet.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Dub Outtakes,Textless Opening

Review Equipment
Panasonic PT50LC13 50" LCD RP HDTV, Panasonic RP-82 Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.