krista66 - 2013-07-19 04:40:47

"Have you ever taken a shit in your pants while in a public place before? Or walk into a Red Lobster bathroom to find a couple awkwardly fucking each other on the mildew infested tiles?

That's kind of what it feels like watching this anime. You feel like you've just stumbled into or have unwittingly become part of an embarrassing situation and you're only options are either to slowly back out gracefully or watch it play out to it's illogical conclusion (that couple by the way, didn't really mind me being there, I just wanted a breath mint). "Those Who Hunt Elves" is an anime that dares you to sit through every single one of it's episodes while you brutally suppress the urge to go watch something better.

The story, that seems to have been begrudgingly inserted into this anime is that the world is on the verge of peak magic with mercenaries, pirates and George W Bush roaming the countryside looking for that next fix to fuel their oversized killing-machine vehicles. The only people who have possession of that sweet, sweet merlin juice are the elves (who of course are all female) which are made apparent by the tattoos on their body. And how do those groups find out if they have these tattoos? By ripping their clothes off of course. Yeah, because giving perhaps a monetary incentive for the elves to come forward or maybe just asking would be too simple. In fact that's how most of this anime plays out: The characters running around the countryside ripping the clothes off of every elf and Vulcan cosplayer in sight.

The characters who I won't bother mentioning because lets face it: you wouldn't give a shit anyway because you want to see some elf T&A and that torrented hentai copy of "Viper" isn't playing on your computer. All you need to know is that their is a buff dude who instigates most of the sexual assaults in this anime and probably by the end of it has a rap sheet long enough to serve life sentences of every criminal in the U.S prison system. A woman who's fond of swords and suffers from an eating disorder. A girl who fires long range assault rifles while in a school uniform (I suppose because she couldn't afford to drop the extra cash on body armor). And a talking panda bear (who is obviously there to help close the diversity gap which this anime badly needed to do) who I couldn't help but call toilet-paper-panda throughout the series the drunker I got watching this shit show. This crack team of idiots in every episode basically drive around in a tank fighting the Street Sharks and hurling elves Team Rocket style into the sun while their clothes rip off so they can get more of that merlin jizz. *sigh* just...just roll with it okay?

So, why does this quad-squad of crap go through the motions of collecting all this magic? Because they're actually trying to use it to get back to Japan. They're all stuck in this weird ass parallel universe and the only way they can get back is ripping the clothes off elves to find tattoos to collect magic dust so they can snort it up and wake up from an acid-trip coma and be back in the real world again. Directed By M Night Shaymalan."
(http://myanimelist.net/anime/1045/Elf_wo_Karu_Mono-tachi/reviews#B7umVu4YuKcbWYmb.99)

By: MrReadmen

Just passing it on

armand06 - 2013-07-05 02:02:08

This anime, probably more appropriately titled "Those Who Strip Elves", is not horrible or unwatchable. It's just bad. While some of the recurring gags are actually funny, the story is completely contrived and repetitive, and the characters are rather unlikeable. Add annoying opening and closing songs, and the eye cancer that is late '90s anime design, and the end result is the kind of series that one watches because they're bored and have nothing better to see.The positives here are cartoony violence and seeing the inept characters deal with bizarre situations before they strip the female elf of the week. I don't really care for elves, but if you're into that kind of thing, well, there's plenty of elf nudity to satisfy your desires, as well. If this all doesn't appeal to you though, then don't even bother with this series.

qgutkowski - 2013-05-18 10:39:35

Anime humour has never been one of my favourite aspects of the medium, and I hated it especially during the early days of my anime watching. "Those Who Hunt Elves" is a shining example of why I didn't readily take to it: the humour is too goofy, and is over-reliant on randomness and exaggeration rather than wit. The "plot" of "Those Who Hunt Elves" involves a martial artist, an actor, and a female military otaku with a tank (please don't ask me to explain) being summoned to a fantasy land with elves and stuff. Unfortunately for them (as well as for me, as it meant I had to watch this crap), the spell to send them back misfired, breaking up into small fragments in the process. The spell fragments scattered across the land and tattooed themselves onto the skins of random elves. Naturally, in order to collect these spell fragments and go home, our "heroes" has to go around stripping any elves they come across.The above synopsis pretty much speaks itself, but allow me the luxury of being explicit - if I were to sum up this show with a single word, that word would be "stupid". "Those Who Hunt Elves" is all about stupid actions from stupid characters in stupid situations resulting in stupid comedy. The comedy is so forced that the show often make no sense unless you go all meta on it: why do they only strip female elves? (Meta answer: because the makers thought the show would be funnier with sexual assault undertones). And why do the other characters never rein in Junpei (the martial artist with more brawn than brain), and instead allow him to go around stripping elves with all the aggression of a serial rapist? (Meta answer: because about 90% of the jokes in this show would disappear if the female characters just asked the elves nicely instead.) Even Junpei himself doesn't seem to have an ulterior motives for stripping elves - he seems more interested in curry than naked elf chicks. It's hard to think of another show with so much goofball comedy - in one of the episodes the characters actually comments on this themselves. So if you're not one of Those Who Hunt for Goofy Comedy, is there anything in "Those Who Hunt Elves" that's worth seeing? The answer is not much. The show may be also classed as a fantasy, but Those Who are Hunting for Good Fantasy will find this lacking. Fantasy elements are used in the settings, but there's not much beyond that. And though there is also some action in the show, it's lousy at best. As far as archetypes go, Junpei pushes the stereotypical "stupid brawler" kind of character to subhuman levels of stupidity, although the constant banter between between him and Celsia (the elf responsible for summoning the outsiders into her world) can be quite amusing - it's probably the highlight of the whole show. Occasionally, the shows tries for some more serious character development, but due to the insane humour of the show, these attempts failed miserably with no exceptions.I do find the character designs in the show to be quite attractive, but the visuals looks pretty low budget in general. The sound production isn't great either; the background music is very quiet compared to the voices, and when I turned up the volume, I found the music flat and not worthy of attention.To conclude, "Those Who Hunt Elves" is made by people with a poor sense of humour, for people with a poor sense of humour. The anime tries too hard and delivers too little. And since everything else is sacrificed in its attempt to be funny, there's not much here beyond the comedy. This is one to avoid unless you're a very silly mood.