Hakushaku to Yousei

I came in with expectations before watching this because I had finished reading the two-volume manga a week before. Both the anime and manga are based on the light novel, but it seems the anime took things a little further and didn’t include what was in the second volume of the manga.

Anyway, I know this anime was probably quite popular back in the day with young girls. There’s a beautiful young lady who’s misunderstood and finds comfort in a mysterious and devilishly handsome man who is in need of her fairy services. She can see fairies! He sparkles so much when he saves her life! ... I think if I were years younger this show would have been the ultimate source of my fangirling.

The setting for this anime is charming and quaint. Historical anime, especially set in the Victorian era, is always quite interesting due to how well the writers pay attention to clothing, speech, and other little details that make the time period credible. If you like seeing people in dashing coats and open collars, long dresses with petticoats and ruffled sleeves, top hats and canes, then this will definitely be appealing to you.

There’s that fairy lore aspect as well. Even though I’m a grown adult, I’m still quite fascinated by magical fairy tales, having grown up in a time where Disney made my childhood. This show doesn’t shove information down your throat, either. Lydia doesn’t act like some kind of dictionary when she helps the earl with his fairy business. She feeds him tidbits of information when he asks or when it’s necessary. There’s no time to talk all about the fairy world. All there is to know is that it’s there and there are some rules to follow, which aids in keeping one’s imagination vibrant.

Adventure-wise, though it keeps moving and engages the viewer, I think a little bit of it was muddled and confusing. While having legends to follow and read about is interesting, when they became more convoluted it was harder to follow what the characters had to do in order to accomplish their goals.

The earl’s true origins also brought the show to a new level. All I can say is that he’s not the perfect prince that he initially appears to be; he’s got a lot of dirt and it complicates the entire plot, especially the romance.

Even though MAL doesn’t give this anime a romance tag, I think it definitely should have one. Anyone looking at the cover of the anime, manga, or light novel would know that there is a gigantic shipping between the fairy doctor Lydia and the earl Edgar. It would be a little too perfect if their feelings for each other were clear from the beginning, so there’s the problem of Edgar’s womanizing personality and Lydia’s difficulty in believing his declarations of love. It can get pretty frustrating, though it was much more annoying in the manga. The anime does better by giving an additional reason for Lydia spurning his advances, making the question of their relationship credible.

There’s something a little different about the way this romance is portrayed, though. I’m not sure if it’s customary in the Victorian era, but both characters are very earnest about their feelings. Though Edgar’s personality is a little bit murky, he’s still dead set on making Lydia his and showers her with compliments of love, especially those three little words. Lydia tells him honestly that she doesn’t believe him and even gives him the reasons why she doesn’t think so. It’s a constant battle of wills and reminds me a lot of Asian dramas.

While one would expect Lydia to be quite a headstrong protagonist, a lot of the times she’s put in the position as a damsel in distress because she can’t fight against strong men with guns and knives. Her strengths as a character, therefore, are in her knowledge of fairy lore and her belief in herself. She’s a strong-willed person due to how long she’s had to endure people’s ridicule towards her profession. She trusts her instincts above all else, and she’s hardly wrong because of her fairy instincts.

Though I wish she were nicer to Edward, she’s very much a friendly girl and is the kind of person I’d want to know. She’s smart and her desire to do a good job as a fairy doctor drives the show successfully. A lot of this show has to do with her becoming a new person because of Edgar and because of the trials she goes through which put her experience to the test. I think it’s wonderful to see a heroine bloom like this.

Edgar is a whole different story. While I’m a sucker for attractive gentlemen, I’m annoyed when they almost never change their cool expression. It also may be the strange color of his eyes which makes it seem that way. His emotions are hard to read and at times I felt that Lydia may have been right to say he was bluffing. Additionally, his uncovered dark past is pretty bad and contrasts greatly with his current status, so it feels unreal and a bit over dramatic.

You have to like his suaveness, though. If you can sympathize with his history, his transformation into the earl he is now reflects the great strength he has inside of him. He’s a courageous person and stops at nothing to obtain what he desires. Of course, his aims change the longer he spends time with Lydia. He never fails to be the prince-like character that every girl dreams of.

As much as I hated how perfect Edgar seemed sometimes, he looked gorgeous, as did Lydia. The character designs imitated the delightful light and lovely look from the manga and light novel. While they do have the same large-eyed girls and smaller-eyed men that are frequent in shoujo, they’re still lovely. They even carry the important colors over: the long and springy hair of Lydia’s that people often call “rust-colored”, Edgar’s unique ash mauve eyes, Lydia’s peridot green ones that see everything of the world, and Edgar’s noticeable blond hair.

The fight scenes in here were hard to understand. The people moved too fast and it was difficult to comprehend who did what. I suppose part of that is due to the incredible speed of fairy world creatures, but it’s really quite a shame. I think otherwise the animation for this show was fine, though, given it was aired in 2008.

I can’t say that the soundtrack was that spectacular. There were the light and quirky tracks for mischievous moments in which brownies stole cookies, little classical string pieces when the earl and his fairy doctor went out on walks, and so on. The soundtrack worked for most of the show.

What I had an issue with was the OP. I didn’t think that poppy piece with electric guitars and violins suited the anime setting. I would have preferred a quieter piece to go with the seriousness of the story and ancient fairy lore. I suppose this type of OP would be appealing to the young folk it was geared toward, though.

