Looking Back on ADV Films Work: Devil Hunter Yohko (Episodes 1-3) Review

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I am skirting my normal 'Six Episode Minimum' review rule since this isn't a new show, but I just can't really deal with this show. When we get to next month's episode of The Adventures of The Monk and The Monarch I'll go into the importance of this show as far as the culture and ADV is concerned, but it is not one of the older anime that has aged well.

The story follows a girl named Yohko who becomes the family's newest Devil Hunter, the 108th one. The show is pretty simple in premise, you have Yohko learning to be a Devil Hunter with a new enemy and story in each episode. None of the ones I saw were at all deep, but that isn't an issue depending on the kind of show you were going for. Devil Hunter Yohko is a mix of blood, action, and fan service. And none of these deliver.

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More often than not the animation fails because almost every scene you are going 'Wait, should her hands even be there? How can she even be in this position from where she was a moment ago?' Even that is something that can be overlooked if the action is at least intense enough or over the top enough, but Yohko doesn't deliver on either of those. Even without the inconsistency of the scenes, they are kind of simple.

As ADV's first-ever project, the voice acting is also pretty bad. The early days of Dubs were an interesting beast, ranging from horrible to great, with a handful of just... confusing ones. Yohko falls pretty solidly in the category of just being bad.

I didn't want to go into this one hating it, but the show just offers nothing I can enjoy. Even at the time, the action was subpar, the story was weak, and the characters were just not very interesting or even funny. It had its foothold in the history of western anime releases because we just didn't see cartoons like this coming out of the west, but as time went on the show lost its unique appeal. It's worth watching as a piece of history, but beyond that kind of interest, it's best to skip it.

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I can totally understand not enjoying this today, especially if you were stuck with the Dubbed version, which is best classified as 'atrocious'.

On the other hand, I'm old enough that I saw this maybe a year or so after it was originally released and, as such, have fond memories of the whole series. Not because it's anything spectacular, but because it was just so much fun. Plus, the soundtrack is pretty darn good as well. Granted, I think I was 15 the first time I saw this, so I was absolutely the target audience for it then. I re-watched the first OVA a year or so back, and it was still entertaining.

But compared to the anime of today, with its vastly improved art styles and long-running plot arcs, yeah, it looks like the artifact of its time that it is: when artists slaved over inking and coloring each individual animation cel. And sometimes I miss that era. :)