Hanoka

I'm not really sure what I expected from this show initially. I'm all for new techniques used in any kind of context, and given that this Anime series had been animated entirely in Flash format, I thought of it as perhaps something exciting, something catching. Also, the episodes were short...meaning I wouldn't have to endure THAT much if it proved to not be worth my time. :-J So, how did my opinion turn out?

Story: 3/10
Rehash, rehash, rehash. Well, it's a war between humans and large ferocious aliens, and special superpowered units have been deployed to aid the humans in the war. Hanoka is one of ... these - a girl with impossible strength a'la Saikano, who is teamed up with a boy (and the entire series through, I thought this was a girl) to take on this alien threat. Throughout the show, we see the usual, predictable scenes such as "I'll fight to protect you", "he gave me a reason to live", and "raagh you fatally injured him and now my powers increased tenfold because of my emotional distress". The originality of the show is close to zero, and since it's so short it skips from point to point making every confrontation end almost anticlimactically. No, if it's a proper story you're looking for, then this isn't it.

Animation: 5/10
It's a valid attempt, but in the end, Flash is Flash, and it's painfully obvious that it's not one of the better choices for a TV show.
...that's really all I can figure to say. Maybe you understand what I mean.

Sound: 7/10
Here's one of the more decent points of the show, what with the sound effects, the voices and the music. It blends together neatly, the sound is crisp, and the music is really quite fitting to every aspect it's played. What racks down on this score the most, though, is the fact that - GOD - is Hanoka whiny...do not want those kind of voices. No, definitely not.

Character: 4/10
As I said...there's the rehashing. There are the heroes, the hero supporters, the neutrals, the evil masterminds and the evil masterminds' braindead soldier troops...and none of them really stands out in any way at all. Simply put, it's quite hard to feel attached to any single one of them, because they act so properly in their stereotypes and don't really go out to be very unique.

Enjoyment: 2/10
I was curious to see how they'd pull off a series in Flash, but it feels like that was the sole purpose of the show - get a Flash series out, never mind the story or the characters. No sir, didn't get much enjoyment out of this one...I just felt embarrassed watching it.

So that's what it boils down to. Note that my opinion isn't veto in any way :-P, but my recommendation is such - don't bother with this one. It just wasn't worth the time (*cough* *has more free time than a tombed mummy*) or the braincells sacrificed to delve into it.

Hanoka is a series that proudly proclaims that it was the first TV anime series ever made solely using flash animation. And it's a mess! For starters, the animation is incredibly inconsistent and looks really jarring and awkward most of the time with action sequences that lack any kind of flow and having character designs that look off model most of the time. Now, considering the year this show came out in and if it were an independent project produced by one guy I would give it a pass. It was made during the Newgrounds era when many talented animators were beginning to emerge in ... the case of Egoraptor and the Eddsworld series. Eddsworld, in particular, was around two years into it's run when this show came out and the flash animation there, which was produced by one guy, is still a ton better and more consistent than this piece of aids. You could argue that it was the best the staff were capable of at the time with flash so therefore this holds no water but it still doesn't make the show any less visually unappealing or better. How the hell this got approved for television is way beyond me, even more so when it aired in 2006, a year that is considered to be one of the greatest years in anime as a whole which makes this piece of trash feel even more trite.

Even if the animation were good it still wouldn't have made any difference since the script is bad. While it is MUCH more consistent in its writing than the previous shows I have reviewed thus far and actually does make coherent sense it's still nothing to write home about. The narrative is as cliche as they come revolving around a war between humans and ferocious alien monsters. In order to battle against these creatures, humans have developed super-humans to fight against these aliens and the series focuses on one of these super-humans called Hanako. The rest of the show is a series of different missions and the such involving Hanoka and her partner and that's pretty much it. The plot never develops and explores any deeper themes, the characters don't go through any arcs and the story remains stagnant throughout. It spews out some of the most generic liners too ranging from "I'll do anything to protect you" to "He is my world". This is something you have seen before on a much better level somewhere else and I always cringe at the delivery of lines of this nature.

