Witch Hunter ROBIN

It's really easy to pitch this series as "The X-Files meets Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex", but that makes it sound way more awesome than it is. Not to say that Witch Hunter Robin is bad by any stretch, it isn't, but the series needs to be with moderate expectations to be fully enjoyed.

Set in a world where people with paranormal powers called Witches, or "craft users", who have been around for millennia, hiding from the rest of the world. For years, an organization called SOLOMON, run by priests set in Italy, has dedicated their time and effort into hunting down and killing them, except for the Japanese branch, which captures them and put them away in a mysterious place called the "Factory".

After the death of one of their hunters in the Japanese branch, SOLOMON dispatches a new hunter there, a 15-year old girl named Robin. Robin herself is a "craft user", raised by the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, specifically trained to hunt down other "craft users". But soon, she finds herself tied up in a situation more complicated and hidden than first thought.

One of the worst things you can say about a series is that it had potential. The setup for the series is great, and it even has some depth to it, such as has having a moral grey area in which any of the characters ask if what they're doing is right. But the series has a few problems that prevent it from going from an OK series to a great series.

The biggest problem is that the series end with a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger made worse by the fact that a sizeable chunk of this series are "monster-of-the-week" style episodes, where the witch hunters take down whatever witch is causing a problem that episode. The plot proper doesn't start until somewhere in the second half, but by then, it's a bit too late.

As a result, lots of the plot and themes never really get fleshed out, and unlike a lot of anime, Witch Hunter Robin is not an adaptation of an already existing source material, so not even "Just go read the manga" excuse can be used here, because there is no more to this series.

Witch Hunter Robin never really got popular enough to get another 13 episodes, and it's a shame, because right when it started to get interesting, the show ended with no resolution whatsoever. And this series could really use some closure.