Stop!! Hibari-kun!

When i first starting watching this anime. I had my doubts about the art seeing as it was made quite a while ago but i gave it a shot and wasn't disappointed.

The story was great though i didn't feel as though it had a real plot maybe a collection of episodes instead. It revolves around a teenaged Kohsuka who has now moved in the home of his mother's friend, because she had died a while back. Its just so happens that the Yakuza family has four beautiful daughters, but the one daughter, Hibari, thats more beautiful than the rest is actually a boy. Hibari ... just can't keep his hands off Kohsuka and so their crazy yet happy lives go on.

Art was good nothing spectacular or anything but back then it was considered great.If this show was to get a makeover to 2009 artist redoing the character design it would definitly be a one hitter.

The music was okay and can get annoying sometimes. Though there is a different song for a situation so you know when something is coming on based on the music playing.

The characters were the best part of the whole series. Hibari was the most unique and one of a kind with his interactions with everyone in the show. Hibari also reminded me of Jun watarase of Happiness so for those who love jun should definintly check out this anime.

Overall i enjoyed this series very much. It had the perfect combination of romance, comedy and genderbender and was a joy to watch.

Very dated.

Allthough I liked the animation and the characters a lot (very 1990), and some of the humor is pretty well written, the main premise would be a disgrace these days.

This isn't a spoiler, but the main running joke is transphobia. Allthough the crossdressing boy (trans girl) is treated as a hero with basically no flaws (she's awesome!), what goes for funny in every episode is how people are scared/think it's weird/diislike that part of her, and that's kind of hard to swollow these days, unless you're on the wrong side of history and decency.

The other jokes are good, though, it's not a barf fest, ... but treat what I wrote as a trigger warning if you have a hard time with that kind of thing.

If Hibari wasn't awesome, I'd give this a 1, but because she is, I give it a 5.

As a trans lady living in 2021, when I heard about Stop Hibari-kun, I had to watch. Not gonna lie, this series is one of the more complicated (for me) animes I've watched yet. It was equal parts awesome and dreadful.

As far as characters go, Hibari-chan is amazing. She's everything a trans girl aspires to be and more. She reminded me so much of our generation today. My character rating for this review is ONLY of Hibari. Every other character deserves a 3 or below.

Literally everyone else in the series was either passively transphobic or outright racist (including Hibari's father and the ... family bodyguard). I was not expecting to see the racism and that was very hard to look past when looking at the series as a whole. Also, I kept hoping I'd see a payoff in the final episode of her family finally acknowledging she is a girl. That didn't happen, this was made in 1982. The director may have been an egg and this was his attempt at reconciling that, idk. I rated the overall story for this review, as a 3. Only because it felt like the entire point of the series was transphobia.

I gave it a MAL rating of 6, but only because of Hibari. Otherwise I'd probably rate it a 3 or 4 due to the problematic nature of the other characters.

I wish a sequel would come out showing Hibari a few years later, who is now goth, and how she was traumatized by her racist family and upbringing. I would watch the hell out of that.

If you are strongly bothered (like most of us) by racism and transphobia.. I'd pass on the show. I watched it for um, science, but would never recommend it.

|TL;DR|
Stop!! Hibari-kun! has an interesting and unique premise, and a good approach to it, for 1982. The humor is absurd and full of references to pop-culture like other gag-manga of the time, which would be a positive aspect if it didn't overwhelmed the show, trampling over possibilities to focus on varied characters and, specially, develop *anything* of the relationship between the MC and Hibari, which stays limited to funny skits until the last episode. Which is specially bad since this is not a short anime, having 35 episodes.

|Review|
Stop!! Hibari-kun! premise is quite cool (considering this is the 80's Japanese zeitgeist): the MC suddenly has to ... live in the house of a (comical) Yakuza boss that lives with his 4 daughters: however, one of them, Hibari, the most beautiful one, is actually a boy.

Hibari is labeled as a "crossdresser" in the series, though it actually may be transgenderism by today's standards. The main premise is that even though Hibari is a "pervert" (that's how his father calls him), he is so beautiful and awesome that people just have to accept him the way he is. He acts like a girl and nobody outside the family knows he's a boy. The MC of course rapidly falls in love with him (not knowing he's a boy), and when he discovers Hibari's gender he tries to negate it. Throughout the series he keeps trying to convince himself that he's not attracted to him, even though he definitely is, and Hibari always teases and flirts with him knowing this.

Again, considering the spirit of the time, this is actually a positive approach into the subject. This is a comedy anime after all, and nothing is taken seriously. And this may also be the biggest flaw of the anime: even with interesting characters, like Hibari's other sisters, the classmates at school, and a cast of other comical yakuza employed by the family, I felt these characters weren't explored how they should, considering this is an 35 episode anime.

Most episodes just consist of random comedy situations with a fair dose of surrealism and references to pop-culture inspired greatly by other gag-manga of the time, like Dr. Slump. I'm a great fan of this type of humor, but it starts getting really repetitive, and even boring, since the show in going on, and nothing is actually happening. Some characters receive more episodes focused on them, while others, for some unexplainable reason, are almost ignored. It's really unbalanced.

And this is specially worse considering Hibari and his relationship with the MC is basically *never* developed in *any* way. Things always fall to shallow comedy skits of Hibari flirting with the MC and he getting flustered or embarrassed, until the very last episode. Actually, the last episode happens just like any other episode, like the show was abruptly cut in half. It makes you feel there was a lot of wasted potential here, as a whole.

Probably the story that I saw with the most quantity of subtle, serious sub-subjects while still going all out on a "comedy" running gag show! Which (the "comedy" running gag show) is obviously a materialization of the two main characters trying to cure themselves from inner frustations of the rejection of what they are, but that are stuck in facing the crude reality that people around are stuck in repressive stereotypes that don't want to evolve and care around. So why would they care about living along the decorum while everybody are being socially decided to be worst?! I think this the message of this ... very descriptive masterpiece series! Insanely great from the start until the last of the 35 episodes as even the musics are real bangers.

Stop! Hibari-kun has a great premise revolving around an LGBT character (a crossdresser), and that aspect of it works out great. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else works against the show's premise. Disregarding the low-quality art style of the series, Hibari and Kosaku are great characters, and it would've been fine to leave it at just that; however, instead, Hibari is given three sisters and a variety of token cast members which seek to insert "funny" jokes. Unfortunately, the jokes and even plots rarely ever make sense. There's a continuous "running gag" about Hibari's father seeing a white alligator in his dreams and many jokes seem ... to feature cutaway fantasies so poorly constructed it's sometimes hard to tell what's actually happening, or how it was even meant to be a joke. For instance, in episode 9, the coach is talking to some kids about respecting nature, and out of nowhere, they become Native American caricatures speaking gibberish for a few seconds and revert to the scene afterward. Many jokes are also about guns, violence, Kosaku not liking Hibari (which oddly, only occasionally works to the show's benefit), and Hibari's dad almost dying/having a serious medical condition after overreacting. However, this isn't what does the show in, at least for me: all of these things, while not passable, would ordinarily not be a deal-breaker. No, instead it's the fact that the series relies on stereotypes to progress not only its characters, but the episodes themselves. At least one episode is dedicated to finding a way to make Hibari more manly, and he almost gets sexually assaulted by the end of the episode. Another example would be Hibari emotionally manipulating his own sister and bribing a little boy to go on a date with him...without even telling the boy of his true identity. Sadly, despite the show's great LGBT lead, I can only give it a 3/10. It's a shame, this type of show had great potential, especially for its era.