Those Who Hunt Elves

—by Charles McCarter

"Please, take off your clothes for us."

No, it's not a band of roaming perverts (although I'm sure that the elves of this particular land think so), it's just three stray humans and their tank trying to find their way home. Based on the manga by Yagami Yuu, THOSE WHO HUNT ELVES was made into two television series, both of which are going to be released by A.D. Vision.
The first volume introduces us to Airi, Ritsuko, and Junpei, the three hapless humans who are stuck on this planet. We don't know how or why they got where they are, just that they were trying to get home when a stray comment caused the High Elf Celsia to lose her concentration, and thus the spell. The ruins for the spell were scattered across the land and appeared on the skin of several native elves.
Naturally, since Those Who Hunt Elves want to get home, they're going around trying to find these elves. However, how do you say to someone you just met, "Uh, excuse me, will you please let me see you naked?" Needless to say, this leads to a lot of problems. They cause so much trouble that Celsia decides that she needs to go and help them—but in disguise. Unfortunately, it's not as clever a disguise as she believed it to be.
The group consists of Airi, a Hollywood actress who is the leader of the group. She has a talent for disguise. Then there's Ritsuko, a schoolgirl who also happens to be an excellent marksman and the tank pilot. Finally, there's Junpei. Big, dumb Jumpei with his incredible strength and his willingness to do anything to help or impress Airi. Add to this one cross high elf disguised as a dog, and the group is now complete.
So there's these three humans travelling around the countryside in a tank with a talking dog. If that's not strange enough, some of the people they have to battle should speak for themselves. In the first episode, a town is being terrorized by fish people who want the village to turn over their elf so they can stuff and sell her. By "fish people," I mean, humanoids with the heads of aquatic animals, including sharks, flounders, octopi, and even mollusks.
The show itself is pretty. Character designs are by the ever-popular Goto Keiji, who also did the character designs for sister ADV titles SORCERER HUNTERS and NADESICO. The animation is pretty good for a television series, although somewhat skimpy in some places. And the music is ok as well, but not particularly memorable outside of the opening and ending theme songs.
What really sets this show apart are the character interactions and the bizarre things and people that show up in this world. For example, Junpei loves curry. And, for some strange reason, it's available everywhere in this land. And then there's the hate-hate relationship between Junpei and Celsia. They're always calling each other names and pounding on each other. Not very ladylike behavior, but Junpei really brings out the beast in her.
The subtitles in this version are typical ADV. Clean and easy to read. And it was nice to see that they didn't take a lot of liberties with the script and left most of the bickering between Celcia and Junpei intact. The dub voices to me were relatively good, but they seem to lack the same amount of pure enthusiasm and energy for some of the more high-octane scenes. The screaming matches just aren't the same in English as they are in Japanese. It's not a bad effort for a dub, though.
THOSE WHO HUNT ELVES is part action and part comedy. Those looking for serious fantasy or science fiction should look elsewhere. (But then again, who would be looking for that when you know that the show is about stripping elves. I mean, how serious could it be?) I personally enjoyed the series when it was first run on Japanese television and I'm glad that a title that is not an immediately recognizable hit has been given a chance here in the United States.

English Dub
VHSTW/001D
$24.95

English Subtitled
VHSTW/001S
$29.95

60 mins.
Where to buy