It's not uncommon to see an anime series out there that classifies as Japanese historical fiction, but what about historical fiction for other countries? Well, Soul Hunter, known otherwise as Senkaiden Houshin Engi, is an anime series that qualifies as Chinese historical fiction, giving the anime world a little more variety at least in its series' nationality roots.

China is suffering a real crisis. It is falling apart as a nation due to the demon immortals' intervention with the government, lead by the seductive but dastardly Dakki, whose charms captured the heart of the Yin Dynasty Emperor Zhou. Master Genshitenson of the immortals at Mount Kunlun has decided that it's time to do something about these meddling demons, so they created this "Houshin" pillar to seal, or "Houshin" the demons' souls into, in order to create a new world in which to imprison them. And who should he choose for this task, "Project Soul Hunt," but the most incompetent immortal of them all, a lethargic boy nammed Taikoubou, who is more concerned with trying to finish the project quickly and find his next meal than he is with actually doing a competent job. Partnered with a Hippo-esque magical beast named Sibuxiang(Pronounced "Suupuushan"), who quickly realized what an incompetent buffoon his master is, he set out on his journey. In this first volume, we also meet the most primary of the great Warlords of China at this time, Ki Shou, and his songs, and we also meet Shinkohyo, an odd fellow at the top of the Book of Souls of those to be Houshined, who just spends his time observing others for his amusement. We also eventually meet Nataku, a violent simpleton who wishes to learn why he returned from the dead. The characters were generally somewhat archetypal, but not irriatingly so. Taikoubou's reckless antics are rather amusing, as are Dakki's evil plights, being so charismatic that it's almost hard to hate her. Houshin Engi has succeeded in intriguing me. I've seen a number of fantasy series, and after seeing Slayers (which I wasn't hugely fond of), this series is refreshingly original, although not quite as funny as Gokudo-kun Manyuuki(Better known simply as Gokudo in the USA).

This is a series right out of 1999, complete with numerous CG effects and an overall impressive and enjoyable animation style. Based on Ryu Fujisaki's manga which was originally published in Weekly Shonen JUMP comics, this seems like a rather adequate adaptation of the manga, although I'm not entirely one to judge, not having read the manga yet. The character designs were done by Masashi Kojima.

Musically, Soul Hunter isn't exactly particularly memorable, but not unpleasant either. The music is a mix of everything from simply odd mood-enhancing pieces to a number of traditional Chinese pieces of music. Ryo Sakai did a fine job with the soundtrack. The opening, "Will," is performed by Chihiro Yonekura, and is a rather suitable and enjoyable piece, although not really as memorable as some anime series' openings have been, and not even in the same ballpark as Lodoss War's "Kiseki No Umi." The closing theme, "Friends," is also performed by Chihiro Yonekura, but I found it even less memorable than the opening. It's slow, sweet, and pleasant sounding, well accompanying the footage from within the episode that shows in the lower right as the credits roll, however, it didn't capture that feeling that Fushigi Yuugi did with its ending song, accompanied with a very similar style of presenting the credits with the clips from within the episode.

AD Vision provided us with some nice extras on this first DVD. These extras include the original opening, profiles of the Voice Cast from the dub, as well as some useful historical notes on the Yin Dynasty and some Translator notes. It also included a Relationship Tree, explaining the various characters' relationships with one another in the growing massive cast of characters this series has. This was a very nice little feature, although it didn't give enough detail on some characters that entered the cast in this first volume, and in some cases no detail at all. There's also a Glossary of Terms they included, and this was rather useful with the number of Chinese terms used within the series, but I felt it was lacking in one solid definition of one particular term that needs to be more clearly explained, Paopei, which seems to be the magical weaponry characters use in order to fight amongst themselves, rather than personally possessing their own power.

Soul Hunter is a rather decent fantasy anime as they come, with a rather original concept for its basis. To me, it felt like kind of a mix of Fushigi Yuugi and the Slayers. For a while, it was kind of hard for me to decide whether or not I liked this series, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that it was certainly good enough to warrant a good rating. As I pick up more of this series, I'll continue to send in reviews to let you all know whether or not its quality drops any as it progresses, like The Slayers did.

Distributor: ADV Films
Creator: TV Tokyo, Studio Deen
Released: 1999

Video Quality: A
Audio Quality: A
Presentation: B
Content: B
Overall: A