Witchblade Vol. 4

Dear god, the bouncing, the jiggling, my eyes! Yes, we have a beach episode, but not before we have the continuation of the previous cliff-hanger. Yes, Rihoko’s mother is revealed and to add to that, we now have a pretty good idea of whom the father is too now and with that immediate excitement out of my system, back to the visions of those large bouncing orbs...

When we last left the happy family the snotty woman from the child welfare agency was threatening to take Rihoko away. Now, with the new arrangements for the residents of the building that may be difficult, but needless to say, once Masane finds out, things rapidly change. Enter Marie. you may remember the firey little red and blue haired neogene bitch from the previous volume. Well, it seems she is the new bearer of a cloneblade which pretty much means she is the new scariest female in the series. Like we needed more. 

As you may have noticed, Witchblade is not just about big breasted beauties beating each other up. It has an overall theme, which is "Family". You have Rihoko and Masane’s struggle to live together as a family. You have Reina, the neogene who wanted to know what being a mother was like, and now you have Marie who is the youngest neogene who will do what it takes to find her mother and from this stems all future conflict. What do you tell someone who has basically been genetically engineered and grown in a tube, yet has almost unlimited destructive power. I mean, you can’t exactly lie to them. Well, you can, but it’s guaranteed that it won’t end well, and it didn’t. 

So all that aside, stuff happens, the story progresses, and now we get to the true feature of this volume...

The beach episode! As is anime tradition, every series with characters with ample assets of the chesty area and those who are drawn to excite, has a beach episode. This is no different, except that in addition to the usual formula of tight bikinis and thongs and watermelon smashing, you get a revelation which changes Masane for good. But you’ll have to enjoy the bouncing to see what that is!

This volume continues the frenetic pace unabated and from here it continues to get darker. Also included on this disc is the second half of the documentary about the Witchblade graphic novels and interviews with the Japanese cast. 

As with my usual midseason recommendations, if you have enjoyed the story so far and are actually reading this, continue as the one thing Witchblade does not seem to do is disappoint.