Anime: Burn the Witch

If you are looking at this because you heard it is related to BLEACH understand that it has basically nothing to do with bleach. This is not another Shonen spin-off movie but rather its own original work. If I had to compare it to another anime it would be more like a more mature version of little witch academia. If you spend the entire movie trying to compare it to BLEACH you will miss out on appreciating the work for its own merits. Rather than hold the watchers hand trying to explain everything that's happening it gives you just enough clues to figure things out for yourself. There is lots of story packed into this short time frame so if you don't pay close attention you are likely to miss some of it. That said there is a lot to enjoy here from the strong female leads with big personalities to realistic environments, and cool dragon designs.
Short Synopsis:
The stories main characters are witches in an organization to control damage from dragons in "reverse London". But unlike traditional witches instead of brooms they ride their own small dragons and instead of wands they use horns(an instrument). Because they are skilled and popular they keep winding up with tough assignments, particularly keeping safe a clueless and powerless young guy who attracts dragons to himself.

Art@animation - 8
The ART is good. Everything looks crisp with vibrant colors and smooth movement. It looks like what you would expect a big budget anime movie to look like, and that's a good thing. I would say it meets all expectations but falls short of exceeding them.

Sound - 6
At no point did I feel the music or sound effects fell short or distracted from the picture. I only saw the Japanese version but I thought the voices were good too. While the sounds overall were good they sort of melted into the background, and that is good in that it lets you focus on the story but also means it wasn't good enough to make it stand out and take notice.

Story - 8
As I said above this is something of a more mature story (IMO) that focuses more on the characters interactions with each other than the world environment. There is very little exposition leaving much to the viewers imagination and I feel that's a good thing. Rather than spending half the movie explaining the political structure of their organization, their relation ship to dragons, or how magic works, it jumps straight into the meat of the story while throwing clues to all those things in along the way.

Character - 7
The cast of characters is not particularly large as might be expected of a single movie but they do a good job of exploring each characters personality. The characters motivations are understandable and its easy to understand the way each one acts. Their designs are nothing particularly new or innovative but they feel like strong characters regardless.

Value - 8
You get the entire story and all it costs is about 90 minutes, that's not a big commitment of time, even if you find it's not to your liking you have barely wasted any time. As I said before there is almost no exposition so most of that time is all meaty story, no training arcs or flash backs here.

Enjoyment - 8
This is of course the most subjective of all these relatively subjective categories so take it as you will. I believe if you are a fan of movies like studio ghibli or Makoto Shinkais works you should give this a try. If you really want to try to find all the little Bleach easter eggs save it for a second watch, otherwise just enjoy it as a standalone work.

Burn the Witch is the definition of a cashgrab that relies purely on the fame of a previous work of its autor in order to sell and it otherwise offers nothing of value. It’s supposed to be some sort of spin off that takes place in the same setting as Bleach but it has absolutely nothing in common with it.

I didn’t make a review of Bleach because there is no point in doing that, since everyone and their mothers already talked about it both positively and negatively, but I will make comparisons between the two.

First thing to notice is how it takes place in a different country, nothing wrong in that, and it goes for a urban/contemporary fantasy and magic realism type of story, meaning the normal people is more or less aware of everything that happens (in one side), unlike in Bleach where neither the Hollows nor the Shinigami could be seen by people with weak spiritual energy…at first, something that changed completely later on.

This would be pretty interesting if said normal people would get a role in the story but as of yet they don’t do nothing of importance, heck, they are not even allowed to interact with the monsters, which here are presented in different form than they had in Bleach, as dragons. Another thing where is weaker than Bleach is having a much lighthearted tone.

Although Bleach has lots of silly comedic moments from beginning to end, the first episodes have a creepy atmosphere with a haunting soundtrack at times, something which was completely lost here.

For something positive, the Soul Society here works completely different, it no longer follows a military logic with clear borders that separates the japanese elite from the poor and miserable foreigners (cough) but instead works as some kind of company where the Soul Reapers are some kind of employees that hunts the hollows in pairs for credits.

Believe or not, this is a good thing, in Bleach, the Reapers sent on a mission could be a single soldier or both the captain and lieutenant of a squad which was kind of sily if you think about it. Why would you send a single person on a mission, or why would you do that with the two biggest authorities of a squad, leaving it behind without leadership and boy was the Gotei 13 lucky that they never received an attack at the same time. Also, I never understood why the captains have only one lieutenant and only one squad under their supervision. And the ranks were complete bullshit, with stronger people serving under weaker people at times. None of that nonsense is present here, as everyone has the chance to get a higher rank just by working a lot.

