Witchblade

Once upon a time there were a bunch of fairly talented artists at Marvel. They felt they were being treated unfairly. They were the stars, or so they believed. Well this led to strife and that lead to them leaving and forming their own company. At first they were mega super stars and could do no wrong, but here it is many years later and while they are plugging along they certainly are no long the juggernauts of the industry. Maybe they weren't the stars after all, maybe geniuses it was the stories.

Oh well.

I bring this up because one of their efforts was "Witchblade." Now "Witchblade" has one of those "have your cake and eat it to" approaches to character. Basically at first blush very pro feminist; tough female protagonist who wields a power only women can use. Buuuutttt.... she's fighting in as close to a g string as humanly possible. Yeah, there's empowerment for you happy campers.

Well the comics aren't consistently terrible, and someone came up with a "sound track" that I thought sort of rock. So far so good. Well then TNT tried to make a Witchblade TV series. Well it was paen of suckitude. Blandness ruled and the T&A element was jettisoned. So what do you do next?

Take it to Japan.

Oh yeah, the Japanese took it an ran with it. They did it as an anime of course which meant that our heroine was not just fighting in super butt floss but was drawn .. ahem.. dramatically. It says something that some in the series kept misprouncing her name as MELONy. In this version she's got amnesia and daughter and is trying to make ends meet in a tokyo half flooded after a huge earthquake. In this tokyo there are rogue cyborg/appliances running around microwaving ladies or doing terminal dental surgery. There are also cloned witchblades who defy the laws of physics and good taste. This is certainly a guilty pleasure but it never bores.