Hikari no Densetsu

I've found Hikari to be quite lovely, both the character and the series. It's incredibly simple and straightforward, yet it's one of those uniquely lifelike series that just warm your heart. Most of the time you'll be staring at cheerful Hikari and her big blue eyes.

The story does not solely focus on Hikari's rise in the world of rhythmic gymnastics or sports. It also touches the thematics of growing up, overcoming the many obstacles on the path to the final goal, of love, rivalry and many other themes that pest any young individual.

The production is sweet, which is typical of many 80's anime of shojo ... genre, when the latter was most popular. The music stands out in particular, with piano inserts which range from very lively, positive themes, to starkingly touching melodies. The range of songs in OST is quite narrow, but compositions like Maihime and Yume Miru Koroni are simply beautiful.

There aren't many series out there quite so sweet and charming as Hikari no Densetsu. Therefore it is sad it's been cut from initially planned 26 episodes to just 19, since, despite high general popularity in Japan, the TV ratings were poor. It never reached US markets, because there wasn't any interest in the thematics the series portrays.

I'm very glad that atleast people here in Europe took a high liking to Hikari - especially in France and Italy, where the manga was also translated. The French have released it at least 3 times - the last time in a dual audio DVD release. But their dub can't compare to the Italian one which is really heart felt and on par with original Japanese voice acting.

Even though the anime was cut abruptly , the original manga continues well beyond and has a slightly different development in the love and coupling department. Hikari continues to Seoul 1988 Olympic games. Actually, if it wasn't for the latter, Hikari may have never reached the foreign markets. Tatsunoko Productions have decided to release it outside Japan, since there was great interest in rhytmic gymnastics at the time.

You would think with all of the plot threads this story would be bogged down - but Hikari no Densetsu is an anime that can take this wild ride and actually make it work. The characters are super compelling and it's easy to fall in love with each and every one, so you want to know where all of their adventures are taking them.

Can we also just acknowledge the fact that this show portrays a HEALTHY competitive relationship between two women? We need more of this in storytelling.

The animation is also much better than one would expect from an 80's show, with super ... fluid motions during Hikari and Hazuki's routines. I felt like it had a sudden production jump towards then end, though. The sound is decent too, since music is a big subplot it has to be.

Overall, I loved every minute of it.

What I liked about Ajimu: Beach Story back when I watched it is how, despite being a romcom, it doesn’t feel like a typical entry in its genre, no overreactions, no too much melodrama, no fanservice despite taking place on a beach, no cast made up of teenagers with moe designs but rather ones that look like actual teenagers, and they were also far more sensible and mature than what I’m used to see in romance stories within this medium.

Hikari no Densetsu has pretty much the same positives, plus far better animation, a slightly more sophisticated soundtrack, and a far more original premise, as it ... mixes slice of life moments, with drama about a love polygon and a sport which isn’t portrayed much in anime, or entertainment in general honestly.

But maybe that has to do with how boring it becomes to watch it. Don’t get me wrong, the gymnastic performances in Hikari no Densetsu is one of its best aspects, as they are well animated, are accompanied by sweet piano pieces, which they dance to, thus making them part of the plot and not just background melodies, and the girls can mess everything up from one moment to another and even hurt their bodies, while there’s also some emphasis on how their emotional state can affect their results.

It also does the unthinkable of not having a protagonist who is either op or a complete underdog, while at the same time does not let her win all the time, quite the contrary in fact. But the problems lies in how repetitive it is, during most of the series you see the same performances and listen to the same music again and again and it gets tiresome after a while. Thankfully, they begin with balls and ribbons and add a little more stuff later on but still, the performances don’t change much, if at all. This becomes an issue when, after all the training, there's seemingly no change in them, for better or worse, and since the sport is never discussed on a technical level, I don't think many people watching it will realize how better the characters have become or how the scoring system works, outside of the very obvious mistakes everyone can notice.


But ultimately the best thing in the show are its characters and their interactions, they are not that memorable nor have the most unique personalities, but as I said they are pretty sensible and mature by anime standards. Despite the main two girls being rivals in both gymnastics and love, they support and admire each other as they have positive influences on one another, encouraging each other to make advances on the guy both of them love and making each other notice the best and weakest points in their performances on the carpet, thus serving as the inspiration for the other to try new figures and improve ther performances and scores.

And all of that is done without melodrama, no crying, no screaming, no fighting, no insulting each other, no keeping distances without talking for days or weeks. Just two girls who have a friendly competition on seeing who gets to the be on top of the tournaments they take part of and who gets to be with the guy at the end.

Also, whenever they lose or do poorly, they do not treat that as the end of the world, they see each instance as a new one with newer possibilities and chances to improve, get to know better competitors around the world and they are happy for the one who wins at the end, even if it’s not themselves.
This is a truly inspirational sport series, not one of those manipulative ones that feature people yelling and crying and being depressed for weeks over losing where the main characters always win at the end. But I also how to point that, towards the end, several performances are skipped almost completely.

The quality in visuals is not amazing but still pretty good for 1986 standards. There are definitely quaility drops in general shots, there are still images and there aren’t many impresive effects, but up close the characters look great despite Hikari having a generic 80s design while Hazuki looks like a generic bishoujo from the 70s, and the backgrounds are really well drawn. The motions are ok to the most part and well done during performances. As for the boys, Oishi also has a generic bishounen design for its time while Mao looks like a generic punk from that time, he almost looks like he belongs in Aishite Knight instead of here.

Speaking of Mao, he is the hardest character to like because, although his relationship with Oishi is similar to the one shared by the girls (although not as influential), he always seem to be pissed and angry and getting in random fights all the time. It gets particularly hard to root for him at all when he gets agressive with Hikari towards the final episodes. Well, at least he accepts things as they are without much bitching either.

He also brings the so much needed variety to the soundtrack, as he and his rock band have their own side story of becoming a little more famous, while the series also show how shady music records can be, but it’s all shown in a very shallow way, there’s just no way to believe someone would go that far to take a starting minor band out of the picture like this, especially when their songs are so mediocre. Seriously, I don’t know who Mao’s voice actor is but he is not very good at singing and is even worse an acting, not convincing at all, well atleast every song of them is somewhat part of the plot.

The rest of the cast do their job just fine, but the sound effects are definitely weak, aside from the bouncing ball, everything else just doesn’t sound right.

The sport part has a proper closure without the typical ending by episode 17 but this is when you notice the issues regarding the other genres, as Hazuki seemed to have a very serious ilness which is otherwise forgotten, every character has their own conflicts within their families but that is hardly shown, or explore, and is usually resolved in easy ways, even partially out of screen, several performances gets skipped almost completely and Oishi’s own side story is entirely disregarded.

And finally, when it comes to romance, there’s just not much in here, is the typical thing of the characters not confessing their love for a big amount of episodes, right before the series ends and leaves this aspect without a satisfactory closure. This partially has to do with the series not doing well and probably catching up with the manga before the it got finished several episodes earlier than the initial plan, but still, the last two episodes were by far the weakest, the romance had a very disappointing resolution and the series made a big time skip and had the characters saying how every one of them did afterwards by themselves, with still images.

Thus the series looks fine, sounds…alright, does a good job with its sport even when its presentation gets boring, and has lovable characters, but the slice of life bit is frankly uninteresting and the romance does not get much attention before being rushed and skipped completely towards the end, making it hard to openly recommend to anyone outside of people looking for something different, as it leaves the audience completely dissatisfied with its finale.