YMMV / Witchblade

The Anime

The Anime:

• Best Known for the Fanservice: Largely due to marketing, the series is more known for its busty characters than anything else.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: If observant revealers were to remember Reina carrying an infant after stealing the Witchblade, Masane having amnesia after the Great Quake, that when Reina and Rihoko stand side-by-side they have similair physical features, and the fact that Reina and Takayama were involved with each other, it wouldn't be hard to guess that Rihoko and Masane aren't biologically related, and that Reina and Takayama are her biological parents.
• Complete Monster: Tatsuoki Furumizu, aka "Father", is the creator of the Cloneblade using Neogeness: women able to bear imitations of the Witchblade. Despite being raised by a loving mother, Furumizu loathed her, seeing his father as "perfection" he wished to achieve. Angered by his own sterility, Furumizu has young women indoctrinated where he implants them with his genetics and the Cloneblades, all the while making them believes he cares for them. Furumizu is well aware the process leads to mental instability and inevitable death but simply doesn't care. His manipulations lead many of the Neogenes to lose their minds and do great harm before succumbing, but Furumizu simply has a second generation created, not caring when the strongest Maria kills his previous "favorite" Reina. Furumizu is solely obsessed with his own perfection and creating the perfect "mother" to give birth to his legacy.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Shiori has a lot of fan content for a character that only appears for less than a third of the series. Most likely do the fact that she has the same (though slightly larger) buxom bodytype as Masane and a lot of viewers finding her witchblade form appealing.
  • Rihoko also has extreme fan love because of her cuteness, maturity, and relationship with the main protagonist.
• Fanon Discontinuity: This is supposedly Canon with the comic book...despite that it doesn't work as anything other than an Alternate Continuity from it. Needless to say, comic fans ignore this series, either out of hatred or simply due to the Continuity Snarl caused by its existence in the comic canon.
• Funny Moments: Masane gets invited to a fancy party for Wadou. Thanks to her, it takes less than half an episode for the party to turn into Reiji and Wadou trying to drink each other under the table.

• Heartwarming Moments: "You're not afraid of me?" "'Course not. You're still my mom."
• Ho Yay: Shiori for Reina. She actually kisses the lip print left on a teacup at one point.
• Moment of Awesome: The standards are set pretty high, considering the nature of the series, but the scene where Takayama outdrinks Wadou in episode 10 most certainly qualifies.
• Superlative Dubbing: When talking about the show, few pass up the chance to talk about its impeccable English dub.

The Comic

The comic:

• Cargo Ship: Sara/Witchblade? Considering the 'Blade is both sentient and male, this may be canonical.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Fridge Horror: The Witchblade has been wielded by countless women thru the ages, so that means the thing has been...."covering" women in many places for ages. Especially "down there."
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Sara and Kenneth Irons at first. Until he shows his true colors.
  • Sara and Ian Nottingham so much so. It's often a Fan-Preferred Couple as many fans have written fan fiction and drawn some romantic artwork between the two.
  • Although short lived, Sara and Dannette Boucher aka The Microwave Murderer. Seriously, the minute they met, Dannette can't help but comment on Sara's natural beauty.
  • Sara and Jackie Estacado, aka The Darkness wielder; they even had a child together at one point.
• Growing the Beard: Ron Marz took over with issue #80 and immediately reinvented the wheel. Sara learned how to stop shredding her clothes, the Witchblade began to manifest more often as suits of armor rather than a steel bikini, Sara picked up a regular love interest, and her relationship with the Witchblade and its previous bearers was reexamined.
• Ho Yay:
  • Back in the day, Top Cow published an ongoing Tomb Raider comic that was actually in continuity with Witchblade, and Lara would occasionally show up to hang out with Sara. During those appearances, they did everything short of make out with one another. When subtext is being screamed into your face at point-blank range, is it still subtext?
  • Not to mention her relationship with Danielle. Danielle is also a confirmed bisexual.
• I Am Not Shazam: Sara Pezzini is NOT called Witchblade, she is the current user of the Witchblade which is an artifact. Yet, many people and fans all refer to Sara as the Witchblade as if it’s her title.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • The Curator is the Sole Survivor of the destruction of old universe. Filled with grief over losing his family, Curator started working on a plan to bring his universe back by destroying the new one. Taking the form of an elderly man, he manipulates events so that he can bring all 13 ancient artifacts to him. After doing so, he sets his plan in motion in Artifacts by gathering a team of villains who wielded half of the artifacts and kidnapping Jackie Estacado's, the wielder of The Darkness, and Sara Pezzini's, the wielder of Witchblade, daughter Hope, who was the last "component" in his plan to recreate his universe. Capturing most of the remaining wielders and getting all of the artifacts, he playfully talks with Hope about his motives and shows his belief that his actions will bring about a better world. In the end, Curator succeeds in wiping out the universe, only being stopped from killing Hope by Jackie managing to recreate the universe and kill the Curator before his plan could even begin.
  • Tales of the Witchblade, by Christina Z.:
    • Issues 3 & 4: Selena Lauren is a former police officer, who was turned into a sex-crazy outlaw. After being arrested for coercing men into illegal acts through narcotic therapy, Selena took over downtown New York, protecting its inhabitants from arrest and granting them their wildest fantasies by connecting them to her Witchblade. After agreeing to help Detective John Chimu to solve the brutal murders in exchange for full amnesty, Selena effortlessly puts all the clues together and predicts who will be the next victim. Revealing the name of the killer to Chimu, as well as her origin as one of the test subjects of Sustain drug, Selena assist him in tracking the killer down and then offers him to live by her side, before she uses his computer to assume the role of a detective.
    • Issue 6: Samantha is a former slave taken by the Romans from her family when she was a little girl. Enduring their abuse and then escaping from them, Samantha found the Witchblade and was trained by druids, before she decided to return to her hometown. Finding out that her father tried to organize the resistance, only to be captured by Romans and the townspeople cheering during his execution, Samantha created a plan and easily manipulated both the Roman army and townspeople into slaughtering each other. Forming a genuine friendship with a woman named Cecilia, Samantha tried to save her by telling her to run away, only to find her dying later, leading to Samantha revealing her motivations and crying over her death.
• Older Than They Think: It's always believed that The Witchblade stopped shredding Sara's clothes once Ron Marz took over. The real truth is that even in the early issues by Michael Turner and Marc Silvestri, the Witchblade rarely tore Sara's clothes to shreds. As a matter of fact, it simply would just grow over whatever clothes Sara was wearing. Sara's clothes were usually already torn from the fights. The only real times the Witchblade actually tore Sara's clothes under Turner and Silvestri was if she was wearing clothes unfit for battle such as dresses. This was also a case of Depending on the Writer and Depending on the Artist which just ran with the idea of the Witchblade tearing Sara's clothes.

