Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge
Based on the Capcom Night Warriors video game series.
Okay, so let me get this straight...another anime based on a video game? Well, whatever sells, sells -- right? So here we have the story of the human world, now controlled by the vampire Dimitri, and the demon
world which is led (?) by the succubus Mistress Morigan. Sure, she's sexy and all but that doesn't stop Dimitri from trying to pound her into the dust does it? Especially since she's in the way of his invasion of the Demon World in the first episode.
In the second episode, we see the lone Vampire Hunter Donovan, who is half darkstalker, or dark one (the term for those who came to the human world from the demon world with Dimitri) and half human. His goal is to hunt down Dimitri and banish the dark ones from the earth, freeing
the humans from the hold of the demons, and freeing the sun which has been hidden behind dark clouds since Dimitri has come. He will team up with a strange little girl with enormous psychic powers in the second episode. Meanwhile, strance Inca-designed robots attack darkstalker and corrupted human alike on their own agenda.
While I like to avoid passing judgement on a television series this early, I have to say that the first episode was horrible. It was disjointed and ended up as little more than an animated version of a fighting game (complete with all the special moves from the video games (groan!)) with the horrible background music to match. Story? What story? Well, the second episode is light-years in improvement over the first, leading me
to believe that the first episode was also the pilot for the series. But yes, the second episode is much better...albeit a little predictible and sappy (Trish Ledoux's english translations make Donovan sound like a mystical Tatewaki Kuno from her Ranma 1/2 dubs). You know, I used to enjoy the American Darkstalkers television series, but the animation sucked even though the stories weren't too bad. Here the animation is good, but the story is too confusing or too boring. Hmm...if we could combine the two...
Do I reccomend the series? I dunno...if you liked the video game a lot, you'll probably like this one. Now I have to await the next video game turned anime soon...Tekken. Or maybe I'll just save my money for something better, like beer. Please, Japan...I know we did you wrong bombing your cities with nukes and all, but do we have to be subjugated to this mediocre excuse for an anime? I mean, we were once friends, right? You did create Wings of Honneamise...
Screenplay: Satoshi Ikeda, Tatsuhiko Urahata
Director: Masashi Ikeda
Producers: Kenichiro Zaizen, Toshiki Onishi
Character Design: Shuko Murase
Music: Koh Otani
©1996 Capcom/Amuse
42 minutes (21 min. episodes)
Genre: Magic/Horror Fighting
Format: Television series at 2 episodes per tape, sub/dub from Viz Video.
Rating: 70 (39/15/16) -- Violence, language.
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Last update 20 July 1998