Each episode is only about three minutes in length which works terribly against the show's narrative since it is not given nearly enough time to properly flesh out characters and the setting. The aliens are generic in design and are even less memorable than the Gastrea in Black Bullet and the fights feel disjointed and boring leading up to an AWFUL conclusion. They do hint at the theme of discrimination between the people like Hanoka and the regular humans but it comes across as forced and forgettable as there is no time invested in this idea and comes across as victimising just for the sake of victimising. Hanoka herself is such a bland and boring character that I would have forgotten who she even was if the title of the series didn't share her name.

The thing about this show is that it's just so boring. It's nowhere near as bad as Dark Cat mind you but it's also nowhere near the absurd levels of Genocyber. The show is as interesting as watching a guy cut his own fingernails. There is nothing to care for nor get too angry about either. Hanoka is just a 'thing'. It's bad, sure, but doesn't leave you with anything by the time you're done watching it. Should I praise it for being able to end without me wanting to kill myself or critique it for being so lazy and forgettable? It's hard to pinpoint what the aim of this anime was and just what the hell it was trying to achieve but when you get down to it, it's a pile of trash.

(Part of LIQfilms 12 Days of Christmas - Day 4)

-Story-

The story in Hanoka is a jumbled up mess and it is really incoherent. It is also a stereotypical story about a war between humans and aliens over a planet. There were a million moments in which the story followed cliches to the letter. There is minimal originality in this story. Also the ending has got to be the worst ending I have ever seen to an anime series. Terrible does not even begin to describe Hanoka.

-Animation-

Hanoka was the very first full fledge anime series to be animated completely in Flash. This is a terrible mistake. The flash makes the animation look unnatural, especially when ... viewing the characters. The faces and heads do not look right at all, and the faces show no expression on them what so ever. I do applaud the makers for trying flash, but it appears that the technology has come no where close to where it needs to be to make it worth while.

-Characters-

The characters in Hanoka were highly stereotypical and they were bland. The characters had no originality to them at all. The main male character was gender neutral, and I thought that he was a girl until I found out he was a boy from a third party source. The characters have no depth to them.

-Overall-

Hanoka is a terrible waste of your precious free time. Spend it in a better way, like stabbing yourself with a dull spoon.

College animation enthusiast meets anime and ends up forgetting everything they were taught. This basically sums up the show.

Hanoka is a failure in the true sense of the word. Everything it could have done right was done horrendously wrong. Even fanmade animations for horrendous PS1 games, whipped up in an hour or so, have something redeemable about them. Not this one though.

The story is beyond incoherent - it's just utter nonsense. Nothing in the show is meant to make sense. Everything good about the narrative could probably be summed up in a singular sentence. And, even then, it would be the most random sentence ever ... constructed. The music and voice acting sound like they were made by the worst vocaloid in existence. It could have been acceptable had there been some improvement in just the sound mixing, but that's too much to ask apparently. Animation in the show was just as bad : each and every character is wobbling like the stereotypical NPC you see in a video game, and even the "fights" are lackluster.

The people behind this, if given a chance, could probably be great animators. However, this first avenue of artistic expression feels like nobody told them that it would be a bad idea to release your first draft as an official anime.

Hanoka might not have reached the infamy of other terrible anime such as Skelter+Heaven, Abunai Sisters, or Mars of Destruction, but that’s because this isn’t quite as bad as those other anime. It’s still not good, it’s just not as bad, which is the best compliment that I can give it.

What little story there is takes place in an indeterminate year far off into the future on planet called Tokinea, where human beings only known as “Inhabitants of the Stars” are attacking Humans on a planet called Tokinea, accusing them of polluting the planet with their technology. Humans have created “Demon Gods”, powerful weapons used ... to destroy the Inhabitants of the Stars. This series focus’ on “Demon God 7”, known as Hanoka, and the boy who she is teamed up with, as they struggle to fight against the Inhabitants of the Stars.

