It's no secret that I love the Ayakashi Sisters and consider their redemption arc a highlight of the original anime. But I also love the Witches 5 and find the lack of a redemption arc for them a bit strange and disappointing.
Obviously Naoko didn't meticulously plot out the manga in advance, and since the anime was produced simultaneously and its staff couldn't know what Naoko was going to do before she knew herself, they couldn't exactly plan ahead. Thus, they couldn't have known that for the third story arc, Naoko was going to devise a group of five (or six) female antagonists with alter egos who (it's still unclear to me) were either completely artificial beings created by Professor Tomoe, or once normal humans who had simply been vesselized, but who either way would seem a more logical choice for redemption than the four sisters who otherwise lacked any kind of back story or inner life (apart, perhaps, from their love of late twentieth century haute couture).
But hindsight is 20/20, so I put it to you: should the Witches 5 have been given a redemption arc in the 90s anime? Should a future adaptation of the Infinity arc redeem them? And, if you had to choose between them, which group deserved redemption more: the Ayakashi Sisters or the Witches 5?
(To be clear, I'm not saying the 90s anime Witches 5 deserved a redemption arc as is: Tellu, Viluy, and Cyprine/Ptilol got almost no screen time to speak of and Eudial had basically no redeeming qualities, so Mimete was the only one who even potentially merited redemption. What I'm asking is should the Witches 5 have been written in such a way as to support/conclude in their redemption as with the Ayakashi Sisters?)
Obviously Naoko didn't meticulously plot out the manga in advance, and since the anime was produced simultaneously and its staff couldn't know what Naoko was going to do before she knew herself, they couldn't exactly plan ahead. Thus, they couldn't have known that for the third story arc, Naoko was going to devise a group of five (or six) female antagonists with alter egos who (it's still unclear to me) were either completely artificial beings created by Professor Tomoe, or once normal humans who had simply been vesselized, but who either way would seem a more logical choice for redemption than the four sisters who otherwise lacked any kind of back story or inner life (apart, perhaps, from their love of late twentieth century haute couture).
But hindsight is 20/20, so I put it to you: should the Witches 5 have been given a redemption arc in the 90s anime? Should a future adaptation of the Infinity arc redeem them? And, if you had to choose between them, which group deserved redemption more: the Ayakashi Sisters or the Witches 5?
(To be clear, I'm not saying the 90s anime Witches 5 deserved a redemption arc as is: Tellu, Viluy, and Cyprine/Ptilol got almost no screen time to speak of and Eudial had basically no redeeming qualities, so Mimete was the only one who even potentially merited redemption. What I'm asking is should the Witches 5 have been written in such a way as to support/conclude in their redemption as with the Ayakashi Sisters?)
Likes:
Nadia