Hakuouki Movie 2: Shikon Soukyuu

The second movie of Hakuouki gives us now the conclusion of this 2-part movie, with a new story, different from the TV series one.
The movie already starts in the middle of a battle, with a little time-skip from the last scene of the first movie. We started discovering stuff about the furies, and then the focus goes back to the Shinsengumi, which from what we can see from the beginning of the movie, it's already in crisis, in its declining phase.
Here in this movie we have two main focuses: the conclusion of the war, leaded by the main guys of the Shinsengumi, and ... the Chizuru's story, which is a mix of the onis and furies story with her own love story.
As the movie goes, we're shown lots of battles – epic battles I must say –, all focused on the Shinsengumi guys, they're a mix of sadness, pride and what I think the movie expressed very well, the way of the samurai. So this movie diverges from the first one in these battles; the first movie was more focused in introducing characters and preparing the story, and the second one finished showing more the feelings of the characters and their personalities, together with the whole plot, which in the beginning seems that would take a tragic ending, but end up taking an interesting romantic way.

STORY
As I said above in the brief summary of this review, the story is very much focused in the decline of the Shinsengumi forces in the war. The characters are all already in the limit but they keep fighting for what they believe, and again, it's shown in many ways during the movie how they respect and follow the way of the samurai – some in pure way of the concept, and others in the way they believe is right –. Chizuru again also have an important role in the story, trying to unite the Shinsengumi somehow, even during the crisis, and it's by doing this that she'll discover her true feelings for Shinsengumi and for the one she loved all the way.
After I finished the first movie I was concerned how they were gonna do the second half of the story and the battles, but I was very happy while watching it 'cause the studio did a great job again. They wrote an amazing plot and gave an important mission to each of the remaining characters, none of them were forgotten.
Also in the ending of the movie we get to know the true meaning of the title "Hakuouki", which is very beautiful considering the whole atmosphere of the final scene.

CHARACTERS
The characters have much more development than in the first movie, especially in the battles, it's where we see their true emotions and their pride as samurai.
There are lot of meetings and goodbyes between them and the main character Chizuru, but they all help her somehow. I think different from the TV series, in the movie we get to see – at least if it's just a foreshadowing –, how the characters loved Chizuru and how they want to protect her.
A character that shined in this movie, for me, was Kazama. As a villain he didn't get much attention in the TV series, but in the second movie he's definitely the star. I loved how they portrayed him at the same time being a bad figure and someone who can be lovely and protective.
In general, what I liked the most about the characters in the second movie was how they shown their sentimental side, considering mostly of the characters have become furies at this point, I liked the "I can be a demon but I still have a heart, and this heart will follow the path I believe is right" thing.

ANIMATION
Again, I want to applaud Studio Deen for the amazing animation. These movies might be the best of the best the studio have done so far. Like in the first movie, the characters are perfectly animated, as well as the scenery. What called my attention the most in this movie was the animation in the fight scenes, it doesn't disappoint! If you're a fan of samurai + fight scenes, this will be your cup of tea.

SOUND
The OSTs are ok. They aren't anything special, but they fit with the scenes they're present. The ending song though is something memorable. The song is very beautiful and the lyrics fit with the whole story of the movie, so after you finished watching you should definitely check them. My only complaint was that the song just played on the credits, and as I watched the last scene I thought it would fit much better if it had started playing in the middle of the last scene, or if at least they had put another song during that scene.

Overall, the second and last movie of the retelling story of Hakuouki was very good. As I mentioned in my review for the first movie, it was more enjoyable than the TV series. It was very nice see two different things happening in an historical anime: the story of the samurais and a love story, and better, the movie portrayed both very well! I would recommend to anyone who likes good fights, good looking guys and a beautiful and romantic ending. If you already watched the TV series, or watched just the first movie, you also should check out this movie as well, it has a different story during the first part and then a very similar ending to the one of the TV series.
Check out to see the conclusion of the Hakuouki story!

I gave these movies a go because I really liked the TVA of this series. I usually don't like the "Recap with new animations and scenes" type of movies, but this was different than I had imagined.

I really liked how the story focused a lot more on Kazuma and Chizuru's side of things, as well as the little Cameo appearance. The story development is different than TVA version, and you get to hear the truth about Chizuru's past. Although I disliked how rushed everything was, I feel the story and the ending was much better than TVA's ending.

Overall I would give this 8/10 ... because I felt that the character development was a little bit rushed too much, but that was to be expected.

hmm. my ability to evaluate the quality of this film is really hampered by the lack of decent english subs. i could tell that the translation was way, way off in several of the scenes, and some of the translations simply didn't make sense at all.

bearing that in mind, from what i was able to understand of this film, i would have to say it did not live up to the promise of the first film. whereas in the tv series there was a little too much emphasis on the battles, to the extent that i could not follow who the Shinsengumi was fighting and ... why, this film went to the other extreme. consequently we don't see any of the battles that Hijikata underwent. instead we watch Chizuru journey to reconcile with Hijikata, which made much less compelling viewing. another consequence of this change of focus was that the deaths several characters were very rushed, anticlimatic and lacked any emotional impact.

speaking of Chizuru, her character regressed back to helpless damsel who never tries to defend herself, which was very, very disappointing.

kazama was overused, at the expense of the Shinsengumi characters and his devil associates.

the fate of Chizuru and Hijikata made more sense, and was an improvement on the series, given the scene that takes place between them in the forest. and the sword fight between kazama and hijikata was ok, although i have seen better.

the art and sound were good as usual, but ultimately this is a rather disappointing sequel. 5/10