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Title:
  Black Cat vol 1 - The Cat Out of the Bag

UK Distributor:  MVM (DVD Only)

BBFC Certificate:  12

Suggested Retail Price (SRP):  £15.99

Episodes:  1-4 (of 24)

Audio Options:  English 5.1 & Japanese 2.0

Subtitles:  English

Reviewer:  Rich (Webmaster)

 

It seems to be that MVM are getting all of the big licenses these days, but the 'Shonen Jump' anime has generally eluded them.  Shonen Jump is the Japanese manga magazine that features such famous titles as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece and Rurouni Kenshin.  All massively popular action series aimed at a male teen audience, and all released in anime form by companies other than MVM.

However, they elude MVM no longer!  Black Cat proudly proclaims its Shonen Jump origins, and if other Shonen Jump series are anything to go by we can expect teen heroes with difficult backgrounds overcoming adversity and making friends.  Oh, and fighting lots of people of course.  On paper things seem very much as you would expect, Sven Vollfield is a 'sweeper', a bounty hunter and self-proclaimed gentleman struggling to get by on the measly bounties he is receiving.  In his most recent job to capture a gangster turned politician he runs into Train Heartnet, a young assassin working for the mysterious organisation Chronos.  Train is known by the codename Black Cat and is one of Chronos' leading agents.  His target is the very man Sven is trying to capture, and Sven is powerless to stop him achieving his goal.  However, Train is beginning to have second thoughts about his job after meeting Saya Minatsuki.  Saya is also a sweeper, and her personal philosophies begin to have an effect on Train, who thinks only of killing, not capturing, his targets.  Despite his misgivings Train continues to take on jobs for Chronos, but his latest target causes him to waiver further.  He is charged with killing a young girl at the house of a major weapon's dealer, and is about to carry out his mission when Sven arrives to rescue her.  What is so important about the girl that Chronos would want to eliminate her?  And will Train pull the trigger, or can Sven stop him?
 

It sounded quite an interesting if standard set up to me.  Train is the confused young hero doing wrong at the behest of bad people, and Sven and Saya are the mentors who will befriend him, make him see the error of his ways and help him bring said bad people to justice.  However, I must admit to being thrown a little bit when the first episode starts with Train beating up a church-full of nuns and shooting the vicar.  These kinds of stories aren't supposed to go like this!  Unlike most anti-hero characters Train doesn't seem to be 

doing a bad thing for the right reasons, and he doesn't hesitate or show any remorse either.  In this first volume he starts off as a cold- blooded killer, only questioning himself towards the end of the volume.  This means that for the most part the hero of the piece is actually Sven.  Which is good, because Sven is a far more likeable and interesting character.

Black Cat was not quite what I had expected.  The story flips between Sven and Train's points of view, and the two only cross paths twice in the four episodes on this disc.  Saya is a bit-part character who only appears a few times and has yet to really develop into anything more, and we have yet to see much of Train's masters.  Sven is the emotional and moral hook for the series so far, and he really steals the show.  He's likeable, resourceful and does the right thing, and to be honest he kind of earths a series which occasionally gets a little more philosophical than you might expect.  Unusually for this kind of action based series things are moving relatively slowly, and it is making a point about raising moral questions about the characters and their actions.  It's this moral focus that provides the best aspect of the story so far.  The young girl Train is ordered to kill has the potential to either become a weapon like him, or just a normal girl.  The influences she gets will determine her future, or her potential may be left unfulfilled if Train completes his mission and ends her life.  It's her that provides the most interesting aspect of the story so far, and it will be interesting to see what will happen in the next volume.
 

However, the slow pace and the the emotional void that is Train does let things down to a certain extent.  Even though the story has yet to go in the direction I thought it would, I get the impression that it will do soon.  The series is slowly drawing together a central cast of characters but it feels like it has yet to get going, things are a little too slow at the moment to really draw you in.  It has some interesting aspects but sometimes it seems like it's trying to be a bit too clever for its own good.  However, the characters are intriguing,

 it has some great action scenes and plenty of drama and comedy.  The animation is absolutely superb too, well above the standard of most anime series, and the music is great.  It seems to have a much higher budget than you may expect and it really shows.

In the end of the day I was a bit unsure of what to make of Black Cat.  It looked great, it sounded great and it had plenty going for it, but for some reason I found it slightly frustrating.  I think it's the fact that the story seems to be skirted round for the majority of the volume that is the main problem, but there are signs that things are moving on towards the end.  Overall I felt that Black Cat vol 1 was good despite the frustrations, it's a bit different than most teen action series and doesn't always go the way you expect it to.  A patient but intriguing start.

Extras:

Usual stuff, textless opening and closing sequences and trailers.

Ratings

Feature:   Extras:
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