The first episode left me quite skeptical, but I do have to say I enjoyed watching this anime. Though I’m irritated by how love in Asian dramas can turn out, I still like watching it, so the similar romance in The Earl and the Fairy gave me the same experience. It was also quite nice to see two lovely people in love. The touches of magical history and encounters with mythical creatures were interesting and kept the story going. If you’d really like to enjoy this story to the fullest, though, I’d encourage you to read the light novel.

I watched this whole bloody thing bloody thing because it was only 12 episodes and I was hoping it would get better.

I began watching because literally, I liked the look of the character I was after a nice romantic storyline, which there... sort of... was?

I felt like there was no natural progression and there wasn't a clear difference between when the characters first met and how they felt at the end.
I had to ask google to explain to me the storyline because it was very choppy and seemed to miss out some essential information that probably would have made it flow better. I have a ... feeling the manga probably tells the story better.

Egar the main characters is using Lydia at first to get this powerful sword to prove his status in the world as since losing his parents, he has lost that. Eventually he falls in love with her. It sounds like a cool transitional romantic story line that many anime use as a base - you know, began with no feelings, progressed into love because one of the characters is just so kind they can't help it? Well! The problem is, Edgar is so flirtatious in the beginning that it isn't easy to see when his feeling become genuine. His flirting is borderline creepy too and slightly abusive. Although he never forces her to do something she doesn't want to, he looks as though it's a huge effort to make that decision.

Lydia also only progresses the tiniest bit towards falling for Edgar and it's kind of frustrating.

There is little character development for the others also.

I really could go on. I kept up with this anime till the end as I was curious about the storyline.
Meh. It wasn't the worst thing I've seen. Ones I REALLY don't like I drop after a few episodes

Earl and Fairy is an adventure where a doctor and a prince are going on a journey to find an heirloom of fairy origin. But since it is also a shoujo, the doctor is your typical silly girl with a good heart that can see mythological creatures and the prince is your typical mysterious hairless chest bad boy hunk. YEAAAAH here comes the cheese.

Animation is done by Artland, a studio which has produced nothing but mediocrities with the exception being the highly acclaimed Mushishi. Other than that, they never had high budgets and thus this show looks rather run down. Direction is done by a ... nobody who has produced nothing but passable titles.

So our shoujo heroine TM Lydia is a doctor, something that can fool you to think she cures diseases and treats wounds. That would make her a heck of a dynamic female instead of a clueless dumb broad. But NAAAAH she is actually a FAIRY doctor, akin to a witch doctor or a shaman, able to see and communicate with the unseen world of mythological creatures. And that is all she is doing, so the whole inborn talent she has is just there to flavour the story with sparkles of magic. So instead of having rose petals and stars as nothing more than visual effects in the background, those are literally stuff that happen in real life… but only to her, because she is the only one who can see all that, so everybody else just thinks she is a nutjob. So much for superpowers if you can use them to do jack in your every day life and be sent to an asylum for no real reason.

The problem with her is that she is penniless, since nobody would give a job to a 19th century girl, much less to a girl who claims she can see monsters in an age such things are considered nothing but fairy tales. Here is where the mysterious hunk TM Edgar enters the story and with his royal lineage and hairless chest asks her to help him find a sword to prove he is indeed an earl. Because finding that sword is apparently all it takes to prove to everyone you are who you claim to be; let’s hope some random peasant doesn’t get to it first because he will magically turn to a noble or something.

Each of them has their own mascot pet to boot. Lydia has a talking fluffy cat that acts like a spoiled noble and Edgar has a butler bodyguard who kicks ass and is of course also a hunk. And thus the four of them go on a journey where she constantly is helpless, he is constantly mysterious, and their pets do all the comic relief and action scenes. That pretty much means that the protagonists have less appeal than their lackeys. YAWN!

So here you are waiting to be excited with an adventure full of action and suspense. You get close to nothing because everything remains quite basic and blunt to the most part. The artwork is so weak and the antagonists so dull, you just don’t give a damn even if they accomplish whatever they want. And by the way, they don’t because the story is left incomplete. You also hope for some spicy romance to take place between them but NAAAAH not even that happens as everything remains on first base at best. There are many moments where they could have done much more than just holding hands but she keeps flipping and he just doesn’t try to force himself on her. How nice of him; too bad we don’t get a single interesting scene for the same reason.

And that is pretty much all you get from this anime. Run down visuals, dull music, stereotypical shoujo characters who don’t do anything, piss poor action and adventure and an open ending showing you its middle finger. You might as well not bother watching this unless you so much want to be disappointed or have a heck of a lot free time to waste.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 5/10
General Artwork 0/2 (run down)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (Victorian era and fairy tale feeling)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 6/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 2/4 (average)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 3/10
Premise 1/2 (typical)
Pacing 1/2 (dull)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (doesn’t exist)

CHARACTER SECTION: 4/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 2/2 (cheesy but well founded)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 0/2 (none)
Catharsis 0/2 (none)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (no reason to bother watching again such a dull and incomplete show)
Memorability 1/4 (nothing much to bother remembering it)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Art 0/1 (looks lazy)
Sound 0/2 (sounds dull)
Story 1/3 (generic and heads nowhere)
Characters 0/4 (stereotypes)

VERDICT: 3.5/10