Review of Black Cat: Volume 4

Introduction

I have a distinct reluctance to begin this review, only slightly less than my reluctance to watch this disc. With Black Cat, Gonzo have reached something of a nadir in their sci-fi action output, having recycled and reused the same ideas so often that it`s beginning to approach a beige inevitability of plot. Like all their shows, Black Cat began strongly, immediately setting out its premise and providing the usual Gonzo animated lightshow. But with each subsequent disc simply adding to the banal nature of the show`s unoriginality, it`s been the first time in ages I`ve had to force myself to watch a new anime disc. Still, I have been wrong before, and with volume 4, we may get a revolution in storytelling that blows away my criticisms like so much chaff in the wind.

What happens when the world of the sweeper and the world of the eraser collide? It`s not as you would expect, a sanitation accident in a stationery shop. In this case, a Sweeper is slang for a Bounty Hunter, while Eraser is a euphemism for an assassin. When one is paid to kill, and the other paid to bring back alive, then it isn`t a profitable venture to go after the same target, but this is exactly what happens in Black Cat. The sweeper in question is Sven Vollfied, a hard on his luck bounty hunter who despite going after all the big cases, has a hard time keeping his stomach filled, partly due to a strong chivalrous streak that keeps him on the lookout for any damsel in distress. But he has a curious ace in the hole, a vision eye that he normally keeps hidden, but allows him to see five minutes into the future, albeit at great physical cost. The eraser is Train Heartnet, a ruthless assassin who worked for the mysterious Chronos Foundation. He survived the murder of his family to take bloody revenge, something that caught the eye of his employers, and until recently he has been a cold-blooded killer on their payroll. Now he`s quit Chronos and joined forces with Sven as well as Eve, the bioweapon he was initially ordered to destroy, to go into business together as a sweeper team. Meanwhile another escapee from Chronos, Creed Diskenth, is plotting global domination with his Apostles of the Stars, Taoist group. .

With these four episodes presented on Volume 4 of Black Cat - The Cat`s Tail, the confrontations continue.

13. The Love Cat
Durham is summoned by the Apostles to explain his unwarranted confrontation with Train. He receives a lesson for his disobedience that he won`t forget as long as he lives. It`s a punishment that makes Apostles members Charden and Kyoko think twice about their allegiance. Kyoko realises that she can`t fight Train under any circumstances, especially when her feelings for him get in the way. The only thing to do is to leave the Apostles and find Train. But the other Apostles won`t accept her defection. The Doctor and Leon go after her, armed with a nano-machine bullet that causes the target to transform. Only they miss Kyoko and hit Train instead.

14. The Kitty Cat
Train has been de-aged. He`s trapped in the body of a little boy, and it reawakens unpleasant memories of his childhood. While Sven and Rinslett look for a cure, Eve is left in charge of her `kid` brother. They wind up rescuing a young orphan boy from a bunch of gangsters. The gangsters want to evict Tim and his fellow foundlings from the abandoned factory they call home, and they aren`t above violence to achieve their aims. Tim is now de facto leader, and has to balance his responsibility to the other children with his need to avenge the murder of his parents. Train, despite his reluctance to get involved, winds up teaching him a few life lessons about revenge.

15. The Distant Cat
The battles between The Apostles and Chronos continue, with Creed Diskenth threatening the covert nature of the Numbers. It`s time for the Chronos group to consolidate their forces, replace fallen members, and tie up loose ends. One of those loose ends is Train Heartnet, who can`t be allowed to retain a piece of Chronos hardware in the form of his Hades handgun. #1 Sephiria is tasked to confront Train and retrieve his weapon, or eliminate him. Train isn`t ready to give up his gun just yet, as he`s learned that there is more than just the obvious use for it. Meanwhile Charden has defected from the Apostles, but his disdain for global powerbrokers has only intensified. He comes across the meeting and decides to grab the opportunity to eliminate one of the Numbers. Train will have to make a choice.

16. The Cat and the Lizard
Chronos new strategy is to let others do their dirty work. To that end, a 3 billion bounty has been placed on Creed Diskenth, going up to 5 billion for all of the Apostles. Sven sees the poster, and knows straight away that he has to keep Train from seeing it, lest it spark up feelings of vengeance once again. It`s a good thing that Woodney is turning up with another, easier bounty. But Sven has his own interest in the Apostles, and he ditches the others to attend a gathering of Sweepers in a warehouse to discuss an alliance. Train and the others have a simple case of a missing pet to locate. A wealthy philanthropist has lost her pet lizard, Flora. True to stereotype, it`s taken refuge in the sewers, but the panicked reaction from the town`s residents indicate that they`ll be looking less for Flora, and more for Flora-zilla.

