Hinako Note

Born and raised in the countryside of Japan, Hinako "Hina" Sakuragi gets anxious easily when she talks to new people—so much so that she resembles a stiff scarecrow. To overcome this, Hina hopes to get involved in theater, inspired by a play she saw during her school's field trip. So, Hina moves into the Hitotose Manor in the bustling city of Tokyo to study at Fujiyama High School, aspiring to join the school's renowned theater club.

But to Hina's dismay, she learns that Fujiyama High's theater club has been on a lengthy hiatus. Having already come to Tokyo and enrolled in the school, Hina is at a loss for what to do next. Sensing her disappointment and eagerness to learn theater, Chiaki Hagino, the landlady of Hitotose Manor, encourages Hina to create a troupe with the residents of Hitotose Manor as its members.

Hinako Note follows Hina as she begins a new life in Tokyo attending Fujiyama High while learning the ropes of theater with the support of her friends along the way.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Natsukawa, Kuina Main

Tomita, Miyu Japanese

Sakuragi, Hinako Main

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Hiiragi, Mayuki Main

Ogura, Yui Japanese

Nakajima, Yua Main

Kouno, Marika Japanese

Hagino, Chiaki Main

Toujou, Hisako Japanese

Kuroyanagi, Ruriko Supporting

Yoshida, Yuuri Japanese

Hinako's Mother Supporting

Satou, Kanami Japanese

Uncle Supporting

Chiaki no Chichi Supporting

Sasa, Kenta Japanese

Ruriko's Mother Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Tanaka, Shou Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Hayashi, Eisuke Producer

Kurosaki, Yuuki Producer

Reviews

Feb 19, 2022

BP2004

Recommended

Story: 7 | Art: 7 | Sound: 7 | Character: 8 | Enjoyment: 7.5 | Overall: 7

A cute, fun and short comedy anime about a girl with anxiety who moves away from her farm to try doing live acting performances to make herself more confident. She stays with a few other girls who become friends and has a great time with them all.

Someone else who reviewed Hinako Note mentioned how this is great to watch when you've had a tiring day and stuff, which I much agree with. It was also great for helping me calm down before going to sleep or getting ready to ... go out somewhere such as appointments and meetings.

There were some things that I thought weren't too necessary (some mildly perverted scenes lol), and just a couple times where they have some comedic scenes go on at wrong times or longer than it needed to.

Overall this was still fun to watch, it's nice for calming you down or just to see Hinako's first steps to getting over her anxiety while also having cute funny moments along the way. I don't know if I'd watch it again but either way it was still a nice show to put on when stressed.
-15/02/2022 (edited 19/02)

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 8, 2025

kxxyrui

Mixed Feelings

Overall Score: 5/10 (Average)
Language Difficulty: JLPT N3
Usefulness for Learners: 7/10 (Good)
Enjoyability: 4/10

An anime based around a shy girl who moves to the city to perform in drama arts in order to become less shy, however not entertaining for most consumers which is why the enjoyability rating was on the lower side.

For language learning, generally it is quite slow and clear, making it excellent for beginners who are looking to start their first anime. The speech also has mostly casual and polite speech, used by many female speakers and is very natural in comparison to native Japanese.
However, there is almost little to no slang used. Most ... sentences are also short with many repeated phrases.

After watching this anime, you'll definitely learn the words such as 演劇（theatre) and 芝居 (play) as they are repeated numeral times even if you don't look them up, you'll learn from context as it is repeated in so many scenarios. There isn't many hardcore theatre terms so you will be exposed to everyday words such as いつの間にか and phrases in 敬語 so you'll get a lot of listening practice with natural Japanese, making it a fairly good score for learners.

The grammar and vocabulary is quite basic, which I can even recommend for someone at a high JLPT N4 level.

However, I think the enjoyability rating is quite important when choosing an anime, as that score can determine how fun it is for you to continue watching or not and is almost the sole reason many watchers drop an anime or continue an anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 3, 2025

ggol

Not Recommended

Brief overview: One of the most annoying voice acting I have ever heard in my life

Story 5/10
Hinako spends most of her life in the countryside growing up and doing hard labour. One day she decided to move to Tokyo and transfer to a nearby high school where she lives. At the same time she is not used to being around lots of people and learn decided to learn the way of life from the people in the city. When she visited her high school one club caught her eye which is the theater club. She is excited to join but learns that the club is ... on a temporary hiatus and the club needs her help to reopen it. This is when the story of Hinako's note begins. It is a by-the-books story where cute girls do cute things and school life, but oh boy what ruins this series is the voice acting.

Characters 3/10
Now, I normally don't criticize the voice acting in anime but fuck, the voice of the characters in this series makes you want to rip your ear's out. They literally put almost all the characters in a high-pitched voice INCLUDING the main protagonist throughout the series it makes the characters sound like squirrels talking for 99% of the time. Those voices heavily impacted the anime, nothing against the voice actress, but whoever directed this holy shit they need to work on their hearing that's for sure. Apart from that the characters are fairly average and by the books standard for a slice-of-the-life anime.

Animation 8/10
The animation is very good for that time. They combined both standard and chibby styles together which makes the animation pretty cute most of the time. Apart from that there really isn't anything special about it.

TLDR
Overall, is a generic story of cute girls doing cute things and school life with a pretty adequate animation that has been put into it. However, the only thing that ruins this series is the voice acting. The voice actress is forced to voice in this ridiculous way of high pitched voice and they did it to more than one character which makes the anime very painful to watch all because of the voice.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Hinako Note Episode 6 Discussion Stark700 - May 12, 2017	35 replies	by Alkimia »» Apr 24, 8:50 PM
	Poll: Hinako Note Episode 5 Discussion Stark700 - May 5, 2017	33 replies	by Alkimia »» Apr 23, 11:01 PM
	Poll: Hinako Note Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Apr 28, 2017	57 replies	by Alkimia »» Apr 1, 6:06 PM
	Poll: Hinako Note Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Apr 21, 2017	54 replies	by Alkimia »» Mar 28, 4:34 PM
	Poll: Hinako Note Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Apr 14, 2017	58 replies	by Alkimia »» Mar 23, 1:30 PM