Also, the Gotei 13 is presented much sooner and they already began moving in order to capture some sort of legendary weapons/creatures which are seemingly going to be important later on. What I didn’t like is how the place feels like a school, is there really a need to have a school in everything, especially if it involves magic?

Anyways, the premise is more or less the same as in Bleach only less interesting because of the lack of a creepy atmosphere as I already said but also because the characters here are complete shit. The black haired girl is the only one who is completely serious about what she does and does not take bullshit from anyone, but she’s also so serious she’s just boring to watch. The blonde one is just Hiyori from the Vizards in steroids and man is she annoying.

And still not as much as the guy, he’s so stupid, he ruins any attempt at seriousness. And there’s also a yandere type of antagonist who has a crush on the blonde girl and just like with the guy, I was expecting for the moment both of them die on screen, which obviously didn’t happen because they are going to be main characters later on.

Another problem in the show is how the spells are totally boring, they are just light beams of different colors and that’s it, nothing like in Bleach where they had all sorts of shapes and functions and I need to point out how the characters keep pulling powers out of nowhere, in fact that is how the anime ends, leaving any sort of closure completely open for it is just a prologue which exists only to promote the manga.

That is another issue it has, it’s too short and silly to make anything feel important, and on top of that, since it clearly wanted to promote the manga, it skipped the pilot chapter which shows how the main characters get together and are connected, none of that is present here, which could have worked as a bit of their backgrounds.

It also feels uninspired, with the dragons flying around it just feels like you are watching something made by Hiro Mashima, and the two sides from the same city, which seem to work as some sort of parallel dimensions connected to each other (I’m only guessing, it’s never explained), is basically taken from Harry Potter, with the only difference being that the “muggles” know what happens here and can move from one side to another under certain circumstances.

I like how the legendary weapons/creatures are based on classic fairy tales, I’ll give it that, but even then it’s nothing I hadn’t seen done already in Read or Die, in a much more creative and fun way.

Ultimately, what everyone who watched this really cared for was the action and the visuals, and I have to admit that they are not bad, but when they are praised beyond the point they deserve, I have to point out how neither of these elements are that great either.

By comparison, in the same season, Majo no Tabitabi and Akudama Drive came out and Burn the Witch just pails before them. And in the same year we got the likes of Tower of God, Deca-Dence and Fog Hill of Five Elements, all of which are also far better and more spectacular than this show in these aspects.

Another thing that was praised about it are the character designs and I don’t understand why, Kubo knows how to draw his stuff but he also tends to repeat the faces of his characters a lot, in Burn the Witch, the black haired girl is basically a mix between Orihime and Bambietta from Bleach and as I said the blonde is an aged up Hiyori. The same thing can be said about every other character, they resemble the characters from Bleach a lot and the artwork lacking in details does not help them either. There is a character with a somewhat original design, but he has the same problem as Mirio from My Hero Academia, he resembles a famous character (Luigi) a lot and the chances of liking his design are gonna be divisive because of that.

The special effects are not bad but for a show where they throw magic left and right, they could and arguably should be better, the best things in the visuals are the backgrounds, the city looks really good. The motions are fine but nothing really surprising, again I feel like they could have been better and at times they felt kinda sloppy. They feel consistently fluent and fast paced but it’s mostly because of the camera work, which follows every movement the girls make with and without their brooms. And as I said, Majo no Tabitabi did it better.

I have nothing to say about the sound, the sound effects lack impact, the voice acting is one of the same you can hear everywhere, the music is alright but nothing really memorable.

And that’s it, there isn’t really much else to comment about it, it’s short, it’s just a prologue, it’s mostly silly and nonsensical, poorly written, it has trashy characters, it feels disjoined from the series it’s supposed to be related to, it feels derivative in some elements, everything it does has been done before (for better or worse) and it’s not amazingly animated, it also had the bad luck of airing in 2020, the anti hype year, and thus it didn’t caused as much impact as expected, but I guess it served to remind the audience that Bleach will get a sequel soon, let’s see if this one still retains its audience and manages to sell once that adaptation of a somewhat hated arc is over.