Hinamatsuri

While reveling in the successful clinching of a prized vase for his collection, Yoshifumi Nitta, a yakuza member, is rudely interrupted when a large, peculiar capsule suddenly materializes and falls on his head. He opens the capsule to reveal a young, blue-haired girl, who doesn't divulge anything about herself but her name—Hina—and the fact that she possesses immense powers. As if things couldn't get any worse, she loses control and unleashes an explosion if her powers remain unused. Faced with no other choice, Nitta finds himself becoming her caregiver.

To let her use her powers freely, Nitta asks Hina to help out with a construction deal, which goes smoothly. But while this is happening, a rival yakuza group covertly attacks his boss. To Nitta's shock, his colleagues later pin the blame on him! Tasked with attacking the rival group in retaliation, Nitta steels himself and arrives at their hideout. But suddenly, Hina unexpectedly steps in and helps him wipe out the entire group. As it turns out, Hina might just become a valuable asset to Nitta and his yakuza business, provided she does not use her powers on him first! And so the strange life of this unusual duo begins.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hina Main

Tanaka, Takako Japanese

Nitta, Yoshifumi Main

Nakajima, Yoshiki Japanese

Anzu Supporting

Murakawa, Rie Japanese

Mishima, Hitomi Supporting

Hondo, Kaede Japanese

Mao Supporting

Ozawa, Ari Japanese

Yassan Supporting

Tsuji, Shinpachi Japanese

Sakura, Utako Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Sab Supporting

Kawanishi, Kengo Japanese

Naitou, Tatsuhiko Supporting

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Baba, Kiyoshi Supporting

Koyama, Tsuyoshi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kikushima, Kazufumi Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

Sep 7, 2024

DrMechano

Recommended

Hinamatsuri is a short but sweet series. It's really funny and has a lot of heart to go along with its humor.

The show is about Nitta, a yakuza gangster who unexpectedly meets a girl named Hina with psychokinetic powers. While it's a bit rocky at first, Nitta comes to view Hina as his own daughter, and their relationship is really heartwarming as the series progresses.

While it's short, I really enjoyed Nitta and Hina's father-daughter relationship. Anzu's storyline of dealing with homelessness also had a lot of heart.

I enjoyed the anime (short as it was) so much that I've even started reading the (comparably much longer) ... manga, and I'm enjoying that a lot so far too!

If you want a nice quick funny anime about found family, Hinamatsuri's a good choice.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 6, 2024

CaptainKenshiro

Mixed Feelings

While I didn’t watch everything I would have liked from any year in the history of the medium, 2018 is easily the worst year in anime history that I remember, based on everything that I watched so far that came out in it. I still have to watch some other titles to see if I’m wrong or not, but until the moment I write this, there’s only one show in it which I gave an above average rating, this one, and even then I only consider it to be just decent.

Initially I didn’t care about it much because I tend to dislike anime comedies, but ... this one had certain good reputation, and I watched so many awful to meh titles from that year so one more wouldn’t hurt.

To my pleasant surprise, a story that begins with an esper (alien?) girl falling over the head of a yakuza didn’t go for the usual over exaggerated humour of the genre, with people screaming all the time and telling you what the joke is supposed to be. It also didn’t include any lazy referential comedy, it let the absurd situations, the properly drawn reaction faces, and the character interactions do their thing, and that is all that it needed.

But what really makes the show appealing and worth watching is not really the comedy, but instead the slice of life part of it. Eventually another girl appears to fight against the main one, and the series also partially focuses on an actual human girl dealing without wanting with parts of the, let’s say, adult world (no, it’s nothing nasty or anything like that). There are some bits about the main yakuza guy as well, and they are funny because how good and silly every mafia guy is, but for the most part, the lives of the other girls are the main point of the series.

There is a fourth girl shown at some points that is training all the time while having a comical “Cast Away” type of situation going on, but it wasn’t expanded much. The ending of the show is nonexistent, it’s completely open for more stuff to come, and it has been six years, and the source material was already finished, yet nothing seems to be on the horizon, man…

The main girl is Hina, who can’t really control her psychic powers and thus lives off the yakuza guy threatening him to make a mess out of his life if he opposes (though she doesn’t really uses them much). Her whole thing is about learning to, well…not do and don’t be like that, though the show is not that successful with her “character arc”, as she doesn’t really change all that much by the end of the series. She gets friends and there’s an evolution of her relationship with the co-protagonist, at least.

Anzu, tasked with defeating Hina, is by far the most interesting and best character in the show, as she becomes a homeless person and learns about working and being part of a community and having a place to consider her home and stuff. It could be said that through her the series explores the situation of homeless people in Japan. But although it is the most serious and best part of the series, the theme is not explored that deep, detailed and well, it just adds the slight drama bits and the little bits of substance that ends up making the show worth watching and not much more.

Finally, there’s Hitomi, who ends up getting swayed around by all the ridiculousness around her, but also ends up getting a job and there is some funny developments around her and somewhat of an evolution of her relationship with her mother, but is played out more for laughs than anything else.

Visually, the series is surprisingly good, especially coming from studio feel., that produces nothing but crappy ecchi shows or average slice of life dramedies with so-so visuals. Here everything from artwork to backgrounds to special effects are very solid, with the simple and generic character designs being the only weak aspects. The actual animation is very good at times, as the series has surprisingly good motions during its short action scenes, that puts lots of fighting shounen to shame, especially the ones from that year. The thing is though, that most of the time the series isn’t like that and is more normal and standard, with the characters being mostly still and stuff.

The audio is decent in every aspect from sound effects, to voice acting, and music, but nothing to write home about.

There isn’t much else to say about it, well scripted and directed comedy, good visuals, serviceable sound, decent characters, and some slice of life bits on the back of everything to give it a little substance and make the series slightly worth watching. That was enough for the terrible year for the medium that was 2018, and I hope the continuation comes out at some point.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 19, 2021

DearyDarling

Not Recommended

I was absolutely down to invest in the anime the first episode set up. Strange exceedingly powerful young girl that doesn't understand human interactions being dropped in to learn just that from a Yakuza (hilarious blind-leading-the-blind set up) while i assumed part of what would form their bond is protecting each other from the dangers each of their lives are rife with.

And then that just didn't happen. It was like they got a new showrunner for episode 2 that came in blind and just made it up as they went along. It was incoherent, disjointed and downright irritating because i wanted very much to ... continue watching the anime i started.

I will say there were animes within this anime that could be pulled out and given their own storyline that i would watch in a heartbeat. Anzu doesn't need to be a powerful girl from ... uh... where? who knows really but the story arc about a group of these old, weary homeless men imparting values to this little street urchin trying to survive and forming a familial bond with her would be an instant watch for me. I am sad that Anzu's anime doesn't exist.

Likewise a comedy about Hitomi would be hilarious.

But all of it together was a jumbled mess and it's just proof that while I rely heavily on reviews for recommendations, once in a while I will just not get what all the hype is about.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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