TV series

The TV series:

• Complete Monster:
  • Vorschlag Industries CEO Kenneth Irons is the cold-blooded Big Bad of the entire series, tormenting Sara Pezzini at every turn in his quest for the Witchblade. Throughout the first season, Irons is revealed time and again to be behind many of the show's villains, be it a government group that drugged and experimented on people to turn them into super-soldiers or a Mad Doctor who artificially inseminated several women to clone himself, until finally, Irons takes center stage, murdering all of Sara's friends and loved ones in a mad gambit to manipulate her into his servitude. When this fails, Irons acquires the Longinus Lance, using it to slaughter two of his own men who leaked his secrets after giddily displaying that he murdered their families for their "betrayal", and later attempts to cut Sara down then use the Lance to wipe out all who would stand against him. Returning from the grave as a spectral entity following his death at Sara's hands, Irons continues his machinations, influencing his son Ian Nottingham, who he has abused since childhood, into continuing his crusade against Sara, killing several bystanders in the process. In the finale, Irons's evil reaches its peak as he uses the website Cyberfaust to "download" himself into hundreds of people across America, then control them into committing vicious murders of all those nearby, claiming countless victims, adult and child alike. Kenneth Irons was the pinnacle of villainy in Sara's conflicts, with the only thing matching his eternal life being his depths of depravity.
  • "Nailed": In a series filled with magical foes, demonic entities, and insane immortals, Carl Dalack stands out as the sole ordinary foe Sara faces, yet nevertheless one of the most wicked. Dalack is a despicable Serial Killer and rapist of young teenage girls, who he tortures by ripping out their fingernails to satisfy his fetish for hands. Having claimed eight victims by the time he is released from police custody on a technicality, Dalack immediately begins stalking and terrorizing several young girls, mocking an entire class of them by reminiscing about some of his victims' screams, later killing one of these schoolgirls as the restart of his spree. To get revenge on Detective Danny Woo, the one who originally busted him for his crimes, Dalack kidnaps the man's young niece, molesting then preparing to torture and kill her just to hurt Danny, and, when Danny captures him once again, Dalack attempts to goad Danny into killing him to ruin both his conscience and his life.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Sara and Kenneth Irons, Sara and Ian Nottingham.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ken Irons crosses this irrevocably when he burns alive one man's wife and family and drowns another's wife and child just before killing them both for betraying him.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jeffrey Donovan, who played Daniel Germaine in "Lagrimas", is now better known for his lead role as Michael Westen in Burn Notice.
• Tear Jerker: In the first season, Anyone Can Die. Many of the deaths qualify. Special mentions go to the deaths of Conchobar and Joe Cirus.

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