Haikara-san ga Tooru Movie 1: Benio, Hana no 17-sai

I watched this movie at the Akibapass Festival in Frankfurt, Germany. First of all, I have to say that I'm not familiar with the original source (published from 1975 to 1979) or the older anime series, which aired from 1978 to 1979. As it is I cannot compare it to these works and watched it completely unaffected and without any previous knowledge, besides the information which has been included in the trailer. Though as it is written on the manga source page, Haikara-san ga Tooru won the first Kodansha Manga Award for shoujo in 1977, so likely it has been very good as well.

The ... story is put-together enjoyable and the art of storytelling has been made in a very lovely way. The transition between different scenes was often in such a smooth way that you just had to smile at how it was done. As the genre allocation of this anime says Comedy, Historical, Romance, and Shoujo, you get exactly that. I laughed or smiled a lot, while I was watching this movie and as I experienced it at the cinema I was surely not the only one with this expression aka impression of this movie. The historical aspects are also depicted quite well and one or the other scene reminded me of pictures I've seen before (in preparation for a presentation I made) about this era. Also, I haven't seen such a pure romance shoujo for a while, which means some scenes have been worked out almost unrealistically perfect or smooth. But still very enjoyable and sweet. For sure something recommendable for romanticists.

The art was clean, consistent and very lovely. I wouldn't describe it as the most artistic outstanding work ever, but it really was enjoyable. As I've seen this movie only once yet, I cannot further go into detail with this point.

The creators have taken great care of this production. The character design and composition also make it very enjoyable.

As it is Part 1 out of two movies, the story is not yet concluded but the first movie is in its own a great work and is not only the introduction to a bigger following story.
(Like some other multi-part movies have been created.)

This underrated movie is a half-gem with the first half being real and the second half being fake. The first movie was a great movie but it lost all of its potentials during the second movie. In short - they destroyed their own unique story with cheesy Shoujo Drama.

This is like when you fall in love with a girl, dated, but then before you fucked her you somehow realized that she has aids.

It's also quite a bit of a surprise that this strikes a resemblance to Violet Evergarden. It is set in a historical war, there's the "lost the one you loved" cliche, ... and so forth. The fact that this movie messed up triggers me so bad, I had to imagine that it didn't even exist.

If you're looking for a historical Shoujo "Drama" then this might be just for you. It's good but you must be prepared for the second movie because that one is dogshit.

p.s. I gave this 10/10 because I'm assuming that the second movie doesn't exist.

I watched both the Haikara-san ga Tooru movies, also known as Here Comes Miss Modern. Here are my thoughts:

This anime is about a tomboy who is pressured into an arranged marriage with a half-jap soldier in the Japan army. The story takes place during the first couple decades of the 20th century and has a socio-historic flavour that some viewers may find appealing. It involves a lot of social issues in Taisho-era Japan, mainly involving female gender roles. It is somewhat interesting from a sociological perspective, although the plot velocity and runtime constraints limit the depth to which these themes could be explored. Even so, ... someone interested in historical Japanese society might appreciate this anime. These movies also incorporate the political nature of marriage in the writing – I found this to be refreshing, as the typically overly romanticized nature of marriage in fiction often doesn't reflect reality. I appreciated this lifelike treatment of marriage, and it meshed well with the other social themes. That said, romance is still a dominant motif in this anime, as is the relationship drama that comes along with it.

This feels like a shoujo-demographic anime, albeit not exclusively so. As you might assume from the title, the story focuses very much on the female MC. The primary male love interest lacks character depth – he's really underdeveloped. In fact the entire cast is tropey in characterization, but I don't think that could have been avoided given the runtime. The story actually reminded me of theatrical works like Shakespeare in the sense that it involved themes such as love and loss, love polygons, tragedy and reunification; it was all quite reminiscent of theatrical writing. Haikara-san ga Tooru feels like it could be a stage play instead of movie anime. Ironically however, I found the scriptwriting itself poor – many scenes in this could have been enhanced by a better script.

Similarly to theatrical writing, the story of Haikara-san ga Tooru demands a lot of suspension of disbelief. It is filled with convenient coincidences used to move the plot along and it felt crude and hamfisted as a result. The second movie in particular is quite bad in this regard and I enjoyed it less than the first. I also found the pacing of the first movie better calibrated than the second.

There are a lot of scenes in which the boorish tomboy MC is placed into situations where elegance and sophistication are expected of her – these scenes are funny and I enjoyed watching them. The sidekick ruffian henchman character (Ushigorou) also has some funny moments. Unfortunately the other sidekick character (Ranmaru), a feminine-boy childhood friend, is kind of annoying.

The visual art style and animation quality are rather lackluster. The visuals are on par with what I'd expect from a modest-budget TV anime – they're nothing special. The character designs are mildly retro shoujo-manga-like. In fact, overall this anime feels retro – if you told me it were 15 years older than its actual production year, I might have believed you. Regardless, the visuals overall feel low quality and fairly amateurish. However, the soundtrack does have some nice orchestral music. Conversely, the voice acting is consistently mediocre for the entire cast, in my opinion.


My ratings for the Haikara-san ga Tooru movies are as follows:
Movie 1 (Benio, Hana no 17-sai): 5/10
Movie 2 (Hana no Tokyo Dai Roman): 4/10

The writing of the second movie is worse than the first, mainly due to forced coincidences in the storyline. Furthermore, many scenes in these movies suffer from weak scriptwriting coupled with underwhelming voice acting. The visuals are lacking the quality I'd expect from movies made in the late 2010s, however the soundtrack is decent and worth checking out if you like classical/orchestral-type stuff. Some viewers may appreciate the socio-historic themes of these movies.

I think that in general a female audience is more likely to enjoy these movies; they kind of felt like Taisho chick flicks.

For the record, I have never seen the original anime adaptation released in the 70s.

These movies reminded me of Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni, in that they are set in a similar time period and deal with similar social themes (i.e. female gender roles in historical militaristic Japan).