The folks at Frontier Works announced back in September their plans to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the spring 2006 Witchblade anime series with a Blu-ray release on April 26th, 2017. With the release coming up in just about a month we’ve now got a look at the main packaging cover as well as the packaging as a whole. Interestingly, it’s being done as all twenty-four episodes on one Blu-ray disc, making it pretty clear that this will be a standard definition affair instead of a full on high definition release, likely owing to how it was animated at the time. The show has had DVD singles and a DVD box set in Japan and has only seen DVD releases in North America. The release will be priced at 17,280 yen when it arrives.
The series was directed by Yoshimitsu Ohashi based n the series composition by Yasuko Kobayashi. Based on the original Image Comics from Marc Silvestri and Michael Turner, Makoto Uno handled the character designs and served as the chief animation director. It was animated by Gonzo.
The Japanese cast includes Akemi Kanda as Rihoko “Rico” Amaha, Mamiko Noto as Masane Amaha, Masaya Matsukaze as Yusuke Tozawa, Mie Sonozaki as Reina “Lady” Soho, Nana Mizuki as Maria, Rikiya Koyama as Reiji Takayama, Shinji Ogawa as Tatsuoki Furumizu and Shizuka Itou as Shiori Tsuzuki.
Funimation previously licensed and released the series in North America that was directed by Christopher Bevins for the dub. THh cast for that, which is not included with this set, was Carrie Savage as Rihoko Amaha, Jamie Marchi as Masane Amaha, Cherami Leigh as Naomi, Christopher Bevins as Hiroki Segawa, Colleen Clinkenbeard as Reina Soho, Gwendolyn Lau as Rie Nishida, Jerry Russell as Mr. Cho, Kent Williams as Masaya Wado, Laurie Steele as Mariko Natsuki, Mark Stoddard as Reiji Takayama, Monica Rial as Maria, R Bruce Elliott as Tatsuoki “Father” Furumizu and Robert McCollum as Yusuke Tozawa.
Plot concept: Sought by the greed of Men since the dawn of Humankind, but only bestowed upon the woman whose fate it forever scars: The Witchblade. Is it the Righteous Sword of God, of the Hand of the Devil Himself? Now a new bearer has been chosen and she must discover the answers for herself. As she stands on the brink of destiny, she is forced to seek the balance between ecstasy and ruin…
Masane Amaha is a woman on the fringe of society, bouncing rootless from town to town with her daughter, Rihoko. She struggles to build a life for her family, with no memory of the past and no clue as to what the future holds. But upon their arrival back in Tokyo forces conspire to separate parent from child, unleashing the fury of the Witchblade. The young mother will find herself conscripted into the service of the Doji Group and hunted down by the emissaries of the NSWF, all while seeking to balance the weight of this forced duality.
[Source: Witchblade]
