Hakkenden: Touhou Hakken Ibun

The village of Ootsuka—home to Shino Inuzuka, Sousuke Inukawa, and Hamaji—was lit on fire under the preconception that a virus had seen all of its life eradicated. Now surrounded by flames and on the verge of death, the three were approached by a strange man holding a sword. He tells them that they must reach a decision if they want to live. That night changed everything for these children.

Five years later, the family of three now lives under the watchful eye of the small Imperial Church in a nearby village. All is fine and dandy until the Church attempts to reclaim the demonic sword of Murasame. To accomplish this, they kidnap Hamaji to lure Shino, now a bearer of Murasame's soul, and Sousuke, who possesses the ability to transform into a dog. The brothers must put their differences aside to rescue their beloved sister from the Church in the Imperial Capital, signalling the beginning of a very difficult journey.

Inuzuka, Shino Main

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Inukai, Genpachi Main

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Inukawa, Sousuke Main

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Murasame Main

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Hamaji Main

Takagaki, Ayahi Japanese

Inuta, Kobungo Main

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Satomi, Riou Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Ao Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Osaki, Kaname Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Inusaka, Keno Supporting

Miyake, Junichi Japanese

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Oomuro, Masakatsu Producer

Wada, Kaoru Producer

Reviews

Jun 20, 2021

cocolita22

Recommended

I was pleasantly surprised with this anime! Fair warning that it takes a few episodes to really get into it. Honestly, the first episode was not the greatest and it starts to pick up around the third or fourth. It REALLY gets good around episode nine. I know that is a while, but luckily there is a second season so you can fully consider yourself invested at a good point.

Story- 7/10; I gave this a pretty low score because sometimes the plot was incredibly boring. I still can't tell you exactly what is going on at any given point and I actually don't even ... understand the curse on Shino. I also have literally no idea what half of them are talking about with the curse. The truth is, what keeps you interested are the character relationships, interesting dialogue, comedic moments, and the adventurous vibe.

Art - 10/10; Literal perfection!! This art is peak anime in my opinion. It's my favorite time of design on the characters and the aesthetics were chef's kiss. I found myself just enjoying the visuals in several scenes.

Sound - 10/10. Wow the music! Haunting. Goosebumps. Those are words that come to mind. I can't put into words how gorgeous the music is. Some scenes just elevated to the heavens with the sounds. Especially during emotional scenes or scenic images, the music pops out. I swear you will come to enjoy this show just fo the music and that's totally okay.

Character - 9/10; I loved Sousuke & Shino's relationship to death. They are the heart of the show and really fuel all the events. Sadly, the other characters are not memorable enough... I literally can't even remember their name. They all are white haired and have identical voices and personalities, but I still enjoyed their presence. I just don't feel like they pushed the plot forward in any way. I also didn't like the female characters at all. Sousuke and Shino are the main reason I watched.

Enjoyment - 9/10; Seeing as I binged all 13 episodes in one day, I seriously enjoyed this!!! Not a 10 because I found myself losing focus when it got boring, but I definitely can't deny that I was really interested in the plot. There were certain plot twists that really shocked me, and other times when I just shrugged it off. Overall, however, this was a really fun show.

9/10 all the way. i find it hard to say 10/10 because I reserve that kind of rating for an immaculate show and this definitely had its flaws. It takes a while to get interesting and it loses focus plenty of times. There were some filler scenes that annoyed me, and certain characters that were empty space.

In hindsight, I seriously think you should watch this! It is super enjoyable.

BL: There is DEFINITE BL in this. Why is this not tagged shounen-ai? It should be. It's not the kind of BL that will aggravate you and it's not really "fan service". It actually seriously fits into the plot and makes sense. They are outright bisexual or gay in characterization so it isn't baiting either. It's one of my favorite components of the show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 24, 2015

Twacka

Mixed Feelings

Life is short and I will only give you an honest and straight forward opinion. I enjoyed this anime's artwork, style, and concept until at one point the boy-love tone made me hit the kill switch. What is with the "mother dresses her son up as a girl to make him a better person" rubbish? Why do you have to destroy a decent story with all that side stuff? I have not completed this anime and never will based on my personal integrity on what a decent story should entail.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 28, 2013

Danno

Not Recommended

Preliminary (4/13 eps)

I was talking to a friend about Ten (Tenna Toori no Kaidanji) after I finished reading it. Our conversation led to a discussion about the characters, which is when I brought up "Genpachi". It turned out the character in Ten is named "Ginji", which left me with some very important questions... Just who the hell is Genpachi? Where did I get that name from? It was quite troubling. I Googled "Genpachi" and found out about this anime.

To sum it up, this anime is all over the place. It's just a mess. The story starts off with some people dying in a fire, then some ... mystery man hands a crying girl a katana with the opportunity to live instead of die. From that day forth, a girl becomes a guy, a man and dog get fused (he gets convenient transformation powers), and the girl forgets everything about the incident while the dead girl/boy shoulders the responsibility. Or at least that's what I made of it.
They live a simple life in some town. The boy has a pet Niizuma Eiji (literally), he's friends with some river god and frog master, and he gets some fuzzy eyeball that he can't get rid of. Meanwhile, the church has kidnapped the girl, so they must go to town and get her back. Never mind, she went there of her own free will. By the way, there's an evil church of monks torturing a guy who slit his own throat and shot himself in the head. Somebody save him! Too late, he turned into some demon and is going to eat the boy. Or at least that's what we thought. The monks followed after him and fired off a bunch of arrows, resulting in our brave heroes falling into the river and the monks giving up on the chase. I dunno what happened to that old frog dude, but the show is now about some sort of dog fetish. Luckily, the guy who kidnapped the girl is a good guy and he finished off the evil monk. Suicide guy and his bro are now shirtless at the battlescene. I'm not sure why, but they just are. All's well that ends well.

I just want to emphasize the senseless script in this show again. The boy detects enemies, so he turns his crow into a sword and swings the door open to reveal that they're surrounded by the evil monks wielding bows and arrows. He is the only one with a weapon at this point and you think he's gonna be a hero. Someone else kicks up a floor board to reveal some hidden katanas and he dispenses them to everyone else. The boy steps back and lets the big boys handle things, then the dog fusion guy holds the boy's hand and runs off to safety. They spend the remainder of the battle being absent.
Honestly, what the fuck just happened? He went from courageous hero to indecisive punk to molested little boy all within the span of a few minutes. How did this happen?

The adult male characters in this show are pretty. The setting is some traditional Japanese era where trains and industry have just been introduced. Cool setting and pretty characters, that's about it. The animation is subpar, especially when the animals are talking (their mouths just stay open and sounds come out).

This show also puts a ton of effort into having characters react to things in the opposite way you'd expect them to, which is supposed to be funny. Now laugh! Basically, if you're gonna watch this show, you should start it up on some stupid whim like I did. That way, you won't feel cheated when you find out the plot was written on similarly stupid whims.
Seriously, I couldn't watch the whole thing. When the "plot" advances, you just kinda put a handful of popcorn in your mouth and say "Oh, I see."

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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