This premise for this series is pretty good, but it's unfortunately hampered by the execution of literally everything else, and the problems start pretty much immediately.

Each episode is roughly 5 minutes long at most, and the OP for each episode is 90 seconds long. More than one fifth of each episode is purely the opening. If it was 10 seconds, maybe 15 to 20, there wouldn't be much of a problem, and it would give the plot room to breath while filling out the same amount of time, and every time I have to skip it, it subconsciously feels like I'm skipping huge chunks of an episode.

And this brings it us to the series's biggest problem, the whole thing feels like the footnotes of a 12-episode series. There is clearly is the hint of a plot and characters, but the series is way too short to give either the proper depth they need to be even remotely fleshed out, let alone entertaining or interesting. On top of that, the series has a recap episode. The whole series is barely long enough for just one episode of a regular series, and it has a recap episode just over half way through the series. Just why?

The animation isn't much better, and is the highlight of the series. Released in 2006, Hanoka makes the big claim that it's the first anime to be fully animated in Adobe Flash, and it kinda shows. While I've seen uglier animation and art, but Hanoka is still now winning any awards for it's animation.

And it's not like flash wasn't being used at the time for animation, just look at a sites like 'Newgrounds', which started in 1995, 'Cool Math Games', which started in 1997, and 'Miniclip', which started in 2001, a whole 4 years before Hanoka's release. A lot of amatuer animators were doing producing animation than this supposedly professional studio, all while using an animation software known for being hard to work with.

I could have easily gone onto the internet and within a couple of minutes found both animated series and video games with better animation done by relative unknowns that were better quality than Hanoka. Here, let me give some examples:

-Broken Saints (2001 to 2003)
-Foamy The Squirrel (Started 2003)
-Alien Hominid Game Protoyped (2003)
-Salad Fingers (Started 2004)
-Charlie the Unicorn (2005)
-The Ultimate Showdown (2005)

The DVD actually comes with a couple of touch ups, such as a new and extended scenes as well as some re-recorded and new dialogue that add a tiny bit more plot to the whole thing. The DVD even comes with a prologue and an epilogue that changes the whole resolution to the show, so I guess if you're going to check this out, the DVD is probably the version to go with, but good luck finding it.

So the team behind it knew that they had a bit of a flop on their hands, and they tried their best to make it better for the home version, but it didn't work out for them.

Unfortunately, due to Aruji Morino's (the creator of this series) failing health, the series didn't end up the way he wanted, and even he is unhappy with the final product. Maybe someone can pick this up and make a fully fledged series so it could see it's full potential, but I doubt that is ever going to happen.

Hanoka was a valiant effort into making something big with flash, but unfortunately it couldn't compete with it's competition, which was often free and better, and to add insult to injury, was done by people doing it as their hobby.

As it stands, I can't recommend this to anyone since it's not very good and not even entertaining in the so-bad-its-good way. Maybe it like watching and collecting niche and obscure anime that might even have something mildly noteworth about it, like the fact that this is the first fully animated anime is Adobe Flash, this one is entirely skippable.

This anime lowkey reminds me of that one meme that's like: "Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars I could really use a wish right now wish right now" with twilight sparkle and that bird (I forgot the name).

It is horrible. Look up the first episode and you will see. I was laughing my ass off during the intro because it look like something my 9 year old sister would make. Please send help and eye bleach, because it is terrible. Really.

The Characters are fine, but very generic and have absolutely no personality, the sound and voice acting actually ... aren't as horrible as expected, but the art...

The story is bad too. It reminds me of anime star wars downgraded by 1000 percent, and I was bored quickly after I got over the bad animation and drawing. Never watch this.

Terrible! I tried to find the worst anime I could to see just how bad it could get, and I "wasn't disappointed".

