Masane Amaha is a woman on the fringe of society, bouncing rootless from town to town with her daughter, Rihoko. She struggles to build a life for her family, with no memory of the past and no clue as to what the future holds. But upon their arrival back in Tokyo forces conspire to separate parent from child, unleashing the fury of the Witchblade. The young mother will find herself conscripted into the service of the Doji Group and hunted down by the emissaries of the NSWF, all while seeking to balance the weight of this forced duality.
The fan-service adventureWitchblade(2006) is another trans-Pacific hybrid: a Japanese TV series based on an American comic. Masane Amaha and her obnoxiously precocious daughter Rihoko were discovered amid the ruins after an earthquake devastated 22nd century Japan. During the disaster, she somehow acquired the sentient ultimate weapon, the Witchblade. When Masane comes near an X-Con, a prototype cyborg made by Douji Industries from human cadavers, the Witchblade causes her to morph into a fighting fiend--in an outfit Pamela Anderson might wear in a sequel toThe Dark Knight. The Witchblade supposedly endows the wielder with "insatiable lust and unthinkable power," but Masane gets her exposed derrière kicked by women using Cloneblades, imitation Witchblades the Douji Group also created. Maria, the most powerful Cloneblader, emerges as a potential rival to Masane. When she decides to seize control of Douji Industries, the audience is left to wonder how and why she went from an undisciplined,infantile killer to a disciplined, mature killer. The inevitable duel between Masane and Maria atop Tokyo Tower suggestsHigh Noonwith implants. Masane triumphs over Maria and the power of the Witchblade in a finale that's simultaneously gory and mawkish. Although the convoluted plot stumbles along like Masane after a binge,Witchbladewill delight adolescent boys who want to watch fights between overendowed, under-dressed babes. In an accompanying interview, character designer/executive animation director Makoto Uno says, "We added a devilish element to the physical beauty of women and animated them with particular attention to the breasts and butt." No kidding. (Rated TV MA, suitable for ages 16 and older: violence, violence against women, grotesque imagery, risqué humor, alcohol and tobacco use)--Charles Solomon