Video

The 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer is typical for Gonzo productions, clear and sharp enough once you get used to the bright and hazy look that mixes 2D and CG elements. The animation itself is up to Gonzo`s usual dynamic standards, but I found the character designs a little too basic and unmemorable. The more sedate moments in the animation also fell short of the usual impressive action sequences.

Audio

You have a choice of DD 2.0 Japanese and DD 5.1 English with optional translated subtitles or signs. There is a nice bit of separation in the stereo track, indeed there is little to separate it from the 5.1 track, which is very front-focused. The dialogue is clear in both versions, and the English dub is one of the good ones. The theme tune has grown on me, and is well worth a (legal) download. There`s a new end theme from this volume onwards.

Features

You get trailers for Love Hina Again and Witchblade, while there are also new opening and end credit sequences, sans text, to look at.

Conclusion

With this volume, we reach the halfway point of Black Cat`s run, but it doesn`t signify a change in the show`s fortunes. On one hand, Black Cat is rubbish, but on the other, it`s a good deal of fun with it, which means that I have to put more thought into this review, than the writers did into its recycled and vapid plot. With its global conspiracy of moustache twirling villains, its rapidly growing collection of fun loving heroes, its well worn storyline, its inability to develop even the most basic of characters, and its utterly random tone, Black Cat cherry picks the worst aspects of the typical Gonzo production, and distils it down further into an absolutely annoying melange of ill-conceived ideas and clichés. The story hangs together loosely, with only lip service paid to coherence, and if you are following the series religiously, then thoughts of raising a white flag of surrender strike every few episodes when nothing seems to make sense.

But, taken on their own merits, the episodes are largely enjoyable affairs. You don`t have to worry about character growth or the bigger story, and if you accept each character as presented at the start of each new episode, then you can enjoy the events of that episode for the nonsensical fun that they are. Kyoko of the Apostles realises that she has fallen for Train in the first episode on the disc, and rather than fight him, she decides to defect instead. Cue an episode of lovey-dovey idiocy as she pursues her man, and he tries to stay un-pursued. While that isn`t happening, Train nurses a cold, if only for the comedic affect of him sneezing into Sven`s face. There is some drama going on with the Apostles, as they pursue Kyoko, but it`s really only as an afterthought that just gets in the way at the end, setting up the next episode.

The Kitty Cat could have been an episode I might have enjoyed, and it got off to a promising start with Train de-aged, fawned over by the girls entranced by his cuteness, and having a couple of serious dramatic flashbacks to his real childhood. But then the girls are left in charge of Train while Sven and Rinslett hook up to look for a cure. Train and Eve get distracted and leave Kyoko behind to discover the orphans standing up to the gangsters (and that`s the last we see of Kyoko in this episode, the writers obviously forgot about her), and the rest of the episode is a remake of a Burst Angel story. There is a point of interest, when the origin of the Apostles` Leon is discovered, but the show does absolutely nothing with it. There might also have been some character intensity given Eve`s bioengineered nature, and the genetic manipulation performed on Train. For a moment she looked like she might have a dramatic moment, but she settled for morphing her hair into a giant mallet and pummelling someone with it.

The Distant Cat is one of those confrontations engineered to show us how much Train has progressed from his past life. Apparently while the previous two diversions have been occurring, the Numbers and the Apostles have been battling it out, something that probably would have been more interesting to look at. There was a big deal made in the last volume of Cerberus, a three man Numbers combat team that made quite an impact. Well, while we weren`t looking, two of them wound up dead, leaving poor Jenos by himself. We don`t know what the big deal is with Train`s gun, and sending Sephiria to retrieve it has no import, it`s just one of those things that has to be done according to the gods of plot. So they have a confrontation, prepare to battle each other, Charden interrupts on his mission against the Numbers, and Train refuses to let anyone die, at which point Sephiria realises that Train is Ok, and everyone lives happily ever after, or something. This is the episode where the budget runs out, as the action sequence reverts to a freeze frame slideshow at the battle`s climax.

Finally we get the monster hunt. This is probably the most enjoyable episode on the disc, mostly because we get the majority of the characters on screen, all participating in the story. Normally Rinslett is cameo eye-candy, pretty lame for someone who looked like a main character at the start of the series. There`s some nice action and comedy, and the story does entertain, but at the end, Train gets wind of Creed`s whereabouts, and ditches his friends and runs off full steam in search of vengeance, for the umpteenth time.

Black Cat is fun, it`s brash, it`s colourful and it`s energetic. It`s also naff, with ideas crammed together without thought or consequence, a careless attitude towards plot, and a `sod it, they won`t notice` approach to characterisation. It works if you don`t think about it, but there are far too many better anime out there for this to even be a last resort.