I had read quite a few reviews of Those Who Hunt Elves when I finally decided to get the DVD. Thank god for that or I wouldn’t have understood anything through the whole first episode, in fact I made sure three times that it was indeed the first episode and not the sixth. It was and it really does start right in the middle of the story.
The first episode is a “monster of the week” type in which giant fish-men pirates are attacking a small costal village of blissfully innocent peasants. As two mysterious robed figures wander through the devastated village, the locals begin to pray to legendary heroes. The small town is also harbouring a beautiful elf supposed to bring them luck and good weather on the sea and she is what everybody is after. As the story moves on, the mysterious figures (which you will recognize as two of the main characters if you watched the opening credits) end up saving the town with the help of their two other allies and gaining the love and admiration of the entire village. For a reward, they ask only to see the beautiful elf nude. The love and respect quickly disappears and they are run out of town but not before reaching their goal.
That’s it. No explanation, no background, not a hint of what a tank is doing in a medieval style village! For that you have to watch the second episode, this is where things finally clear up. At the core of the story are four rather stereotypical characters. Junpei is your steroid abusing meat-head strong guy who from time to time gets these incredible flashes of insight, Airi is the beautiful Hollywood actress who can use nothing but her charm and a few cleaver costumes to get to her end, Ritsuko is a weapon otaku school girl, complete with uniform and then there’s a tank. All of these wacky people were brought from our world to this magical, medieval world by accident and are now the responsibility of Celcia, the matriarch of the elves, who made the mistake of bringing them in the first place. The whole situation could have been fixed quickly and easily, with one powerful ritual but Junpei had to ruin the whole thing and now the spell has broken up and five fragments have fallen all over the world. In order to go home our friends have to hunt down all these fragments and then put them back together again. The catch? The fragments are in the form of symbols tattooed on elves bodies. So now the gang has to travel from town to town, stripping all the elves they encounter.
Despite this obviously questionable premise, I should mention that Those Who Hunt Elves is good clean fun for the whole family. There is almost no fan service and we never get to see any of the elves for ourselves. The main characters may be stereotypical, but they are none the less consistently funny, and the supporting cast are all wackier than the next. Celcia also joins the team after a few episodes to form a perfect ever feuding comedy duo with Junpei.
The first six episodes of the series can be found on this DVD. In general each episode offers a new town with a new elf to strip and a new monster to defeat. This is by no means a deep or even mildly intelligent series but it is a good time and you will surely catch yourself giggling throughout Those Who Hunt Elves.
On the technical side this series is average in all things. The voice actors are decent although Celcia can be rather annoying at times. The animation is nothing the rave about and although I personally dislike the character designs, they are nonetheless efficient if not really original. However none of this detracts from the over all good times that the series offer and shouldn’t stop you from giving Those Who Hunt Elves a chance.
The DVD released by ADV films offers Japanese, English and Spanish language as well as English subtitles, character sketches and a text less version of the opening theme. I only tested the Japanese audio with English subtitles but I found the sound to be good. The menus are simple and very easy to navigate. ADV has opted for putting more episodes rather than more extras, always a good move if you ask me. The only actual extra are about 20 screens of characters designs. These are interesting enough especially if you like to draw your own anime or manga characters.
Selling at about 30 bucks U.S. and with approximately 150 minutes worth of crazy animation, you definitely get your money worth with this title.
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