Hatenkou Yuugi

Hatenkou Yuugi is a 10-episode anime based on the ongoing manga with the same name. It aired between the 4th of January and the 7th of march, 2008.

The genres include: Comedy, Adventure, Drama.

Story
Hatenkou Yuugi begins pretty randomly, but with a lot of promise. The young woman Rahzel is thrown out of her home by her dad, because he wants her to travel and see the world. She quickly finds two traveling companions, Alzeid and Baroqueheat, and together travel from place to place, helping out people with different problems. Sounds good? Sure does, but during episodes you sometimes experience these random comedy moments that destroy the ... series (I say sometimes, but in some episodes, there are like 10 minutes wasted on horrible time-fills like these). Sometimes they're so bad I actually laugh at them, but usually they're just failed attempts at making the series more enjoyable. The series did pick up pace, but way too late to affect this score.

Animation
This series has beautiful character designs. Every character is detailed and nicely drawn. The thing that fails though, is the fact that sometimes the movement looks awkward (a character cheering will only move his/her arm and the rest of the body just stays still, like a mannequin), wasting the good designs. If you take a look at the backgrounds, they're all nicely drawn, and look good. Too bad that the quality drops loads of times and negatively affect the series.

Sound
The far best aspect of the series. The voice actors did a great job in this series. Since you can't really rely on body language in this series, the VA's all helped. Especially the voice actors for Rahzel(Kobayashi Sanae) and Alzeid(Sakurai Takahiro) were the best of the bunch. The OP and ED were both very good and fitting of the series, and one of my favorite voice actors(Koyasu Takehito) had a guest role.

Character
The only interesting characters are the main trio, Rahzel, Alzeid and Baroqueheat. Other than that, you just have a lot of characters, simply used as plot-devices, and even though there's only just three main characters, they hardly get any development, except for the occasional hints of romance. Though I have to admit, that the main trio are all good characters.

Enjoyment
I'll be honest, I did not enjoy this series very much. Only 3 out of 10 episodes were good, and the rest were boring or worse. As I said earlier, there are many totally random events during the series. Sure, I like randomness, as long as it's kept to a certain level, but since these random events n-e-v-e-r have anything to do with the actual story going on, they're just stupid and unnecessary.

Overall: 6/10
I will not recommend this series to anyone. Do yourself a favor, and stay away from this, unless that you really like the things I hated with this series.

I hope you found my review helpful, and if you didn't, please tell me why, so I can improve myself until next time.

This is the first anime I've ever seen that I would call random. I think the word random is overused when describing many shows but this show is random - random in a funny and fun way, but random none the less. Yes, I know the reading the manga would probably make it less random but that itsn't the point.

What the MAL description fails to convey is that the show is really just ten episodes of following a trio of dysfunctional people on a journey. It definitely suffers from a lack of plot, but it redeems itself because dysfunctional people on a ... semi-random journey can be really funny (the reason I stuck with it and suggest you do as well).

The journey has some vauge goals like revenge or finding something, but the goals are not the focus of the show - not that there is a focus to it aside from the before mentioned journey and the people who are on it. The themes of the episodes are to repetitive - just variations on Rahzel seeing and child in need and saving him/her with the help of Alzeid and Heat again and again and again. The story is poorly developed and ends up being disjointed - partly because it is so episodic. Many good shows are episodic in nature, but in this one the individual episodes rarely connected to each other at all and there is no transition between them e.g. random.This lack of buildup leaves the show with very little tension and almost no climax. Major parts of the story are never explained (for example how or why people can use magic is never addressed), although I assume the manga which I haven't read contains more detailed explanations. The show proceeds as if there is no gaping hole and you have the needed information to understand what's going on which makes it rather confusing at points. Several times I was left wondering either what the heck is going on or why on earth would this be happening.

The characters are amusing if not not well developed, and their banter will keep you laughing. Rahzel comes dangerously close to just being annoying -privileged 14 year old girl need I say more (?), but stays on the likable side by a small margin. Alzeid is a pretty great character, and really adds to the humor. The dialog is pretty fast paced and witty which is the biggest redeeming quality of the show. The lack of charter development is a little problematic, but somehow it mostly makes them seem disgruntled which adds to the humor of the show.The people introduced in each episode mostly do not have any real connection to the main characters and are only occasionally used to illuminate something about the main characters past, so in the end you have a random assortment of people who have not contributed to the plot. You find out very little about the main charters' pasts or even why they are traveling together which is kind of ridiculous.

As far as the art and music is concerned it's nothing special but overall not bad. The character designs are fairly generic and a little goofy. The op and ed are pretty bad.

While the lack of explanation and development of the plot (if you want to argue there is one) can be frustrating, I still enjoyed the show mainly for its humor and wit. It's kind of a silly anime but may prove to be a fun watch.

I really enjoyed this series, until i got to the ending. In the end, instead of feeling satisfied with the conclusion, i was left with more questions. The series ends as if theres a sequel that will resolve some problems concerning two of the main characters and introduce a character that popped out a quite a bit, seemed important to the anime, but in the end was never introduced. Unfortunately, there is no sequel. Also, thanks to that character that popped out alot, it felt as if there were two seperate storylines. While one of the storyline was obvious, the other was hinted everytime that ... certain character came out.
So yeah, I really liked it, mainly because the characters were great, but I hated being left with questions.

Hatenkou Yuugi is NOT the anime you should be watching if you want a good, thorough plot, and a riveting experience. This is an anime that you go to if you want to waste three or so hours of your life and not feel too bad afterwards.

Harsh as that sounds, let me say upfront that I do want to recommend this anime. Maybe because of their budgeting or whatever, but this anime chooses its battles very wisely. In the first half (episodes 1-4) the anime introduces its characters haphazardly and its cliche plots even more haphazardly. As such, the anime comes off as satirical and ... self-depreciating without actually aiming to be a parody (like Gintama). That satire, paired with the characters' hurried introduction and banter, gives the anime humor where none should be.

The second half of the anime (episodes 5-10) has a drastically different format from the first: two episodes make up one convoluted story, while the following episode--sometimes painfully--is unrelated to it and given a lighter tone. We are granted more insight about the characters, but not much. In fact, I was mistaken about one of the characters' relationship in the beginning until more clarification is given in later episodes.

The reason why that's important is because Hatenkou Yuugi thrives in simplicity. The simpler the story, the wittier the story is allowed to be. For how rushed the characters were in the beginning, we're given a superficial view of their relationship and thus are at least able to follow along. For the more convoluted episodes later on, it becomes terribly obvious how crammed and ill-paced the story is, even going as far as to skip transitional scenes that could have made it emotionally impactful.

There's also the ending, which...I really shouldn't have expected a decent ending from an anime with only 10 episodes. Just like its opening, it ends as hurried as it starts, and even worse, it introduces characters and plot points that will never be expanded on. I feel strongly encouraged to read the manga, but from what I've seen from some JP fans on the newest and concluding volume, it might be better to stick with the anime, weaknesses and all.

Conclusion: With all that said, Hatenkou Yuugi was an extremely enjoyable watch. Its shining points is definitely the main characters, their (ambiguously polygamous-but-not-quite) relationship, and the anime's self-depreciation. Each character, while filling a certain "trope", has little specks here and there that might keep your interest. Overall, the anime snatches more than it gives back, but does its best to entertain you along the way.