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

Oomuro, Masakatsu Producer

Matsuda, Keiichi Producer

Wada, Kaoru Producer

Reviews

Apr 21, 2013

rightyx

Recommended

Hakkenden draws you in through its artwork, elements of fantasy, and its moments of mystery. It was an enjoyable anime that kept me watching every week but it did not have me dying to watch it.

The storyline is definitely unique, however there is an absence of a central plot or it tends to stray from it. What kept me interested were the characters and their background stories. With the introduction of each character, there are minor plots that keep you interested, however it is usually resolved within the following episode. The storyline tends to feel like a collection of stories that are somewhat connected to ... a central plot however it feels mostly disconnected.

The characters are my reason for scoring this anime as an 8. Shino, the protagonist, is very childish however he has a sensitive and caring side that makes him very enjoyable. Sosuke, his childhood friend, maintains a calm and loyal attitude and is seen accompanying Shino mostly everywhere. He provides a balance to Shino, who would otherwise be a typical bratty protagonist. Hamaji is another childhood friend, but her presence in the story is not a prominent halfway through. She appear to be immature and demanding but later displays a level of maturity far greater than most of the characters, even the adult ones. She is a refreshing character, who although lacks a background story of her own, adds a silly and realistic feel to the story. She is a main character but acts mainly as supporting. These characters and the rest as they are introduced actually add to the story. Not only are their personalities in great variety and incredibly different from one another, but their stories are what truly make this series a great one.

The artwork is definitely done incredibly well. It is one of the first things that drew me in. The characters all have defining features that are immediately noticeable and match the multitude of personalities presented. The background is captured beautifully. Each district, each of the places that the characters visits are almost like a painted work of art. The artwork is the defining beauty of this series.

Hakkenden is a very good series if you don’t mind the lack of a central plot. Don’t fret though because it does keep you interested if you get into it. It does tend to leave you wondering what it all leads into, hopefully we will see a central plot in the second season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 1, 2013

Toucanbird

Mixed Feelings

Hakkenden: Eight Dogs of the East, But Went South Fast

This is one of the rare occasions where I'll say a series fascinated me but bored me to death at the same time. I'm not sure how that's possible, but Hakkenden managed to pull it off. This series is slightly misleading from the get go and it never really got off the ground.

This series is about a pair of friends, who consider themselves "brothers" that each possess a special power after their lives had been saved five years prior to the current plot. Shino Inuzuka is a boy/young man that possesses the sword Murasame in his ... body and takes the shape of a crow. However, as a result, his body does not age and he remains in the form of a 12-year-old boy. Sousuke Inukawa is a young man the same age that takes the form of a dog and it is later discovered in the series that there is a problem with his spirit (which I will not spoil). Together, they live with another girl they consider to be their sister named Hamaji, who also faced a tragedy from her past that brought her together with Shino and Sousuke. The three of them are taken in by Rio Saotome, a priest from the high church and while in his custody, Shino is on a mission to collect the eight beads that are the same as his and Sousuke's beads. Each bead has a different passage on it, what each means...is yet to be determined.

There isn't much I can say on the positive side of Hakkenden other than I found the premise to be pretty interesting and the music to be downright awesome. I'll admit, this series did keep me interested in what these "Eight Dogs of the East" were and what powers they shared. This series was captivating from its OPs and EDs, giving the impression that this series was going to have an interesting story AND excellent shounen elements...even if it is somewhat shounen-ai. I found the music to generally be pretty good, especially with its OPs and EDs. The OP is a song called God FATE performed by Faylan, who I consider to be one of my personal favorite J-pop artists in the industry right now. My only beef with the OP in regards to the song choice is that it does not fit the vibe of the series very well. Hakkenden is a very slow-paced, character driven series with not a whole lot of action. However, the upbeat song with flashy OP visuals gives this series the impression that its a fast-paced shounen series. While the OP is enjoyable, it's a bit of a false advertisement for what you're going to get with the series. The ED is actually one of the better EDs I've seen in a while. While it isn't visually stunning, it is pretty to look at with a pretty cool song to boot, "String of Pain" by Tetsuya Kakihara. It's actually kind of funny in retrospect when you realize the person singing the ED song is also doing the voice of Shino...and sounds almost nothing like him. The ED does a nice job showing off each character...but that's about all it accomplishes. Otherwise, the music by Hitomi Kuroishi is pretty solid and fits the theme of the series...which are a couple things I'll give her props for considering her most notable works outside of this series are Code Geass and Last Exile.

As for the negatives, when I said this series bored me to death, it was because there is almost no story progression whatsoever. If you just watched the first three episodes and the last three episodes, I'd almost be willing to bet you'd be able to pick up on everything that's happened throughout the series. It felt like this first season focused more on character introduction with some slight development around the two leads. It's a little hard to explain, but while I found the characters to be at least somewhat interesting, the pacing of this series didn't reveal a whole lot about them besides their exterior personalities. While yes, I'm aware each character that was introduced did come with their own internal monologue, the way this series was paced felt too slow and didn't really dwell on each character enough. It didn't seem to implement the supporting characters into the over-arcing story very well either. From a production standpoint, there wasn't anything very remarkable about the animation or voice acting. There are quite a few familiar seiyuu's, like the aforementioned Tetsuya Kakihara (Natsu from Fairy Tail, Gaul from Dog Days, Simon from Gurren Lagann), Satoshi Hino (Akito from Bakuman, Koukin from Ikkitousen, Yuji from Shakugan no Shana), and Hiroshi Kamiya (Yuzuru from Angel Beats, Koyomi from the Monogatari series). However, I wouldn't call their performances in this to be all that compelling.

All-in-all, I'm really not sure what's going on with Studio Deen. It seems like they keep pushing out mediocre series after mediocre series with a hidden gem here and there. Unfortunately, I have to put this series along with the blandly average. It's really a shame because this series did have a ton of potential. It had a very interesting plot and the production values are pretty good on the OP and ED, although a bit misleading. However, again this story seems to struggle due to its horrifically slow pace with a non-existent story progression. While I tend to enjoy animes that are more character driven than story driven, this was one of the few rare occasions where I felt it put a little too much focus on certain characters, not enough on others, and had moments where it felt like there was unnecessary padding. As far as a recommendation for this series, I'd have to say to wait until the 2nd season comes out this summer. The series does a nice job of introducing the characters but is extremely slow with its story progression. I just have the impression that this whole series (including 2nd season) would be easier to marathon than watch and wait for a 2nd season. If you enjoyed something like Katanagatari or shounen-ai animes, I might recommend this...but again, I'd say wait for the 2nd season to finish first to see if it's really something you'd want to invest your time into.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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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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