NightWalker

Original Title: Night Walker - 真夜中の探偵
Romanized: Night Walker - Mayonaka no Tantei
Literal: Night Walker - Midnight Detective

Plot Synopsis

Shido is a P.I. with a caseload like Magnum never dreamed: when the police come up with an X-file that defies normal investigation, they turn to the one vampire who can make things right (for a bit of cash, of course). With the help of Yayoi, a cop who deals with the special cases, and his high school intern Riho, Shido stalks the creatures that stalk the night. Only one problem: what might happen when an ancient vampire from Shido's past comes to visit his old "friend"?

Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2004-10-16

Ah, another vampires hunting monsters series (see: Hellsing, Vampire Princess Miyu, Darkstalkers, Vampire Hunter D, Blade, et al). NightWalker is, unfortunately, not the most memorable of the variety to choose from, but it does share a lot with several better known vampire series, so I'm going to indulge myself and sprinkle this review with comparisons. Bear with me.

Put bluntly, NightWalker is a cross between Phantom Quest Corp, Interview With The Vampire, and the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series. Its biggest flaw is how accurate that analogy is--the series feels derivative and a bit scattered.

The first three or four episodes start out looking interesting; a vampire detective hunting demons while embarrassing his intern with lots of innuendo. Though bloodier and somewhat darker than the look had me expecting, it is fun enough and still has something of a plot. Then, the series takes an unexpected twist, switching into Vampire Princess Miyu/Interview With The Vampire mode--hunting down a variety of demons preying on the weaknesses of humans, while taking time out to brood about the tragedy of eternal youth and life in the night.

The problem is, once the element of fun fades, it gets less original and a lot less interesting; I'm not a big fan of vampire angst to begin with, and NightWalker seems to try unnecessarily hard to wallow in it. The monster of the week episodes aren't badly done, and I'll admit to there being some interesting supernatural twists on human flaws (see: Vampire Princess Miyu), as well as an air of relatively down-to-earth realism that appealed to me. But even these are marred by the fact that the climactic plot twists are so consistent that they ironically end up being rather predictable.

I do give the series as a whole credit for not going at all where I was expecting it to. Then again, I didn't exactly see the end coming because it's entirely inconclusive (not to mention disappointingly unrelated to the rest of the story), and I would have found the whole thing a lot more interesting if it hadn't changed quite so much midstream. The characters are a basically likable lot, but the slightly quirky flavor of Shido (the guy's a P.I. and wears a top hat) and his banter with Yayoi early on are a lot more fun than Riho's incessant whining about the destruction of her life (and for no readily apparent reason--sure seemed like she could have worked around her "problem").

Getting to another analogy, I hope I'm not giving too much away here when I say that plot-wise, NightWalker is almost exactly the same as Hellsing. The funny thing, though, is that it takes a more or less opposite take to most parts of the story--wherever Hellsing is funny, NightWalker is serious, and the roles of the vampire, villains, and the vampires' respective muses are all essentially reversed. Unfortunately (again), Hellsing seemed to make all the right decisions--instead of just enough levity about the vampire mythos to keep the otherwise dark story from overwhelming itself, NightWalker takes a potentially fun opportunity to twist the vampire role a bit and throws a far too traditional angst-soaked blanket on it.

The one area where NightWalker probably stands out the most is its artistic style--not because it's memorable, but because it doesn't look like what it is. The light art style and relatively cute character designs have the look of a Pioneer comedy, which you'd think would be appropriate from the opening episodes. In actuality, the series is fairly violent, bloody, and for the most part quite dark; on one hand the story seemed to beg for darker, more stylized art, but on the other I rather liked some of the subtle but creepy changes in the character designs, and it certainly works to put you a little off balance.

As far as the quality of the visuals go, there are no major problems; the animation isn't bad and there are some decent attempts at dark imagery. But there is really only one good original spot--Shido uses a sword (and a few other magical-type attacks) made from his own blood. Although a bit more could have been done with it stylistically, it's still cool. Then for some reason at the halfway point they switch from nice, red blood dripping about and solidifying into a blade to a rather abstract (and slightly cheesy) shimmering pink blob, basically making the only original thing in the entire series look way less cool. Go figure.

Actually, there is one all-around good part of NightWalker--the music. Not exactly spectacular, but I loved the sad, mellow, slightly funky opening theme, and it captures the feel of the series surprisingly well. The background music is similarly funky and features a range of appealing themes, with a light-hearted jazzy tune that accompanies some of the investigating being among my favorites.

The acting is all around quite good. I enjoyed pretty much all of the Japanese voices, Shido's laid back but not overly dispassionate tone being my favorite of the leads. More noteworthy, though, are some strong performances behind the episodic characters--several short but powerfully acted scenes. The slightly weaker English is still good for the most part, although Shido is very different--most of the casting is similar, but his English voice is much higher than the Japanese and too whiny for my taste. Not badly acted at all, just questionable casting.

In summary, today's equation: Phantom Quest Corp + (Interview With The Vampire + Vampire Princess Miyu TV series) - originality - fun = NightWalker. Unless you're relatively big fan of at least two (preferably all three) of those series, it's probably not going to be anything special.

For those unfamiliar with those series, here's a recap: NightWalker starts out fun, goes dark, and then doesn't really go anywhere. The overall story is relatively unpredictable but the individual episodes aren't, and it's too heavy on the vampire angst for my taste. Definitely watchable and maybe worthwhile for big fans of vampires, but there's not enough quality in any of the important areas to make for a memorable series.

Related Recommendations

As mentioned above, Hellsing does everything this does, and does it better. Vampire Princess Miyu (particularly the TV series) shares just as much with the story, and also does the demons taking advantage of humans thing better. But perhaps the series with the most similar feel is Bastard!! -- it's somewhat funnier than NightWalker, but has a similar mix of funk and grit, and a similar artistic style.

US DVD Review

The two DVD volumes are relatively standard USM fare, featuring a standard hybrid presentation with a decent selection of bonus features: storyboards, trailers, plus an art gallery and scripts if you have a properly equipped computer. The discs were re-released at a lower price. There is also a newer 2-disc budget-priced set of the whole series that is dub-only for some bizarre reason, which seems a rather insulting development for a medium where a dual-language disc costs the same as a dub-only disc to produce.

Content Guide

Though rated 13-up by US Manga Corps, it could legitimately be rated 16-up for a variety of mature themes, graphic violence, and a small amount of nudity.

Violence: 3 - It isn't gory, but there is a fair amount of violence and blood.

Nudity: 2 - Very brief bits in a couple of spots.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - A variety of innuendo, a bit of semi-implied hanky-panky, and some more direct mature themes.

Language: 2 - Some profanity.

Notes and Trivia

The series is apparently an original concept, not based on any manga.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on 2 bilingual DVDs (later re-released at a lower price). Was also available on three dubbed VHS volumes, as well as a 2-disc set of dub-only DVDs.

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