Today I've managed to get through the first episode of El Cazador de la Bruja and Makoto Shinkai's Byousoku 5cm - Oukashou.
El Cazador de la Bruja was a fairly straight forward girls with guns anime featuring the overpowering music of Yuki Kajiura. It's a lot like a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, though like the rest of Kōichi Mashimo's work (Noir, Madlax) the super-powered protagonists can apparently dodge bullets without much effort at all. I'll probably need to see a few more episodes to decide whether or not the style offers much substance, right now it's very "meh...".
Talking of directors and their similar styles, Makoto Shinkai's Byousoku 5cm - Oukashou was, as expected, nostalgic, romantic and sentimental. It's interesting that with this, Shinkai has totally dropped his sci-fi pretensions and gone for a straight up romantic drama. My main problem with "The Places Promised..." was the overly complex and distracting sci-fi plot, and as a result, Byousoku, as just a purely character driven drama, was a lot easier to watch. Funnily enough I think his best work was actually "She and her cat", but "Byousoku" could well topple that if the further two parts are as drenched with emotion.