I watched the first three episodes and loathed every moment. I was constantly tempted to stop. Eventually I got sick of it and watched the last episode to see how it ended. It took all of 30 seconds to figure out what happened between episode 3 and episode 12 the writing was so predictable. The series skipped over fight scenes frequently, even at the climax (if you can call it that).

The visuals of this series are awful and made me just want to close ... my eyes. The animation is at best wonky. Even the characters' facial expressions look weird.

The best part of this was its music which was at best an average experience. The voice acting was okay and the sound effects were listenable. Nothing fancy here.

The characters were boring and irritating. Most of them were clichés with nothing that stood out. They all lacked any interest and despite attempts at building some back story I couldn't care less about these characters.

This anime is not enjoyable! It's eye and brain torture... Show it to your most hated enemies and they might just claw their own eyes out.

Overall this show is very difficult to watch and has little reason to exist. If you like challenging games just try and watch it the whole way through.

Hanoka is not good. It was made in flash by a single person but that doesn't forgive some of its errors. This aired on television. This should have just been uploaded on to some Japanese New Grounds website or something because the quality of this anime is bad in almost every aspect.

I've watched the entire 12 episodes PLUS the "directors cut" versions of episodes 1, 2, and 4. The directors cut versions are slightly better (especially for episode 1) but they are still not good... at all.

The story is the best part of this anime. It's not amazing but it's not the worst thing ever ... and you can see that there's a decent idea behind it. It's just not executed very well, which I will get into later.

The voice acting is okay. Hanoka herself has a pretty good voice actors but everyone else is pretty mediocre or bad. The sound design is... okay for what what it is.

The animation is not good. This much is obvious. It's just bad. Ugly with bad animations. The explosions look okay. Everything else looks like crap especially the human characters.

My biggest issue with this anime is the terrible pacing. I get it. Every episode is "5 minutes" but that doesn't excuse this issue. First I'll start by saying that most episodes are actually under 4 minutes. Yes, MAL says every episode is 5 minutes but I believe there are only 3 episodes that are 5 minutes or more (with episode 12 being nearly 7 minutes). This is made even worse when you consider that every single episode starts with an OP that is 1 minute and 30 seconds long. That's about 33% of the runtime of the entire anime! And on top of that every episode starts by repeating 30 seconds of the previous episode before getting into the episode proper. This all combines to make a fast paced mess of an anime that has no time to breathe or make sense. Things happen rapidly and nonsensically throughout the anime making it very difficult to follow or take seriously at times.

Yes every episode is very short but the OP and recaps make the episodes even shorter and the premise of the anime is much too grand for under an hour of story telling.

Not good. 3/10

tbh this is better then other stuff i have seen there a story even tho its so basic and predictable other then that its the first flash animation so that was a big mistake

story basic

main charterers the garbage cliche personality

and dont get me started on the ending

final thoughts i think its bad really bad only reason i give it a 2 is cuz at lest the story u can some what make since of

tbh this is better then other stuff i have seen there a story even tho its so basic and predictable other then that its the first ... flash animation so that was a big mistake

story basic

main charterers the garbage cliche personality

and dont get me started on the ending

final thoughts i think its bad really bad only reason i give it a 2 is cuz at lest the story u can some what make since of

Hanoka itself wasn't just a big middle finger to the flash animation industry, it was a massive kick in the balls followed by an bunch of decapitated heads in toxic ooze!, the entire series of Hanoka is just one long silence scene of the creating going to "hey look at this sci-fi!, ooooooh!". With the characters being on par of having an "not-to-be-swallowed" look, and the voice acting is flavourless as a dried up ketchup and half the time, the creators tries to capitalize on the under 10's who didn't heard of Evangelion before! the story is, in the planet Tokinea the indigenous bionic alien ... race of Hoshi No Tami tries to fight for their rights of protecting their planets against the evil humans and control wildlife. Honestly, i kinda find this concept of wildlife in a alien planet very creative and it gives an Avatar flashbacks from it, but nothing can top this hideous mess that is that 2 cent flash animation!