The Witch and the Beast

Very well-crafted take on Witches and the supernatural in the modern world, that doesn't hold back at all. During the various investigations that seem to last 2-episode, magical mysterious straight out of a horror movie are unraveled, usually climaxing in a decent action animation scene. Sum it up so far... unexpectedly good... intelligently written... shocking moments of horror-movie levels of violence and sadism... And despite being a supernaturally-based world, everything still follows a logical flow, giving it a sense of realism. << Edit as of Episode 12 >> Decent Season 1 with everything I mentioned above continuing throughout... though it gets a little lackluster with the action animation, with many scenes filled with still-frames or sluggishness. Hopefully Season 2 will have a bigger budget, allowing the creators to put more money into the fights, which... are a big part of the show. Also... this whole kinda "walk around all cocky, getting her butt whooped" until she 'kisses a witch' and becomes essentially an unbeatable 'god'... is both kinda weird (esp when the witch is a child) and an obnoxious story-driver imo... Pre-kiss, she reminds me of Vegeta: loud, cocky and always overvaluing his own strength... aka we the audience knew he was just going to get slapped around until Goku got there.

So far (ep 5) it's accurate to the manga, with a few minor changes just to add some excitement, which i don't have any problems with. my only complaint is probably the art direction, it's a pretty normal anime style but the manga had a darker ambiance that was really the main focus of the art, the anime does not capture this. Also, the voice acting for some of the characters isn't how i'd imagine them but that's pretty common if you read the manga first. But for things that the anime does better than the manga, it's got to be the action scenes, as much as i like the manga i think most would agree that action is best portrayed in anime format, static images just make it hard to understand what's going on, and The Witch and The Beast was particularly bad about this.